OGR, Turin
Built at the height of the Italian railroad’s popularity, Turin’s OGR (Officine Grandi Riparazioni) housed train-repair workshops for a century, before being transformed in 2017 by the young curator Nicola Ricciardi into a dual-function institution – at once an art center and an incubator for technology projects.
Two huge rectangular wings are joined by a transept of 1,500 sq m, housing a restaurant with a single 25m-long table capable of seating ninety diners. The motif is clear: inclusivity, collectivity, diversity. In this part of northern Italy, where the far-right Lega Nord holds sway, it’s not without reason that this theme is emphasized. “OGR is above all else a space of unification,” says Massimo Lapucci, the managing director. “And it’s not just for artists, for youth, and for entrepreneurs, but for all of the public, whatever their walk of life and interests.”
OGR Cult (9,000 sq m) and OGR Tech (13,000 sq m) aim to bring together the best of the visual arts on both a national and international stage, and to operate as a think tank for innovative and socially useful digital technology, fostering start-ups, education, and research.
The idea was ambitious, and required determination and audacity to get off the ground. After serving the railroad for decades, OGR, established in 1895, was abandoned in 1992 and slated for demolition. Then, in 2013, the Fondazione CRT – a philanthropic organization active most notably in the preservation of cultural heritage and scientific research – purchased the site. Three years and 100 million euros later, OGR announced its new form.To launch the redesigned site, the Italy- and US-educated art critic and curator Nicola Ricciardi, born in 1985, gathered together an auspicious assembly of musicians – Giorgio Moroder, Elisa, Ghali, Omar Souleyman, the Chemical Brothers, and the Atomic Bomb! Band – to provide free Saturday concerts over three consecutive weeks in order to spread the word about OGR.
The project draws its integrity from presenting performing arts and contemporary visual arts within the complex’s industrial architecture, which has unique stylistic and spatial features. The sheer size (almost 3,000 sq m of exhibition space with 16m-high ceilings, along with the transept linking the two buildings) offers a sense of new possibilities for performances, large installations and monumental works. Fittingly, the opening of OGR was accompanied by three site-specific works: Procession of Reparationists, an installation by the South African artist William Kentridge, on display until the end of December 2019; an immersive cinematic work by the British collective United Visual Artists (UVA); and an exhibition by the Italian artist Patrick Tuttofuoco. At the center of OGR Cult are two spaces: the Duomo, a 350 sq m space with a 19ft. ceiling that is dedicated to conferences, artist presentations, and roundtables; and the Sala Fucine, with 2,750 seats for a variety of live events (concerts, dance, and theatre). “Our goal is to enter into dialogue with the largest international institutions, whose programming inspires us by the way they have achieved meaningful work weaving together the visual and performing arts. For
example, the Tate Modern, the Barbican Centre, and the Southbank Centre in London, the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, and the Park Avenue Armory in New York, not to mention the Manchester International Festival,” Ricciardi said in an interview.
But this international prism doesn’t exclude OGR’s local roots in Turin and the surrounding region, where numerous private foundations, galleries, public museums (despite their limited financial means), and spaces for artist residences and festivals combine to form a robust network dedicated to art. For while OGR is interested in art production across the world, it wants to tailor its programs to reflect the excellence of art in Turin as well, and to stimulate and facilitate exchanges and transfers of knowledge between the local and the global.
To these ends, Ricciardi has formed connections with prestigious Turin museums: the Museo Egizio, specializing in Egyptian antiquities; the Palazzo Madama’s Museum of Ancient Art; the GAM museum of modern and contemporary art; the Museo d’Arte Orientale; and the Castello di Rivoli, with its noteworthy Museum of Contemporary Art, which opened in 1984.
With these partnerships in place, Ricciardi has enlarged the sense of what is possible for art in the city. For example, his alliance with the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo (founded in Turin in 1995), which focuses on young Italian and international artists, suitably complements OGR’s mission. The two organisations provide joint spaces for an exhibition housed at both venues, supported by the city museums. The exhibition, “Like a Moth to the Flame” – curated by the brilliant and innovative team of the artist Liam Gillick, the editor-in-chief of ArtReview, Mark Rappolt, and the executive director of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College in New York State, Tom Eccles – brought together fifty-four artists to present Turin through objects collected by the city’s museums and residents. Organized immediately after OGR’s inaugural festivities, this first exhibition revealed not only the institution’s attentive gaze on Turin itself, but also the high standards of its programming.
In its two-year existence, OGR has shown the work of Tino Sehgal; Susan Hiller; the Iranian trio of Ramin Haerizadeh, Rokni Haerizadeh, and Hesam Rahmanian; Mike Nelson; and Ari Benjamin Meyers. More recently, it has hosted the Biennale of Image and Movement through its partnership with the Centre d’Art Contemporain in Geneva, while the work of Pablo Bronstein is on show until November 24, 2019. It is a busy slate, admits Ricciardi, but one that places OGR squarely within the history of contemporary art in Turin: Marisa and Mario Merz lived and worked in the city; arte povera was born there in 1967 (Giuseppe Penone still has his workshop in Turin); Artissima, Italy’s most important contemporary art fair, takes place in the city every November; and the Merz, Pistoletto, and Sandretto Re Rebaudengo foundations call Turin home. “Our exhibitions are complex, and, in a way, we ask a lot of our visitors, who are mostly Turin residents,” said Ricciardi. “But I love the idea that they are surprised by the works and by their use of the exhibition space, and that OGR, separate from its programming, constitutes a place of exchange, of meeting, and of peace.”
OGR, Corso Castelfidardo, 22, 10138 Turin. Among OGR’s numerous autumn events are exhibitions by Monica Bonvicini (October 31, 2019 – February 2, 2020) and Mauro Restiffe (October 30, 2019 – January 5, 2020), both curated by Nicola Ricciardi.