O. M. G. Debernardi, the empathic

 A major exhibition in Berlin presents the Italian artist, whose works are attracting international attention: requests have been made for his relational works, in their iconic version, to be presented in museums and galleries.

"Oreste M. G. Debernardi Dokumentations - Ausstellung" is the artist's first exhibition in the German capital, where he has lived for a few years.

The author of the catalog is the artist himself.
By the number of works exhibited, it is the largest exhibition of the artist organized so far. How to explain this interest? Oreste M. G. Debernardi certainly meets the criteria that are dear to contemporary art.
First of all, he is an authentic artist. He studied music at the Conservatory of Alessandria, but after a few essays (on cello and piano) and an award for composition, he stopped pursuing musical research and playing in public. Later, without worrying about the temptations that came to him from the artistic world, he sought personal expression through a long drift in the scientific world, which he finally found an adequate framework in relational art.

He created countless relational situations with people belonging to his everyday life. The texts that emerged from them initially became pages on the internet (the author was able to follow the birth of micro-computing and the web live, and was one of the first to disseminate private content online, anticipating today's blogs). He then produced an editorial version of it, and then books, initially distributed personally, then published on-demand.

Each of his works is unique, elaborated not only by the artist but also by those who participated with him.

Like his works, his life is authentic.

He, who has not pursued the ego all his life, but has only wanted to "be," shows us how to strive for personal essence by simply making life a place of synthesis between different creative languages, where situations are created that renew the taste of the spirit of beauty.

He lives in a dimension removed as much as possible from replicating social dynamics, which he has always considered inadequate and often banal for himself, cultivating a creative divergence, seeking interlocutors who would grasp and respect his difference.

He has led a life that takes on the traits of an existential performance.

He did not dedicate himself to worldly life, rigorously selected the people with whom to relate deeply. The image that the artist has unintentionally constructed of himself is therefore difficult to frame. Despite his ideas having a creative component capable of subverting pre-established orders, they are not considered dangerous by those who are concerned with maintaining social control.

He lives a life free and independent of society. And such independence is another criterion that distinguishes him.

Every modern artist intends to be free from conventions, seeking a primitive expression, at least since John Ruskin proposed the ideal of the "innocent eye." But Oreste M. G. goes beyond neglecting any public aspect, to focus on pure interaction, between people animated by intimate motivations within social dynamics, often moving in an extremely circumscribed environment. This probably makes his operations intensely evocative of humanity.

His books tell of a daily life, his own, following the autonarrative paradigm, in which anyone can recognize themselves, dealing with themes that are both personal and universal.

The work of Oreste M. G. is inseparable from his own life and that of those who relate to him. In this sense, he has re-established a full relationship between art and life, diverging from artists devoted to the idea of the autonomy of art.

It can safely be said that Oreste M. G.'s innocence is guaranteed by the fact that his works were created independently of any market logic.

Italian presentation of the exhibition

Documentation Exhibition

We believe that art should be experienced in an emotionally appreciable way in order to benefit from the motivational drive it can provide, thus exploiting all the potential that it can activate.

Many people are excluded from such enjoyment due to a lack of adequate interpretive tools.

Simplifying the approach to relational works, making them emotionally accessible and understandable, facilitating their contextualization, should be areas on which to focus attention.

The knowledge transmission model implied by museum activity or art gallery activity constructs communication as a linear process of transferring information from an authoritative source to a more or less informed receiver, configuring such sites as containers of works of art, collected according to pre-packaged criteria, often alien to users. This model must be surpassed by applying a cultural approach that recognizes the importance of the interpretation of individual visitors and takes into account the existence of an audience with differentiated preparation.

Art is aesthetic experience, it is creation, and individuals, rather than limiting themselves to experiencing it, can enjoy the universe of possibilities it offers, its infinite wealth of relationships, ideas, and feelings. Each of us can build our own relationship with the artistic object according to our personal abilities and competences. The heterogeneity of possible artistic stimuli does not disorient if one constructs step by step a system of choices and relationships tailored to us.

Objectives

The exhibition provides a result in concrete experimental forms and aims to:

1) propose an approach to experiencing art that improves the emotional quality of the cognitive act resulting from it, promoting the full expression of the visitor's subjectivity in their relationship with the content offered, providing the cognitive and interpretive tools necessary to promote a personal and autonomous approach to artistic content;

2) develop a multimedia narrative and data collection system, based on an integrated use of different tools (photographs, audio and video recordings), based on the participation of those who experience the construction of the interactive moment;

3) develop a social definition of the content in order to create opportunities for discussion on thematic paths, contextualizing the works, allowing in-depth analysis of them and the contexts of their production, respecting the interpretive needs of visitors;

4) develop a strategy for offering content and intervention differentiated and calibrated based on the characteristics of visitors, characterized by different levels of knowledge, artistic and emotional sensitivity.

The general objective is to create conditions through which the visitor to an exhibition is able to seek information, combine it and contextualize it according to their own interests, curiosity, and creativity, bending the offer to their own emotional participation needs. The exhibition space thus transforms into a sort of utopian and uchronic space where one can encounter what is not possible to find in reality, and which even does not correspond to any real circumstance, to any physical place, but to an image or projection of the mind of each visitor, who can autonomously explore associations and categories of meaning, face ways of seeing and feeling experiences, images, represented spaces, evoked moments, personal interweavings, memories, according to paths established by their own creativity, varying over time, also based on the relationship with others allowed by the interconnection that the network offers. The qualitative outcome of knowledge and learning is constructed in practice, through one's own memories, cultural references, expectations, and approaches to knowledge, with the possibility of constantly renewing paths and methodologies. In essence, with the opportunity to give the cognitive act a personal direction.

Description

The first phase of creating the exhibition is proposing the relational works in the form in which the artist has chosen to present them (relational experiences and related objects), digitally duplicating the iconic traces of the works themselves. This makes the materials to be enjoyed (textual, iconographic, or otherwise) easily accessible and consultable according to original itineraries.

Direct interaction with the artist, who narrates, integrates and corroborates data presented in the works, is recorded and reproduced in additional areas of the exhibition. The interactive characteristics of the system used modify the way in which communication occurs and aims to promote alternative forms of learning and knowledge processing, which are more immediate and intuitive compared to the mandatory path followed by visitors to a conventional exhibition. By multiplying opportunities for interactive access to relational experiences, new opportunities for knowledge processing are opened up, overcoming the game of relationships not only for communicative purposes but to act synergistically with the context, to make the experience dynamic.

Emotional activations allow for the persistence of such acquisition and their transformation into practices. Therefore, two fronts open up:

1) the use of technology conveys the exhibition through new forms of content dissemination;
2) technology allows us to rethink the exhibition and it will take on a new form thanks to the perspectives that technology itself offers, opening up new models and methodologies for designing exhibition spaces.

Evaluation

The successful outcome of the exhibition can inspire new forms of conception and design of exhibitions themselves. Objectives and cultural marketing can be reconsidered in terms of developing a dynamic exhibition reality that allows for the achievement of different goals (from the place of subjective and/or collective experience of learning, knowledge, creativity, aggregation, to the place designated for the protection and preservation of memory) and in terms of participation and involvement methodologies of the public, who actively intervenes in the creation or enjoyment of their cultural heritage.

Considering the social impact of every cultural increase, it was thought to request funding (public or private) that provides, at the end of the exhibition, after experiencing it, an offer (preferably in cultural services): those who participate are compensated because their practices, subsequently, are expected to be more advanced, which will have a positive impact in terms of reducing public spending.