Milan
By synthesizing sound and motion, Jean Tinguely (1925–91), one of the 20th century’s most daring exponents of kinetic art, undermined the stability of the artwork through complex, subversive, and inherently humorous sculptures. The current retrospective of his work at Pirelli HangarBicocca (organized in collaboration with the Museum Tinguely in Basel and on view through February 2, 2025), features 40 kinetic sculptures and monumental multi-component machines from the 1950s through the 1990s that demonstrate how his experimental approach and use of detritus continue to resonate with today’s concerns about technology and consumerism. Filling 5,000 square meters, the show—part of a program of cultural events celebrating the 100th anniversary of the artist’s birth in 2025—marks the most comprehensive Tinguely exhibition staged in Italy since his death.
HangarBicocca’s vast, industrial space is suited to bold, performative practice, and the audaciousness of these pioneering sculptures is shown here to great effect. The works establish a clear connection with the cavernous interior—HangarBicocca was once a locomotive manufacturing facility—while also evoking some of the atmosphere of Tinguely’s last studio in Fribourg, Switzerland. The works stand alone or in coherent groupings, with L’Odalisque (1989) and Mercédès (1991) visible in the distance as sweeping loops and arcs of suspended, colored light.
Many of Tinguely’s unwieldy mechanical contraptions appear to have a life of their own, detached from any constraint of authorship. Powered by a small motor, Méta-Matic No.10 (1959/2024)—a replica of a work first realized in 1959, and one of the first in the exhibition—creates abstract drawings of its own volition, to the delight of visitors. Sculpture méta mécanique automobile (1954), an exquisite black wire construction, employs similar geometric components, in primary red and yellow.
A highlight of the exhibition, Requiem pour une feuille morte (1967) consists of a colossal sequence of wheels driven by belts. One of a body of sculptures characterized by black-painted surfaces, it is backlit, its stark silhouette emphasizing the uniformity of the rotating objects, rather than their individual quirks. The nearby Gismo (1960)—a beguiling arrangement of wheels and rods made possible by electric welding, which allowed Tinguely to join larger and heavier pieces of scrap metal—stands inert like a prehistoric, skeletal relic. While the exhibition is choreographed so that single works are operated for a set time, Gismo can no longer be operated at all due to its fragility. At the time of its creation, however, it was paraded through the streets of Paris, along with L’appareil à faire des sculptures (1960), both sculptures en route to the artist’s exhibition at Galerie des Quatre Saisons.
There is a balletic quality to many of the works, as their constituent parts twist, turn, ascend, and descend, accompanied by aural cacophony. Two of the largest pieces, Cercle et carré-éclatés (1981) and Méta-Maxi (1986), involve wheels, belts, electric motors, and various mechanical components, which, as they crank into action, evoke the rhythm of a production line. Rotozaza No. 2 (1967), on the other hand, functions in opposition to assembly; its glass bottles travel along a conveyor belt to meet an axe that smashes them to smithereens, thereby subverting production to achieve playful, if destructive, ends. Tinguely’s work often exploits machine movement to explore contradictory properties, such as irregularity and disorder, a distinct feature of Rotozaza No.2.
Milan is a particularly appropriate location for this retrospective, because it was here, in the Piazza del Duomo, where Tinguely created La Vittoria (1970), an auto-destructive work also referred to as The Suicide of the Machine. On the night of November 28, 1970, the 10-meter-high structure self-destructed 30 minutes after its performance, while “O Sole Mio” played in the background. Archival documentation from the event is included in the exhibition. Tinguely’s impact on 20th-century art and life was immense, so much so that at his funeral on September 4, 1991—in a procession led by one of his noisiest, firecracker-exploding machines—more than 10,000 people lined the streets of Fribourg to pay their last respects.
