46 rue de la Ferté Gaucher, 77169, Boissy-le-Châtel, France
Open: Wed-Sun 12-6pm
Sat 3 Jun 2023 to Sun 30 Mar 2025
46 rue de la Ferté Gaucher, 77169 The Ability to Dream
Wed-Sun 12-6pm
Adel Abdessemed, Etel Adnan, Kader Attia, Berlinde De Bruyckere, Alejandro Campins, Yoan Capote, Loris Cecchini, Elizabet Cerviño, Nikhil Chopra, Carlos Cruz-Diez,Gu Dexin, Leandro Erlich, Antony Gormley, Cai Guo-Qiang, JR, Eva Jospin, Zhanna Kadyrova, Hans Op de Beeck, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Anish Kapoor, Jannis Kounellis, Luis López-Chávez, Tobias Rehberger, Manuela Sedmach, Kiki Smith, Nedko Solakov, Pascale Marthine Tayou, Ana Maria Tavares, Armando Testa, Ai Weiwei, José Yaque, Sun Yuan & Peng Yu, Chen Zhen
“All’Arte, all’Amore, all’Amicizia. L’unica tripla A per cui vale la pena impegnare il grande dono di essere al mondo.”
“To Art, to Love, to Friendship. The only three things for which it is worth committing the great gift of being in the world.”
Mario Cristiani, Lorenzo Fiaschi and Maurizio Rigillo, founders of GALLERIA CONTINUA
GALLERIA CONTINUA presents The Ability to Dream, a group exhibition in three chapters at its French spaces in Paris and Les Moulins, and at the Centre Interculturel Leila Alaoui (CILA) in Fontvieille, Provence, marking the inaugural exhibition of this new art centre. This new trilogy follows on from the eponymous exhibition presented at GALLERIA CONTINUA / San Gimignano in 2022.
The Ability to Dream is the title of a documentary produced and directed by Sky Arte and TIWI, retracing thirty years of GALLERIA CONTINUA’s history, through the voices and memories of some of the protagonists of this incredible adventure. On this occasion, GALLERIA CONTINUA would like to thank the artists, craftspeople, curators, professionals, institutions, collectors and everyone else who has supported its project over the years, as well as the entire gallery team for its passionate work and unstinting commitment, and of course the public who passes through the doors of its eight spaces around the world every day.
From 3 June 2023 at Les Moulins, before the Paris and CILA chapters, GALLERIA CONTINUA invites you on an artistic journey through time and space, giving mind and body to the words of its three founders, and devoting an unprecedented and abundant platform to thirty years of work and passion. To give colour to the ephemera of ideas, thoughts and sensations accumulated over the years, this narrative celebrates three feelings - art, love and friendship - divided into three temporal axes - past, present and future.
The Ability to Dream pays homage to all the gallery’s artists with major pieces revolving around these values, which will be repeated in the following chapters in Paris and Fontvieille. It is thanks to each of them, to the mark they have left, to their contribution, to the paths they have opened up, that the history of the gallery has been written, borrowing different silhouettes, shapes, colours and languages.
The Ability to Dream presents a body of work that includes all the artists who have accompanied the gallery on this journey from the outset, as well as those who have joined more recently. Each work on display bears witness to the unique bond that has developed over the years between GALLERIA CONTINUA and the nearly seventy artists it has accompanied, to give concrete expression to the gallery’s fundamental purpose: to be a meeting point for everyone, through art and creation. Over the course of its three chapters, The Ability to Dream will invite visitors to an immersive experience made up of unusual objects, fantastical characters and installations that play with light and colour or defy the laws of physics, space and time.
GALLERIA CONTINUA opened its doors in San Gimignano in 1990, the brainchild of three young friends who began their adventure in a space on Via della Rocca, in this village in the heart of Tuscany, with the aim of bringing contemporary art to a rural setting, far from the hustle and bustle of the metropolises and major cultural centres. The name of the gallery was born of the desire of the three founders to enhance the link between past, present and future, an ambition shared by all the spaces opened by the gallery around the world over the years.
GALLERIA CONTINUA has expanded over the last thirty-two years and now has eight sites on five continents. It was the first foreign gallery with an international programme to open in China in 2004, before inaugurating its Les Moulins space in the Paris countryside three years later, a monumental showcase for major interventions and exhibitions. In 2015, the gallery embarked on a new journey to Havana, Cuba, with the aim of transcending all types of borders. In 2020, the gallery opened a new exhibition space in Rome, inside the St. Regis Hotel, as well as another in Brazil, in the Pacaembu sports complex (São Paulo), an inclusive space far removed from the canons of the white cube gallery. In 2021, the gallery moved to the heart of Paris, in the Marais district, with an exhibition space, a grocery shop offering exceptional products from all the countries where the gallery is based, and an ice-cream counter by Gelateria Dondoli. Also in 2021, the gallery opened a new space in Dubai, at the Burj al-Arab, an iconic sail-shaped building located near Jumeirah beach.
Since its opening in 2007, GALLERIA CONTINUA / Les Moulins (The Paper Mills) has taken on a special place in the history of the gallery. Located in Boissy-le-Châtel, in the Grand Morin valley near Coulommiers, the Moulin de Boissy, 46 rue de la Ferté Gaucher, and the Moulin de Sainte-Marie, 48 rue des Papeteries, the paper mills have a rich industrial history, with the first written records dating back to the 14th century. GALLERIA CONTINUA / Les Moulins features permanent installations by iconic international contemporary artists represented by the gallery, including Anish Kapoor, Daniel Buren and Pascale Marthine Tayou.
The gallery’s first space in France, this monumental and unique forty-thousand square metre space has become a creative incubator, giving rise to exceptional site-specific productions and avant-garde projects, as well as a pioneering art education programme. With free, open access, this space has been dedicated since the beginning to sharing culture with as many people as possible since it opened, by being open to the area, its residents and its schools on a daily basis, and welcoming a diversity of uses and practices, with its skatepark and relaxation areas. Over the years, the space itself has become the protagonist of certain works, which are revived today in the exhibition.
In this way, GALLERIA CONTINUA demonstrates its sensitivity to contemporary creative practices by preserving the link between the past and the future. The Ability to Dream celebrates the diversity of places, cultures, individuals and communities that host and animate it, and give it its raison d’être.
A second chapter will be presented at GALLERIA CONTINUA / Paris 23 June to 21 September 2023 before a third chapter at the Centre Interculturel Leila Alaoui (CILA) in Fontvieille from 8 July to 10 September 2023.