M77 is pleased to announce Gianni Bertini: Mechanical Manifesto, a title that references the Manifesto of Mec-Art(“mechanical art”), which defined a new visual language in the art world masterfully represented by Gianni Bertini’s work between 1965 and 1970.
Scheduled from June 10 to September 27, 2025, the exhibition Gianni Bertini: Mechanical Manifesto showcases over 50 works that illustrate a distinctive artistic approach based on mechanical printing and reproduction techniques. The exhibition also marks the beginning of M77’s representation of the artist. Bertini embraced photography, replacing traditional brushes and palette with mechanical processes, and meticulously controlled each stage of the image’s mechanical elaboration to shape its very structure. Transferred onto emulsion-coated canvas, cardboard, or metal, and then rendered in a painterly way using oil, tempera, and collage, these images take on new meanings, reinterpreting reality and the myths of our time.
“Bertini,” explains exhibition curator Nicolas Bourriaud, “managed to blend car crashes and beach scenes, Greco-Roman mythology and mechanical gears: any subject could be Bertinized. From the very beginning, Bertini stated that he was fascinated by ‘cosmic, sidereal, scientific, or mechanical events,’ and he remained faithful to this combination throughout his life. Cosmos and mechanics: his entire body of work seems to exist between these two poles.”
The opening reception will take place on Monday, June 9, 2025, at 7 p.m.