BEYOND ALIEN: H.R. GIGER

Date: Oct 5^th 2024 – Feb 16^th 2025                    Location: Mastio della Cittadella – Turin.

Curator: Marco Witzig.

The exhibition explores, ten years after his passing, the career of the great Swiss master who profoundly changed and influenced surrealism, sci-fi horror, and contemporary gothic imagery. H.R. Giger was one of the most evocative and captivating creators of recent times, whose work exerts an enormous fascination. An artist with a contrasting personality, he developed, over the last four decades, a highly personal body of work with great visual and symbolic impact. Thanks to a distinctive surrealism, his universe is dark, abject yet sumptuous, mechanical and anatomical, capable of inspiring both terror and admiration at the same time.

With his unique style, H.R. Giger became one of the greatest representatives of visionary and fantastic art in the 20th century. Despite his recognition in pop culture, his work has received little approval from institutional circles and is significantly absent from art history books. This major retrospective provides an opportunity to question the place that should be given to an artist whose influence on contemporary culture remains strong and enduring.

The exhibition features 80 works, including paintings, sculptures, drawings, photographs, design objects, and videos, sourced from the Giger Museum in Switzerland and the private collection of Marco Witzig. The exhibition path will allow fans to fully immerse themselves in the artist’s world and admire some of his most iconic pieces in person while also exploring lesser-known aspects of Giger’s work.

The exhibition is divided into four sections, inspired by the most significant themes developed by the master: cinema, music, surrealism, and cosmic horror.

A section dedicated to surrealism explores Giger’s role in redefining the movement in contemporary terms. Finally, the cosmic horror section delves into the literary philosophy developed by writer H.P. Lovecraft, which Giger transformed into a haunting visual universe, crafting unsettling atmospheres that simultaneously seduce and disorient the viewer.