Category: installazione

10
Ott

Musja. The Dark Side – Who is afraid of the Dark?

Christian Boltanski, Monica Bonvicini, Monster Chetwynd, Gino De Dominicis, Gianni Dessì, Flavio Favelli, Sheela Gowda, James Lee Byars, Robert Longo, Hermann Nitsch, Tony Oursler, Gregor Schneider, Chiharu Shiota

Curated by Danilo Eccher

Musja, the exhibition space in via dei Chiavari 7 in Rome presided over by Ovidio Jacorossi, becomes a private museum with the opening on October 9 of Who is afraid of the Dark?, the first exhibition within The Dark Side project, a three year programme curated by Danilo Eccher.

The vast art collection owned by Jacorossi, covering the period from the early 19th century Italian to the present, will be flanked by the most innovative contemporary trends in the international panorama in order to highlight the fundamental contribution of art to personal and collective growth. The new museum also sets out to become established as a focus for the development of civil society in Rome, and to carry forward cultural commitment, and dialogue with international public and private institutions and museums.

The complex thematic setting of The Dark Side project is organized into three exhibitions spread over three years, and dedicated to: “Fear of the Dark,” “Fear of Solitude,” and “Fear of Time.” The first event in the new exhibition programme—“Fear of the Dark”—brings together 13 of the most important international artists with large site-specific installations and large-scale artworks by established artists, such as Gregor Schneider, Robert Longo, Hermann Nitsch, Tony Oursler, Christian Boltanski, James Lee Byars as well as new protagonists on the contemporary art scene such as Monster Chetwynd, Sheela Gowda, and Chiharu Shiota. There is a substantial Italian component with works and installations by Gino De Dominicis, Gianni Dessì, Flavio Favelli, Monica Bonvicini. During the opening of the exhibition, and thereafter at monthly intervals, there will be a performance by “Differenziale Femminile,” a group of four actresses, in the rooms of the gallery.

The majority of the site-specific works will be produced especially for the exhibition, while others are loans from various institutions, galleries and some others are part of the Jacorossi collection. All of them were selected for their power to draw the viewer in and encourage reflection on the topic while, at the same time, introducing some essential aspects of current contemporary art research. Visitors will be able to analyse their own reactions to sensory and tactile experiences, theatrical and magical visions, rituals and settings, anxieties that take different and unexpected forms only to melt away.

The catalogue accompanying the exhibition, published by Silvana Editoriale, contains a wealth of images by all the participating artists as well as written contributions. In addition to Danilo Eccher’s contribution, there are also some intellectually complex views on the theme of the dark by theologian Gianfranco Ravasi, theoretical physicist Mario Rasetti, psychiatrist Eugenio Borgna and philosopher Federico Vercellone. Different points of view, cross-cutting approaches, intellectual fields that diverge, overlap and are interwoven, give the project much greater scope than a standard art exhibition.

In the course of the exhibition, Musja will also be holding a series of meetings on the theme, coordinated by Federico Vercellone, professor of Aesthetics in the Department of Philosophy at Turin University.

The Dark Side – Who is afraid of the Dark?
October 9, 2019–March 1, 2020

Musja
via dei Chiavari 7
Rome
Italy

Image artwork by Gino De Dominicis, Jacorossi collection

23
Set

Antony Gormley – Solo Exhibition

Acclaimed sculptor Antony Gormley presents his most significant solo exhibition for over a decade. A conversation between old works and new, it will span his wide-ranging practice and exploit the scale and light of the RA’s architecture.

This exhibition is intended as a form of adventure that invites both physical and imaginative participation. The body in Gormley’s work is not a protagonist in a narrative, nor an ideal, a portrait or a memorial – it is the body inand as space.

Early experimental sculptures, objects and drawings – often made using his own body as a primary tool, material and subject – are brought together with large scale environments made especially for the RA. Using organic, industrial and elemental materials, such as iron, steel, lead, seawater and clay, the solidity and certainty of sculpture is put to the test, acknowledging entropy, disintegration, the experience of disorientation. Our understanding of matter itself is under scrutiny – what it means to have a body, when every ‘thing’ is essentially space and energy. Sculpture, for Antony Gormley, is not treated as a ‘thing apart’, separate from its context; it is a means of interrogating and activating its space and place. His negotiation of the surface of the body, his preoccupation with the space within, treads the line between the body as a container of feeling, a living reality, our ‘condition’, and the body as an abstract entity.

From the British coastline to the rooftops of Manhattan, Antony Gormley’s sculptures are recognised across the world. With work from his 45-year career alongside major new installations created for the galleries of Royal Academy of Arts, it will be present his most ambitious exhibition in more than ten years.

Following in the footsteps of Ai Weiwei and Anselm Kiefer, Antony Gormley will be the next artist to take over our Main Galleries with a series of works that test the scale and light of the RA’s architecture. The exhibition will explore Gormley’s wide-ranging use of organic, industrial and elemental materials over the years, including iron, steel, hand-beaten lead, seawater and clay. We will also bring to light rarely-seen early works from the 1970s and 1980s, some of which led to Gormley using his own body as a tool to create work, as well as a selection of his pocket sketchbooks and drawings.

Throughout a series of experiential installations, some brand-new, some remade for the RA’s galleries, we will invite visitors to slow down and become aware of their own bodies. Highlights include Clearing VII, an immersive ‘drawing in space’ made from kilometres of coiled, flexible metal which visitors find their own path through, and Lost Horizon I, 24 life-size cast iron figures set at different orientations on the walls, floor and ceiling – challenging our perception of which way is up.

Perhaps best-known for his 200-tonne Angel of the North installation near Gateshead, and his project involving 24,000 members of the public for Trafalgar Square’s the Fourth Plinth, Antony Gormley is one of the UK’s most celebrated sculptors.

The exhibition is curated by Martin Caiger-Smith, with Sarah Lea, Curator at the Royal Academy of Arts.

Please note: if you are sensitive to enclosed spaces, one of the works may not be suitable for you to enter. Please ask a member of staff for the best route around. Some of the works contain water, sharp edges and materials that can transfer onto clothing.

Looking for Friends previews? Reserve your slot for 18-20 September

Antony Gormley
Solo Exhibition, Royal Academy of Arts, London, United Kingdom
September 21 – December 3, 2019

19
Set

HUMA BHABHA – The Company

There is so much physical destruction happening in different parts of the world, to the extent that many functioning cities look like archeological digs. One of the ways I like to approach the past is in a cinematic way, reimagining the past and projecting towards the future just as movies often do.
—Huma Bhabha

Gagosian is pleased to present The Company, new sculptures and drawings by Huma Bhabha. This is her first exhibition in Rome.

In expressive drawings on photographs as well as figurative sculptures carved from cork and Styrofoam, assembled from refuse and clay, or cast in bronze, Bhabha probes the tensions between time, memory, and displacement. References to science-fiction, archeological ruins, Roman antiquities, and postwar abstraction combine as she transforms the human figure into grimacing totems that are both unsettling and darkly humorous.

The Company is inspired in part by “The Lottery in Babylon” (1941), a short story by Jorge Luis Borges in which a fictional society is taken over by a pervasive lottery system that doles out both rewards and punishments. The lottery is purportedly run by the Company, a secret, perhaps nonexistent body determining peoples’ fates. Bhabha’s procession of sculptures makes visible the power of this unseen Company. It comprises a pair of large, disembodied hands floating atop transparent plinths; a seated figure; and several standing figures of varying scale. Drawings on photographs echo these forms and characters, which could have come from a distant realm of the future just as easily as from a lost civilization. The standing figures are carved from stacks of dark cork—which emits an earthy, acrid odor—and its technical inverse, Styrofoam. These materials appear to be hard and dense, like eroded stone or freshly quarried marble, but they are lightweight and soft, allowing Bhabha to carve quickly and spontaneously without over-refining. The sculptural process thus becomes a sort of embodied stream of consciousness from which alien monsters, fertility goddesses, and Greek kouroi emerge.

The masklike visages of Bhabha’s sculptures are at once majestic and jarring. Painted in incongruous pastel tones—blue, mauve, pink, and green—they recall graffiti, where urban grime combines with interventions of glowing color. With their deranged, cartoonish features empowered by a foreboding bipedalism, Bhabha’s sculptures seem to both mock and warn as reflections of and witnesses to human pride and power, veneration and iconoclasm.

Pairing the scars of war, colonialism, and trauma with allusions to current events and popular media, Bhabha has long maintained that the world is an apocalypse, both man-made and natural; her ravaged sculptures appear to have witnessed some measure of catastrophe yet survived to tell the tale. Like an enthroned pharaoh or cyborg caught in a shower of shrapnel, a seated figure is assembled from sallow clay pressed into chicken wire, mottled fragments of Styrofoam, toy dog bones, and rusted chairs from Bhabha’s hometown of Karachi, caught in the crossfire of internecine and international conflict.

In Bhabha’s large drawings, human and nonhuman figures occupy the intersection of photography, collage, and painterly gesture—their composite faces and shadowy forms seeming to haunt landscapes, city streets, and architectural settings. In one, a blue and beige arch is imposed on Bhabha’s own photograph of an ancient dog statue in Rome’s Musei Capitolini, with two white kouroi looming in the background.

On the occasion of the exhibition, the Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Rome will host a conversation between Bhabha and Cristiana Perrella, director of the Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato, on September 18 at 6pm. The event will be held in English and open to the public.

Italian belowContinue Reading..

06
Set

Ryoji Ikeda – A Cosmic Journey from Infinitesimal to Astronomical

Ryoji Ikeda’s solo exhibition is on view on the ground floor of Taipei Fine Arts Museum until November 17, 2019. TFAM curator Jo Hsiao and guest curator Eva Lin have joined forces for the most comprehensive solo exhibition of works spanning Ikeda’s career in Asia since 2009. The selected artworks include large-scale sound sculptures, audiovisual installations, light boxes and two-dimensional works, which are newly conceived and exhibited for the very first time, forming an immersive space-time landscape that vaults from microscopic to macroscopic dimensions.

Ryoji Ikeda is one of only a few artists renowned internationally for both visual and sound art. His artistic explorations range from math, quantum mechanics, physics and philosophy to synthesized audio tones, music and video. His live performances, installations, and long-term projects involving print publications and music recordings constitute a distinctive creative terrain. Ikeda has exhibited around the world, including Park Avenue Armory in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris, the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo, ArtScience Museum in Singapore, and the ZKM Center for Art and Media in Karlsruhe, Germany. He is the recipient of the 3rd Prix Ars Electronica Collide @ CERN, winning the artist-in-residence program at CERN. Even though he never received formal training in art or music, Ikeda began absorbing music from a broad spectrum of genres at an early age, and later he began experimenting with editing music, manipulating magnetic tape and toying with sound frequencies. In 1994 he became a member of the multimedia art collective Dumb Type, whose works involved exhibitions, theater, dance, music and publishing. Through these cross-disciplinary collaborations, Ikeda turned his attention to theater and art exhibitions. Later, he began to do sound art performances and became active in music festivals, creating sound installations and releasing albums.

By 1995 Ikeda had begun to gradually abandon the use of repetitive musical elements in his sound creations, instead exploring the fundamental question, “What is sound?” and launching an in-depth study of its physical nature. Thoroughly reducing sounds down to their smallest units, he then rearranged and reassembled them, employing such basic elements as pure sine waves and white noise to create composite soundscapes with shifting resonances, and challenging the limits of human aural perception. In this way, he became a pioneer of minimal electronic music. Since 2000, he has followed this spirit of questing for the essence, breaking the basic structure of light down to the level of pixels, while reducing the world to data. Ikeda makes art with the mindset of a composer, incorporating physical phenomena such as sound, light, space and time as elements in his compositions. Achieving a precise expressive structure through the use of mathematical calculations, he transforms rigorous arithmetic logic into artistic forms, endowing his works with his own unique data aesthetic.Continue Reading..

09
Mag

Jannis Kounellis

Jannis Kounellis, curated by Germano Celant, is the major retrospective dedicated to the artist following his death in 2017. Developed in collaboration with Archivio Kounellis, the project brings together more 70 works from 1958 to 2016, from both Italian and international museums, as well as from important private collections both in Italy and abroad. The show explores the artistic and exhibition history of Jannis Kounellis (Piraeus 1936–Rome 2017), establishing a dialogue between his works and the eighteenth-century spaces of Ca’ Corner della Regina.

The artist’s early works, originally exhibited between 1960 and 1966, deal with urban language. These paintings reproduce actual writings and signs from the streets of Rome. Later on, the artist transferred black letters, arrows and numbers onto white canvases, paper or other surfaces, in a language deconstruction that expresses a fragmentation of the real. From 1964 onward, Kounellis addressed subjects taken from nature, from sunsets to roses. In 1967 Kounellis’ investigation turned more radical, embracing concrete and natural elements including birds, soil, cacti, wool, coal, cotton, and fire.

Kounellis moved from a written and pictorial language to a physical and environmental one. Thus the use of organic and inorganic entities transformed his practice into corporeal experience, conceived as a sensorial transmission. In particular, the artist explored the sound dimension through which a painting is translated into sheet music to play or dance to. Already in 1960, Kounellis began chanting his letters on canvas, and in 1970 the artist included the presence of a musician or a dancer. An investigation into the olfactory, which began in 1969 with coffee, continued through the 1980s with elements like grappa, in order to escape the illusory limits of the painting and join with the virtual chaos of reality.In the installations realized toward the end of the 1960s, the artist sets up a dialectic battle between the lightness, instability and temporal nature connected with the fragility of the organic element and the heaviness, permanence, artificiality and rigidity of industrial structures, represented by modular surfaces in gray-painted metal. In the same period Kounellis participated in exhibitions that paved the way to Arte Povera, which in turn translated into an authentic form of visual expression. An approach that recalls ancient culture, interpreted according to a contemporary spirit, in contrast with the loss of historical and social identity that took place during the postwar period. Beginning in 1967, the year of the so-called “fire daisy,” the phenomenon of combustion began to appear frequently in the artist’s work: a “fire writing” that enlights the transformative and regenerative potential of flames. At the height of the mutation, according to alchemical tradition, we find gold, employed by the artist in multiple ways. In the installation Untitled (Tragedia civile) (1975), the contrast between the gold leaf that covers a bare wall and the black clothing hanging on a coat hanger underlines the dramatic nature of a scene that alludes to a personal and historical crisis. In Kounellis’ work smoke, naturally connected with fire, functions both as a residual of a pictorial process, and as proof of the passage of time. The traces of soot on stones, canvases and walls that characterize some of his works from 1979 and 1980 indicate a personal “return to painting,” in opposition to the anti-ideological and hedonistic approach employed in a large part of the painting production in the 1980s. Throughout his artistic research Kounellis develops a tragic and personal relationship with culture and history, avoiding a refined and reverential attitude. He would eventually represent the past with an incomplete collection of fragments of classical statues, as in the work from 1974. Meanwhile, in other works the Greco-Roman heritage is explored through the mask, as in the 1973 installation made up of a wooden frame on which plaster casts of faces are placed. The door is another symbol of the artist’s intolerance for the dynamics of his present. The passageways between rooms are closed up with stones, wood, sewing machines and iron reinforcing bars, making several spaces inaccessible in order to emphasize their unknown, metaphysical and surreal dimension.Continue Reading..

30
Apr

Lygia Pape

Fondazione Carriero presents Lygia Pape, curated by Francesco Stocchi, the first solo exhibition ever held in an Italian institution on one of the leading figures of Neoconcretism in Brazil, organized in close collaboration with Estate Projeto Lygia Pape

Fifteen years after the death of Lygia Pape (Rio de Janeiro, 1927-2004), Fondazione Carriero sets out to narrate and explore the career of the Brazilian artist, emphasizing her eclectic, versatile approach. Across a career spanning over half a century, Pape came to grips with multiple languages—from drawing to sculpture, video to dance and poetry, ranging into installation and photography— absorbing the experiences of European modernism and blending them with the cultural tenets of her country, generating a very personal synthesis of artistic practices. Inserted in the architecture of the Foundation, the exhibition represents a true voyage in the artist’s world, organized in different spaces, each of which delves into one specific aspect of her work, through the presentation of nuclei of pieces from 1952 to 2000. The exhibition provides an opportunity for knowledge, analysis and investigation of an artist whose practice embodies some of the key areas of research of Post-War. 

The exhibition Lygia Pape offers visitors a chance to approach the artist’s output and to observe it from multiple vantage points, starting from analysis of her research, a synthesis of invention and contamination from which color, intuition and sensuality emerge. Full and empty, interior and exterior, presence and absence coexist, conveying Pape’s figure and continuous experimentation, sustained by an ability to combine materials and techniques through the use of unconventional modes and languages of expression. Seen as a whole, her research reveals the way each new project develops as a natural evolution of those that preceded it. These connections are highlighted in the display of the works, spreading through the three floors of the Foundation and linked together by a common root, a leitmotif that originates in observation of nature and develops in a maximum formal tension using a reduced vocabulary.
The works on view include Livro Noite e Dia and Livro da Criação, books seen as objects with which to establish a relationship, condensations of mental and sensory experiences. The Tecelares, a series of engravings on wood, combine the Brazilian folk tradition with the Constructivist research of European origin. The exhibition also features Tteia1, the distinguished installation that embodies Lygia Pape’s investigation of materials, the third dimension and the constant drive towards reinvention and reinterpretation of her language.
 Today her work offers interesting tools for the interpretation of the issues of our present, in an approach based less on rules and more on spontaneity, applied by the artist has a key for deconstructing the standards and schemes of preconceptions. 

About Fondazione Carriero
Fondazione Carriero opened to the public in 2015, thanks to the great passion of its founder for art and his desire to share this passion with the public. It is a non-profit institution that joins research activities to commissioning new works for solo, and group exhibitions.

With the creation of a free venue open to everyone, the Foundation aims to promote, enhance, and spread modern and contemporary art and culture, acting as a cultural center in collaboration with the most acclaimed and innovative contemporary artists while also drawing attention to new artists or those from the past who deserve to be reconsidered. From a perspective that joins rediscovery and experimentation, investigations into any form of intellectual expression are joined with commissioning new works.

Lygia Pape
March 28–July 21, 2019 

Fondazione Carriero
Via Cino del Duca 4 
20122 Milan 
Italy 
Hours: Monday–Saturday 11am–6pm H

Contact
T +39 02 3674 7039 
info@fondazionecarriero.org
press@fondazionecarriero.org

18
Apr

Latifa Echakhch – Romance

Fondazione Memmo presenta, da venerdì 3 maggio, Romance, personale dell’artista franco-marocchina Latifa Echakhch, a cura di Francesco Stocchi.

Romance nasce dall’invito rivolto dalla Fondazione Memmo a Latifa Echakhch, per la realizzazione di un progetto inedito a partire dalle suggestioni derivanti dal suo incontro con il paesaggio, le atmosfere, la storia e le vicende socio-culturali di Roma.

La mostra trae origine da un processo di avvicinamento graduale che ha portato l’artista a scoprire, interiorizzare e tradurre gli stimoli raccolti nel corso delle sue visite.

Il titolo della mostra, Romance, riassume lo spirito dell’intervento di Latifa Echakhch volto a rappresentare la stratificazione architettonica, culturale e geologica della città, in cui si intrecciano differenti periodi storici e si mescolano molteplici linguaggi e registri espressivi. L’artista è interessata a esprimere questo sentimento di trasporto, di indagine e sorpresa attraverso un’istallazione realizzata negli spazi della Fondazione Memmo (le antiche scuderie di Palazzo Ruspoli): un’opera immersiva, inedita che richiama – sia concettualmente, sia per la tecnica realizzativa – i “capricci” architettonici in materiale cementizio che ornano i giardini di fine Ottocento.

Questa mostra segna una ulteriore tappa del percorso attraverso cui la Fondazione Memmo intende promuovere l’incontro di artisti internazionali con il tessuto produttivo e artigianale della città di Roma attraverso la produzione di progetti espositivi che rivisitino materiali e tecniche tradizionali.

Latifa Echakhch _ Romance
A cura di Francesco Stocchi
Anteprima stampa: 2 maggio 2019, ore 11.30
Vernissage: 2 maggio 2019, ore 18.00
Dal 3 maggio al 27 ottobre 2019

Orario: tutti i giorni dalle 11.00 alle 18.00 (martedì chiuso)
Ingresso libero

CONTATTI PER LA STAMPA
PCM Studio
Via Farini, 70 | 20159 Milano
www.paolamanfredi.com

08
Apr

ROMAMOR di Anne et Patrick Poirier

A Villa Medici fino al 5 maggio 2019 è possibile visitare la prima mostra monografica di Anne e Patrick Poirier in Italia, ROMAMOR. A cura di Chiara Parisi, la mostra chiude l’ambizioso programma espositivo ideata da Muriel Mayette-Holtz – direttrice dal 2015 al 2018 – che ha visto alternarsi grandi nomi dal 2017, tra cui Annette Messager, Yoko Ono e Claire Tabouret, Elizabeth Peyton e Camille Claudel, Tatiana Trouvé e Katharina Grosse, senza dimenticare i numerosi artisti internazionali che hanno partecipato alla mostra nei giardini, Ouvert la Nuit. A questi progetti si sono affiancate le due grandi mostre dedicate ai pensionnaires, al crocevia tra ricerca e produzione, Swimming is Saving e Take Me (I’m yours).

Anne e Patrick Poirier sono tra le coppie francesi più celebri della scena artistica internazionale: una simbiosi creativa che ha preso corpo proprio a Villa Medici, cinquanta anni fa. Il trascorrere del tempo, le tracce e le cicatrici del suo passaggio, la fragilità delle costruzioni umane e la potenza delle rovine, antiche come contemporanee, sono la fonte cui attinge la loro creatività, assumendo le sembianze d’una archeologia permeata di malinconia e di gioco. Anne è nata nel 1941 a Marsiglia; Patrick nel 1942 a Nantes. Il loro lavoro è caratterizzato dall’impronta di violenza lasciata dall’epoca che hanno vissuto – loro che, sin dalla più tenera infanzia, si sono confrontati con la guerra e con i suoi paesaggi devastati. Nel 1943, Anne assiste ai bombardamenti del porto di Marsiglia, e Patrick perde suo padre durante la distruzione del centro storico di Nantes.

Vincitori del Grand Prix de Rome nel 1967, dopo aver frequentato l’École des arts décoratifs di Parigi, Anne e Patrick soggiornano a Villa Medici dal 1968 al 1972 – invitati da Balthus. Ed è proprio a Villa Medici che decidono di unire la loro visione artistica, firmando congiuntamente i lavori. Anne e Patrick Poirier appartengono a quella generazione di artisti che, viaggiando e aprendosi al mondo fin dagli anni Sessanta, sviluppa una fascinazione per le città e le civiltà antiche e, in particolare, i processi della loro scomparsa. In linea con questa sensibilità: città misteriose, ricostruzioni archeologiche immaginarie, fascino delle rovine, indagine di giardini, unione di opere storiche e produzioni in situ, sono gli elementi che danno vita alla mostra ROMAMOR a Villa Medici. La loro prima grande opera comune (1969), un plastico in terracotta di Ostia Antica, nasce dal ricordo delle varie peregrinazioni nell’antico porto romano, eletta dagli artisti terreno di scavi per eccellenza. Da allora, il proposito di ritrovare le tracce di una storia remota, li condurrà spesso a esperire l’assenza, la perdita delle architetture, dei segni e dell’eredità delle civiltà.

“Passiamo dall’ombra alla luce, alternativamente, dal nero al bianco, dall’ordine al caos, dalla rovina alla costruzione utopica, dal passato al futuro, e dalla introspezione alla proiezione. La duplice identità del nostro binomio di architetti-archeologi è ciò che consente questa erranza tra universi apparentemente lontani tra loro, dei quali cerchiamo le relazioni nascoste”, secondo le parole degli artisti. A Villa Medici, la mostra si apre con una La Palissade/Scavi in corso (2019) che conduce lo spettatore nello spazio della Cisterna offrendogli la visione di una monumentale maquette di rovine, Finis Terrae (2019) illuminate da una scritta Un monde qui se fait sauter lui-même ne permet plus qu’on lui fasse le portrait (2001). Permeato da queste prime visioni, lo spettatore entra nella prima sala con la presenza magica di una scultura luminosa, Le monde à l’envers (2019), costruita a partire di un globo terrestre e costellazioni, che confluisce in un autoritratto degli artisti sotto forma di Giano Bifronte, dio dell’inizio e della fine, rivolto al futuro sempre con un occhio al passato. Un’opera ambivalente, manifesto della mostra, da leggere come contrappunto all’arazzo Palmyre (2018), sulla devastazione del sito siriano da parte dell’Isis nel 2015. Lo spettatore prosegue trovando, al centro della sala successiva, L’incendie de la grande bibliothèque (1976), opera fondamentale degli artisti, realizzata a carbone, metafora architettonica della memoria, della mente umana e del suo funzionamento. A metà tra catastrofe e utopia, tra storia e mito, quest’opera pone lo spettatore di fronte al senso di fragilità caratteristico delle opere di Anne e Patrick Poirier. Ouranopolis (1995), ovvero la “città celeste”, occupa la sala successiva. “Dall’esterno, quasi nulla si vede”: sospesa al soffitto, la scultura consente di intravedere attraverso minuscoli fori, uno spazio interno che conta quaranta sale. Anne e Patrick parlano dell’amore che nutrono per le biblioteche, intese come metafore della memoria; un’attrazione che li conduce a creare dei musei-biblioteche ideali, in questo caso un edificio ellittico che sembra poter volare verso nuovi mondi, trasportando lontano il suo carico di immagini di fronte a una possibile catastrofe imminente. Lo spazio onirico che lo spettatore intravede dagli oblò si sviluppa, lungo la grande scalinata delle antiche scuderie di Villa Medici, catapultandolo all’interno di una “irrealtà inquietante”. Uno spazio luminoso, Le songe de Jacob (2019), composto da nomi di costellazioni, scale fosforescenti, forme serpentine sospese, piume bianche sparse sulla scalinata accompagnano il passo dello spettatore, gradino dopo gradino, sino a raggiungere lo spazio successivo, di immacolato candore, dove appare Rétrovisions(2018), autoritratto tridimensionale della coppia che si riflette in uno specchio, circondata da parole al neon che parlando di utopia, illuminano lo spazio, abbagliandoci. Poco lontano, Surprise Party (1996): un mappamondo sgonfio e sbiadito poggiato su un vecchio giradischi crepitante, a sua volta posato su una vecchia valigia – altro elemento chiave del vocabolario dei Poirier – che evoca una geografia nomade, “un mondo che gira al contrario. Una terra che stride”. Tra vertigini e vestigia, lo spettatore si trova di fronte a Dépôt de mémoire et d’oubli(1989): una croce che svetta, fatta di impronte lasciate sulla carta di maschere di dei antichi. Con l’opera Lost Archetypes (1979), lo sguardo si trova davanti alla ricostruzione in scala umana di grandi opere architettoniche: una serie di quattro plastici bianchi di siti in rovina. Tra passato, presente e futuro, caduta, costruzione ed elevazione, Anne e Patrick Poirier fanno vacillare i punti di riferimento storici del pubblico romano. Nella sala successiva, i collages: disegni vegetali fissati nella cera, Journal d’Ouranopolis (1995), un tentativo di lottare contro la privazione della memoria e dell’oblio. La sensazione di vulnerabilità, che presiede alla distruzione del nostro mondo, si ritrova nelle immagini di Fragility e Ruins (1996). La mostra si estende al giardino di Villa Medici: nel Piazzale, gli artisti disegnano con delle pietre di marmo di Carrara, la forma di un cervello umano, Le Labyrinthe du Cerveau (2019), con i suoi due emisferi. Un “manifesto autobiografico bicefalo”, che raffigura la congiunzione delle loro menti, metafora di una pratica di coppia che rievoca la tematica da loro esplorata negli ultimi cinquant’anni: i meccanismi legati al passare del tempo. Le loro costruzioni sono come grandi cervelli, paesaggio che bisogna percorrere. Amano dire, a questo proposito: “L’immagine del cervello, fatto di due emisferi, è ciò che meglio può rappresentarci; rappresentare contemporaneamente l’unità e la diversità della simbiosi che siamo”. Il visitatore continua la sua passeggiata immaginando di prendere una pausa nella monumentale sedia in granito, Siège Mesopotamia (2012-15) che troneggia nel giardino. Poco lontano, nella Fontana dell’obelisco, si intravede Regard des Statues (2019): anonimi occhi in gesso ci appaiono deformati dall’acqua in cui sono immersi. L’occhio che guarda il cielo, il tempo, l’occhio del ricordo e dell’oblio, l’occhio della storia e della violenza, conduce lo spettatore all’Atelier Balthus, dove emerge un’opera mitica, realizzata proprio a Villa Medici nel 1971: stele di carta, costruite a partire dai calchi delle Erme – le figure in marmo che costellano i viali del giardino della Villa – accompagnate da libri-erbari, “quaderni che recano annotazioni personali e disegni”, e medaglioni di porcellana su cui sono raffigurate le stesse immagini funebri. La parola che dà nome alla mostra, ROMAMOR (2019), appare in neon nel portico dell’Atelier Balthus in omaggio a questa città così importante da un punto di vista artistico e umano per i due artisti.Continue Reading..

29
Mar

Jenny Holzer: Thing Indescribable

The Guggenheim Museum Bilbao presents Jenny Holzer: Thing Indescribable, a survey of work by one of the most outstanding artists of our time. Sponsored by the Fundación BBVA, this exhibition features new works, including a series of light projections on the facade of the museum, which can be viewed each night from March 21 to March 30. Holzer’s work has been part of the museum’s fabric since its beginnings, in the form of the imposing Installation for Bilbao (1997). Installed in the atrium, the work—commissioned for the museum’s opening—is made up of nine luminous columns, each more than 12 meters high. Since last year, this site-specific work has been complemented by Arno Pair (2010), a set of engraved stone benches gifted to the museum by the artist.

The reflections, ideas, arguments, and sorrows that Holzer has articulated over a career of more than 40 years will be presented in a variety of distinct installations, each with an evocative social dimension. Her medium—whether emblazoned on a T-shirt, a plaque, a painting, or an LED sign—is language. Distributing text in public space is an integral aspect of her work, starting in the 1970s with posters covertly pasted throughout New York City and continuing in her more recent light projections onto landscape and architecture.

Visitors to this exhibition will experience the evolving scope of the artist’s practice, which addresses the fundamental themes of human existence—including power, violence, belief, memory, love, sex, and killing. Her art speaks to a broad and ever-changing public through unflinching, concise, and incisive language. Holzer’s aim is to engage the viewer by creating evocative spaces that invite a reaction, a thought, or the taking of a stand, leaving the sometimes anonymous artist in the background.

Jenny Holzer
Thing Indescribable
March 22–September 9, 2019

Guggenheim Bilbao
Abandoibarra et.2
48001 Bilbao
Spain

jennyholzer.guggenheim-bilbao.eus

Curated by: Petra Joos, curator of the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao

Image: Jenny Holzer, Survival, 1989

28
Mar

Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Neither Nor: The challenge to the Labyrinth

Neither Nor: The challenge to the Labyrinth (Né altra Né questa: La sfida al Labirinto) is the title of the exhibition for the Italian Pavilion at the 58th Venice Biennale, curated by Milovan Farronato and featuring work by Enrico David (Ancona, 1966), Chiara Fumai (Rome, 1978–Bari, 2017) and Liliana Moro (Milan, 1961).

The subtitle of the project alludes to La sfida al labirinto (The Challenge to the Labyrinth), a seminal essay written by Italo Calvino in 1962 that has been the inspiration for Neither Nor. In this text the author proposed a cultural work open to all possible languages and that felt itself co-responsible in the construction of a world which, having lost its traditional points of reference, no longer asked to be simply represented. To visualize the intricate forms of contemporary reality, Calvino turned to the vivid metaphor of the labyrinth: an apparent maze of lines and tendencies that is in reality constructed on the basis of strict rules.

Interpreting this line of thought in an artistic context, Neither Nor—whose Italian title, Né altra Né questa, already uses the rhetorical figure of the anastrophe to disorientate—gives agency to a project of ‘challenge to the labyrinth’ that takes Calvino’s lesson on board by staging an exhibition whose layout is not linear and cannot be reduced to a set of tidy and predictable trajectories. Many generous journeys and interpretations are offered to the public, whom the exhibition entrusts with the chance to take on an active role in determining the route they will take and thereby find themselves confronted with the result of their own choices, accepting doubt and uncertainty as inescapable parts of understanding.

The exhibition is accompanied by a Public Program including talks by Enrico David, Liliana Moro and Prof. Marco Pasi, as well as the presentation of Bustrofedico (“Boustrophedon”), a new experimental short film by Italian filmmaker Anna Franceschini documenting the exhibition, produced by In Between Art Film and Gluck50, to be premiered in Venice at the end of the show. The Educational Program, promoted by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Art and Architecture and Urban Peripheries (DGAAP) of the Ministry for the Cultural Heritage and Activities, invites participants to collectively study and perform a choreography conceived by Christodoulos Panayiotou (Limassol, Cyprus, 1978), inspired by the ‘Dance of the Cranes’ which, according to the ancient Greek poet Callimachus, celebrated Theseus’s escape from the Labyrinth of Knossos. The Programs are curated by Milovan Farronato, Stella Bottai and Lavinia Filippi, and will be held in the spaces of the Italian Pavilion.

Neither Nor: The challenge to the Labyrinth will be accompanied by a bilingual catalogue published by Humboldt Books, with essays by Stella Bottai, Italo Calvino, Enrico David, Milovan Farronato, Lavinia Filippi, Chiara Fumai, Liliana Moro, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Emanuele Trevi.

The Italian Pavilion is realized also with the support of Gucci and FPT Industrial, main sponsors of the exhibition, and the contribution of the main donor Nicoletta Fiorucci Russo. Special thanks also go to all the other donors for their fundamental contributions to the project; we are grateful as well to the technical sponsors Gemmo, C&C-Milano and Select Aperitivo.

Neither Nor: The challenge to the Labyrinth
Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale
May 11–November 24, 2019

Italian Pavilion at the Venice Biennale
Arsenale
Venice
Italy

www.neithernor.it

Commissioned by the Ministry for Cultural Heritage and Activities
DGAAP – Directorate-General for Contemporary Art and Architecture Urban Peripheries
Commissioner: Federica Galloni, Director General DGAAP

Curated by Milovan Farronato

source: e-flux