Furini Arte Contemporanea 2010

Roma- Via Giulia 8

October 8, 2010- November 27, 2010

www.furiniartecontemporanea.it

By Shanía Mason

Why Ants Can’t Dance: Robert Barta

Currently on display at Furini Arte Contemporanea is a solo-exhibit by Robert Barta. The name of the show is,“Why Ants Can’t Dance”. The exhibit is one that is heavily conceptual. The artist was born in Prague in 1975, but currently lives and works in Berlin.

In the relatively decent sized space that houses the works (mostly three dimensional sculptures) of Barta has one particular artwork that heavily stands out, it is one that shows a cactus whose arms are hugged by a orange hula hoop. In our daily lives, it is very rare that we would encounter such a display of the two objects (a cactus and a hula hoop) as a unified object. In other words, it is more likely possible the we may see a cactus alone or even amongst other plants, or a hula hoop by itself or in the company of other leisurely objects, but never the two together. This notion of the confusion that is brought to a viewer who witnesses contrasting objects paired together in order to represent a single idea is associated with the theme of Robert Barta’s artworks. The theme of the artist’s exhibit is the importance of the idea rather than the object/s it/themselves. This is a solid representation of conceptual art.

Conceptual art is art that is based primarily on conveying a concept or idea rather than aiming for a sort of appreciation of aesthetic value, or concern with material.

When we analyze the significance of the seemingly random and unparallel pairing of the cactus and the hula hoop, an element of nature (the cactus) contrasted against a symbol of an evolved world (plastic hula hoop) we as uninformed viewers are left in a state of perplexity. We are confused because the visual display of the cactus and hula hoop is not one that can be easily justified in the way that something such as a pencil resting on top of a table can be. If we were to see a pencil on a table we could easily make sense of the scene by assuming that perhaps some sort of written work will be or has been completed; we can pair the visual imagery of a pencil on a table to a mundane act of our daily lives. However, we cannot easily make the same or similar inferences with the interaction of a hula hoop and a cactus.

The hula hoop and the cactus is a symbol of mental orientation and the need for an understanding of accessing one’s understanding and ability to analyze the concept of art. It is through the cactus and the hula hoop that Robert Barta’s work demonstrates the ability of an object’s significance to override its aesthetic value. With the cactus and hula hoop, we are become less concerned with the appearance of the two objects but more with why the two have been coupled together, its meaning, and its connection to an overarching theme.

The artist has successfully created a strong connection representation of the meaning on conceptual art and its association with contemporary art. Overall, what first appears to be confusion and a sheer senseless, later becomes a mental liberator in the way that the viewer is urged to think openly about the work of art.

The Theatre of the Dreams from Chagall to Fellini

The Theatre of the Dreams from Chagall to Fellini

Galleria Nazionale dell’ Umbria, Perugia

September 25 2010 - January 9 2011
www.mostrateatrodelsogno.it

by Sara Pelliccia

Drawing inspiration from the title of a book by Guido Almansi “The Book of the Sleep”, Luca Beatrice has curated for the National Gallery of Umbria, in Perugia, an exhibition on the oniric theme in art-a transversal journay which involves various media from painting to cinema illustrating the influence of “The interpretation of the dreams” by Freud on the language of images. Like an ideal stage, the show is animated by the presence of more than 100 masterpieces by some of the leading characters of figurative arts and cinema, from the early 20^th century to Contemporary days. The world of the unconscious and the visionary becomes magically the form of expression of modern man’s irrational thinking and nocturne and secret realm of the dreams the field of investigation of the artists.

“The Theatre of Dreams” opens by showing the early ferments at the end of 20^th century, destined to develop and become more intense with the birth of Surrealism. Along with prominent international names, such as Arnold Bocklin, Paul Klee, Max Klinger, there are the Italians Plinio Nomellini, Gaetano Previati, and Umberto Boccioni who investigate the illusionistic experiences related to dreams. The Dream of Paolo and Francesca by Boccioni inaugurates a series of fanciful images evoking the attitude of the Romantic man to explore the Self in the mysterious environment of night and the obscurity of the myth. By representing the love between Paolo and Francesca in a red cloud suspended above the darkness of hell, Boccioni wants to show the activity of the human mind engaged in the sublimation of the most carnal instincts. The first section of the exhibition is, indeed, an explosion of multi-colored canvas, in which mythological and biblical creatures, enchanting sirens, and sleeping beautiful women dance in the night, just like the most secret human wishes fluctuate in the sea of the mind.

The journey continues with the second section, centered on the most representative images of the Surrealist period. In particular, Chagall with six truly significant and impressive works, manages to catapult the viewer into the dimension of these child-like dreams, where the most instinctual feelings are free to reveal themselves. Like in a sort of fairy-tale, Le Plafond de l’ opera Garnier celebrates the triumph of an irrational world populated by musicians, jugglers, satyrs, dancers, and weird animals. Strong and bright colors portray Chagall’ s utopian environment with a dreamlike simplicity, and the fusion of fantasy, religion, and nostalgia infuse his works with a joyous quality contrasting with the disquieting atmosphere of the paintings by Giorgio De Chirico, Alberto Savinio, Salvator Dalì, Renè Magritte, Jane Mirò, Max Ernst, Paul Delvaux, and Andrè Masson. A series of desolate squares, ancient ruins, timeless landscapes, ghostly figures become metaphors of the other side of the oniric state, that of the nightmare. These canvas seem to be produced by an ill mind, which through images evoking loneliness, desperation, and melancholy, expresses the drammatic psychological condition of the 20^th century man.

What follows is a synthesis of dreams according to the vision offered by some Contemporary artists, through the pictorial experiences of the Italian and international Trans- Avant garde- with prominent figures such as Sandro Chia, Mimmo Paladino, Julian Shnabel- and installations and sculptures by cutting-edge artists, such as Tony Oursler, Jan Fabre, and Pinot Gallizio. The atmosphere of this section is completely different from the previous ones: the viewer is suddenly brought back to the harsh reality. The sculpture The Sleeper by Mimmo Paladino shows a new interpretation of the oniric world: the sleeper is portrayed as a begging naked man whose dreams have been destroyed by cynicism and disentchantment. The exhibition concludes with the last section dedicated to cinema as a form of art, in which dreamlike visions of famous authors have converged. In a very intimate room, Andy Warhol’s Sleep as well as Sam Tylor Woods’ modern David Beckham Sleeping invite the viewer to explore the silent and secret qualities of sleep seen as the keeper of the most precious human illogical thoughts. Symbol- artist of the cinema section is Federico Fellini who, by drawing lymph from his own dreams, gave life to some masterpieces of the history of film-making such as, La Dolce vita, I Clowns, and The City of Women. Significant are also 30 original drawings taken from the film-maker’s “Book of Dreams”, a sort of diary with nocturnal notes.

The “Theater of the Dreams” is nothing else that the visual representation of the complex metaphysic universe of the human being. A mixture of fantastic dreams, where beauty and ugliness, good and evil alternate in the vivacious chromaticism of the paintings, symbolizes the contradictory complexity of the mind. The dimension of the dream as source of inspiration for life and art is amplified by the blue exhibition space and by the light aura surrounding the frames of the canvas. Just like under a starry sky the miracle of the dream takes place, in the same way, the images succeeding one another as fugacious apparitions in the night esemplify the creative action of the unconscious. In the section dedicated to the contemporary artists, the magic of “the irrational” is bound to vanish. The walls become white and empty as though every dream was condemned to lose its visionary power. This exhibition is, indeed, conceived as a celebration of the power of imagination and fantasy as means through which man tries to capture the essence of reality and interpret it.

Maquette For Landscape
by Ishmael Randall Weeks
Federica Schiavo Gallery
October 2 - November 13 2010
www.federicaschiavo.com

by Clara Giannini

Ishmael Randall Weeks is an international artist born in Cuzco, Peru in 1976 working between New York City and Lima.

Maquette For Landscape is his first solo exhibition in Europe, taking place in Federica Schiavo Gallery in Rome. Walking through the three gallery rooms, the visitor has the possibility to enter the artist’s own world and in its tangible representation. Throughout it, it is possible to see how Weeks alters, often in loco, recycled materials and environmental debris, and creates something new and no more ascribable to their original functions and shapes. The works show how objects can be deeply transformed and form a new identity, a new object that embodies and examines issues regarding urbanization, development, mobility, travel and exchange in a globalized world. His sculptures often take the form of transport vehicles such as cranes, carriages, chariots, modified maps and precarious structures that allude to the artist’s own migrations. In this way Weeks guides the viewer towards notions of labor and utility.

Ishmael Randall Weeks’s philosophy is enclosed within Maquette For Landscape, where site-specific installations divide the space with photo-transfers and natural elements. Each single work of the show encloses the artist’s studies before the creation itself (there is no improvisation in his art), as it is embodied by Brasilia Table, (installation now absent from the show but that well represents the artist’s way of working), and it can be led to a major idea that guides the entire exhibition: the mixture of architecture and nature, artificial and natural. The man is seen here not only as an individual involved in nature, but also as dues ex machina, as a person with an active role in the surrounding environment.

Beginning with Landscape Intersection, the visitor can see immediately the way in which Weeks works. Created through stacks of carved books, it gives the impression of a real in-scale-representation of an eroding mountain scenery. It is very interesting to notice how the different colors of the pages seem to create the several strata of the mountains. Here Weeks’s study and way of working is well expressed: the use of recycled materials (books), the attention to details, and the study of a natural landscape (slope of the peaks which ends in plains).

The exhibition continues in the following two rooms in which photos and photo-transfers on aluminum are the main elements. They capture images of natural environment modified through the hand of the human being, but with them Weeks does not give any kind of judgment, he limits himself in representing reality how it appears in front of everyone’s eyes: a living being in continuous transformation, because of itself or because of external elements. In this photos the man’s work is always protagonist, sometimes absolute (as in Candela (Labor Factoria) or Frei Otto (Montreal 1967)), sometimes accompanied by natural components (as in Anton Tedesko (Hayden Planetarium), where the planetarium under construction was shot immersed in its surrounding environment). These photos have been taken from different perspectives, giving the impression of being looking from different points of view as if the visitor has casually met these sceneries while walking.

However, the natural element is not only suggested by Weeks. In fact, he inserts real plants in the last room of the show. This space is probably the most interesting because in it the spectator can see a direct connection among the components of the works. With the four installations that fill the space, it seems the artist wants to represent one event, a story that is taking place in the exact moment the viewer enters the room. This impression is given by the leading thread that joins the works: the wind. Experiencing the room, the spectator feels himself as if in a building site where maps are stopped by metal boards that do not allow them to fly with the wind, and the plants in the surroundings bend following the force of the current of air. The final result, which is Weeks’s main aim, is the representation of the coexistence of artificial and natural, and it is resumed in the work Cuba, a digital print on sommerset watercolor paper that shows a tent and a dilapidated cement building on a beach in the foreground, and the sea and some palms lashed by the wind in the background.

Although at the moment some works are no more visible for their moving in other places (including Maquette For Landscape, work that gives the name to the show), this does not prevent visitors from following the exhibition and understanding Ishmael Randall Weeks’s purpose: representing the integration between architecture and nature using recycled materials. From this exhibition, visitors can see the artist’s reflections on natural and artificial world, and on how they interact one with the other. The final result is an analysis on space made and expressed inside a physical space. Thought and reality, intangible and concrete form a complete whole that mirrors what is, at the end, the actual reality.

X-tables (2007) Foto Gilda Aloisi

Nora Schultz

Fondazione Giuliani

12 October - 31 December 2010

www.fondazionegiuliani.org

By Emelie Ask

Avere Luogo is Nora Schultz’s first solo-show in Italy and includes about 20 of the German artist’s works, both pieces created in the years prior to the show as well as site-specific ones, which are deeply reflective of Fondazione Giuliani in both a physical and conceptual manner. In this fairly large and spacious exhibition, Schultz delicately treats main interests such as the relationship between the work of art and its observer - as well as that between the collector and his collection -, and the history of both the exhibition space itself and the objects that are included in her works.

Born in Frankfurt in 1975, Nora Schultz is an emerging artist living and working in Berlin. Her minimalist creations bear strong influence of great artists such as Carl Andrè, Robert Morris and Robert Rauschenberg, although this last reference incorporates objects in his works to fit his own ends, whereas Schultz ensures that the history and original function of objects and materials used are strongly echoed and lives on in her sculptures. As perfectly reflected in the show, the artist generally works with poor materials, often found randomly in varying sites: usually discharged or abandoned objects. Once incorporated to become works or parts of works in a show, the artist puts a significant focus on the pieces’ location in space, and their relation to the same. The notion of immediacy as a result of the observer’s direct interaction with her works has always been a central issue for Schultz, and her works and the objects within them are not necessarily explained - for example, informative labels are completely omitted from Avere Luogo - but left in their essence to have this immediate effect upon the viewer.

Penetrating an exhibition space’s history both in terms of the physical structure itself as well as the concepts around which it emerged is an approach typical of Schultz’s, applied in Avere Luogo as well. This time, the materials of the works were collected after many days and much energy spent in Rome and Roman scrap yards, and the result is a group of minimalist sculptures in natural tones of colors, often seemingly fragile and always referring to one another as well as to the Giuliani collection itself, as mentioned. Though the artist was invited to freely incorporate art works from the collection - which mainly consists of sculptures and installations by a wide range of Italian and international artists - in her show, Schultz chose to comment on the immediate relationship between Mr. Giuliani and his collection; this intention was achieved by the juxtaposition of her own works to a series of photos from the office in which the collection is on display, and which strongly reflects the intimate nature of the relationship between the collector and his works. The photos are one of the many red threads in the show whose circular path is initiated by a reference both to Rome as a city of many layers, as well as the exhibition space itself as situated semi-underground. The work, Autoscale (2009), refers to a 1998 drawing by Vito Acconci from the collection, which is the only physical work incorporated in the show as it is mounted on the wall next to Schultz’s work. The drawing comments on a runway that was to be constructed underground, and the notion of construction is also a returning aspect of many works in the show. Following these two pieces, the visitor enters the space where Schultz has left the traces of a private performance in the work Print Station avere luogo (2010), a site-specific piece in multiple parts that is considered one of the central works of the show due to the artist’s presence in the art work. Behind the wall in the next room is a work with strong references to Andrè, part of which is constituted by a carpet and hence echoing the content of one of the earlier works in the show, Untitled (Foam Matress I) (2007). This circular notion is fundamental to the artist, who does not perceive of her show as having a beginning and an end, but instead as a whole body, flexible and in constant modification. Another important work is Car (2009), and Untitled (2010), where magnets are used in order to keep parts together; this feature is also central to Schultz’s work, as she avoids fixing and thus determining various materials to one another, but instead stresses the possibility of transformation and flexibility within each object.

Avere Luogo is an extremely rich exhibition under its stripped off sculptures, and this notion beautifully echoes that of Fondazione Giuliani itself, eternally supported by concepts, materials, beauty and philosophy as embedded in its impressive collection.