It Rests by Changing
Galleria Raffaella Cortese, Milan, Italy
In her introduction to the 1995 reprint of Gregory Battock’s Minimal Art: A Critical Anthology (first published in 1968), Anne M. Wagner writes (of Yvonne Rainer): ‘Dancer should resemble not a sculpture but an “object”, carefully defined as devoid of all human reference except scale. In analogizing the living body to Minimalist sculpture, in other words, bodily qualities are definitely stripped from both, even while the body itself becomes an empirical real.’ Curated by Simone Menegoi, the works grouped in ‘It Rests By Changing’ (a quote from Heraclitus), seem to hold the opposite as true: sculptures do not resemble objects so much as ‘bodily qualities’ choreographing actions around space, and dealing with rhythm, rest and unrest. Well researched and laid out, ‘It Rests By Changing’ frames a specifically Central European take on ‘expanded sculpture’ which lies at the crossroads between Minimalism and performance. The exhibition juxtaposes a series of old and new pieces by three pioneering artists, now in their 70s – Rolf Julius; Roman Signer; Franz Erhard Walther – as well as the younger Jiří Kovanda (a self-proclaimed fan of Signer).
The eye-candy here is Signer’s Sand Column (2008), a pile of red fire buckets filled with sand that functions as a giant hourglass, designed to collapse during the exhibition opening (the sand trickled onto the floor from a tiny hole in the side of the lowest bucket, until the whole column fell over). The work echoes the artist’s well-known unbalancing, explosive and sudden performances, documented here by a series of photographs (‘Action mit Fässern’, 1992; ‘Kugeln’, 1999; ‘Bürostuhl’, 2006).
Julius’ tiny sound installations (Musikrest, 1983 and White Field (Landscape), 2007) reclaim deceptively small portions of space and perception: while the volume is kept very low, it would turn into a soundtrack of screams and piercing noises if it was fully amplified. The liveliest dialogue opens up between Kovanda, who personally worked on the installation, and Walther’s participatory 1960s works. A contemporary of Joseph Beuys, Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter and Blinky Palermo at the Düsseldorf Academy, and also included in Harald Szeemann’s 1969 ‘When Attitudes Become Form’ at the Kunsthalle Bern, Walther has recently been regaining much critical attention: 2008 saw a solo show at CAC Brétigny, and this year he is showing at Mies van der Rohe Haus in Berlin and the BAWAG Foundation in Vienna. Both soothing and menacing, Kovanda’s Untitled (Two Cushions) (2006) is nailed to the wall almost face to face with Walter’s Stirnstück (Forehead, 1963), a red velvet pillow suggests that the viewer to rest his/her head upon it, and thus bend to the sculpture’s needs. On the same wall Kovanda’s untitled 2006 series of white plastic spoons filled with vodka invites everybody to open their mouths to sip it in.
‘It Rests By Changing’ brings forth Kovanda’s engagement with sculpture as an open and self-effacing process, rich in human reference. For example, a found chair rests precariously on three legs, the forth stuck in the wall beside it, poking like a finger (Untitled, 2006), while Walther’s horizontal Standing Piece in Two Sections (1975) is counterbalanced by his impromptu A sculpture made by Antonio, realized by chance during the installation (2009), a pile of left over blocks of polyurethane and papers, set aside for cleaning the floor before the vernissage – a playful, tongue-in-cheek affirmation of the exhibition’s bearable lightness of being.
Barbara Casavecchia
Responses
Added by Luca,
Nothing to do. The language is becoming a reassuring stereotype. The best things descend from the deep 1900. The Italian art system is trying to catch the international mainstream. Instead the no exotic Italian condition could be a vantage to reflect about language.
Luca Rossi
http://wh2.splinder.com/
