BOLOGNA ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS – LUCA FRESCHI
Luca Freschi is makes dolls, feminine simulacra that seem to be waiting for the magic word to be placed between their teeth – just like in Jewish tradition – to start moving and obeying orders. Or as in Hoffman’s tale of Olympia, Professor Spalanzani’s automaton daughter, who makes a man fall hopelessly in love just by the blink of her eyelashes and her unperturbed expression, whenever she is spoken to. Another analogy that might spring to mind is the exquisite but alarming fabric doll reproducing Alma Mahler that Kokoschka ordered from a woman toymaker, after Alma betrayed and abandoned the painter. But no. Luca’s dolls have the modesty and chastity of metaphysical mannequins or wooden marionettes. They are stiff-limbed and hard-jointed puppets wearing decorous, vaguely Nordic looking bonnets that hide their hair.
His painted terracotta casts are fragments of bodies recomposed with the affectionate patience that broken china deserves. They are life-size women, cocoons without the warmth and softness of skin, but they preserve the pose and form of the beloved ones – friends and relatives - who let themselves be wrapped and cast in plaster like fossils in a personal memory. Sometimes these giant chrysalises, similar to Madonnas and saints on old altars, have a private dowry hand-sewn with the care of a bride, and in their naked busts, whitewashed like Mediterranean houses, they host the joyful and airy drawings of children, signs which reproduce, in the fantastic grammar of beginners, the image of a person, a playful, founding vision of the Other than Self.
Text by Sabrina Foschini
BOLOGNA ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS – FRANCESCO COSSU
The work of Francesco Cossu starts with the collection, mostly of wood waste. This is followed by its approximate storage, then by its assembly. The set is constructed in connection with the area, and only afterwards is a relation formed with its inhabitant, the observer. It is the material that determines the organization of the construction, and consequently its shape.
Every piece is chosen for a specific function, to support, to reveal and define a form, to open or close space. The colour is the light hue of plywood, or the darker one of blockboard and solid wood joists, with a limited range of variations. Traces of paint rarely appear and reveal the past of the material, claiming its own identity, diversity, autonomy.
Also iron can be found in the work, even if in small quantities, in the form of screws, nails, angle bars and rivets: they are the bond, partially reversible, which allows Cossu to accumulate solutions, but also to correct and adjust them day by day. The construction appears closed and defensive, but the watchful eyes of those who probe its inside reveal its creative process. We realise, then, that these wooden architectures can be permeated and analysed, offering a redefinition of the environment in which they stand, and of their internal and external space. Francesco pursues the theme of stability, which makes the structure apparently solid, but actually precarious and fragile. On physical contact with the observer, the apparent monumentality disappears, whereas presence and bulk remain.
The Architectures are inhabited by rare objects, found or constructed, mostly leaning: primitive figures emerging from Cossu’s mind, that surprise us and accompany us.
Text by Davide Rivalta
BOLOGNA ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS - ANGELAROSA BENEVENTO
Historically - and it could be said, since its beginning – sculpture interacts with architecture, as it bases its primary significance in its location in space: a space which is a human space, experienced as constructed, and as a human modification of natural space. Only an idealistic misunderstanding, derived from a taxonomic anxiety imposing the separation of the arts, could allow the removal of metopes from temples, and their display, as separate items, in archaeological museums, the aim of which is to conceal their architectonic truth. This applies likewise to the statues that adorned the entrances of the cathedrals of the Western world, often admired in museums as hunting trophies of the big game of modern aesthetic equivocation. But in its union with architecture, sculpture does not suffer at all from subordination, as it tends to decide space, attacking it, revealing it, making it a linguistic entity. So I consider it perfectly reasonable and interesting that current sculptural performances (I wouldn’t say installations, since installation means little more than nothing) like the ones proposed by Angelarosa Benevento, start from the idea that the work of art must insist on its refusal to be an object, an entity apart and detached from the world, to assert itself as a way of activating the relationship between subject (the observer) and place (the environment), a dialectic addition or invasion, capable of establishing the power of a full consciousness to propose to the (pre-existing) space the challenge of a gesture that can revitalise it and make it otherwise perceptible. Power which, in the case presented by the young sculptor at San Servolo, is based on the choice according to which the walls, ceilings, narrow cavities of an ancient bell tower, are affected by a real assault of plastic shapes in silicone glue: simulating bees, insect armies, proposed (also) in a metaphorical key that likens them to members of a vaguely delirious social organization. It is a crowd whose individuals have no ambition to be stylistically appreciated: in fact they are produced in series and almost without any claim to manual dexterity, in the certainty – which is, in my opinion, a sign of maturity of the artist – that the value of a work will no longer be judged according to the requirements of purely formal merit. What matters is the overall effect, or - if you want – the emotional impact that the unexpected presence of dozens and dozens of bees is to produce on the observer’s imagination, through a thoroughly instrumental use of sculptural mimesis. That is, a use in which mimetic adhesion is not intended as a purpose, and in which, consequently, the important thing is not the technical executive aspect (which counts for nothing), but the possibility of generating the a foresaid emotional impact, thanks to a precise linguistic knowledge.
Text by Sandro Sproccati
USA - FULVIA ZAMBON
Fulvia Zambon’s figurative painting career began some ten years ago. The artist from Turin, who has chosen to live and work in the USA, started to express her feelings and passions through the gesture of the painting hand and the support of the absorbing canvas when she was very young. Her contribution to OPEN 12 is one of her sweet but horrifying Baby Carriages which have made her famous – paintings to be found in some of the most valuable collections in the world. Peace is a baby carriage with the Stars and Stripes, which is the symbol of the country Fulvia has chosen to live in, but also the symbol of a Power which is controversially engaged in many peace-keeping missions all over the world. This baby carriage is empty. A long, black, almost endless cloth hangs out, from the place where the baby’s little body should be lying. Something irreparable has happened. The baby carriage ran away by itself. It abandoned the town and finally came to a clearing in an autumn wood. The symbols of abandonment, of death, of guilt are very clear. In this coppice, which stands for temperance and wisdom, there is a little house reminding us of a kind woodman’s fairy-tale cottage. A cup of milk was put down on the stump which is usually used to chop wood. This is one of those bowls which in so many paintings has always reminded us of our early childhood The cup is a symbol of food, and therefore of the possibility of survival. But another important element makes its discreet presence felt: a little oval picture hanging inside the hut. Its subject could be a little angel, a spirit of the wood or the transfiguration of a little mouse which accompanied the artist’s fancies when she, as a child, invented stories about a mouse that accompanied her everywhere. The painting undoubtedly reminds us of the terrible events that happened in America on 11th September 2001, when two Boeings piloted by Arabian kamikazes crashed into the Twin Towers. “We all felt America was invincible”, Fulvia explains, “That attack left everybody flabbergasted”. The Second Gulf War began on 20th March 2003. Everybody knows what followed. Fulvia Zambon is not engaged in politics. Actually her pictures are real stories which transfer everyday happenings into a fairy-tale, but very serious world. “But”, she adds, “in these eight years we have seen just some coffins covered by the flag, few images on TV. The rest has been carefully hidden. We become frightened of our own dead. Yet we realized that things were going wrong”. The work of art exhibited at OPEN 12 is a large picture which reveals the thinking of a talented painter who is able to give voice to den zeitgeist. Ordinary people cannot stand wars any longer. Peace becomes for once a word free of symbolical and rhetorical meanings. It simply and straightforwardly means: Stop it.
Text by Anna Caterina Bellati
URUGUAY – USA – JORGE MISIUM
Jorge Misium refers to his works as mirrors, “playgrounds antagonizing visitors.”
Adapting unconventional materials to spaces is a principal interest of Jorge Misium. His interactive installations often engage visitors in various states of play and experimentation where meaning and purpose are found through discovery. The elements he often chooses - steel cable, chain, cardboard, salt crystals, silicone rubber, motion detectors, sound and light - are used to create complex systems of connectivity and communication. As a way of establishing a participatory experience, visitors to his sites often find their physical activity somehow reflected in the work. Sensors may cause changes to the environment and materials based on one’s movement or sound. Lights flash, images document movement, and engagement is recorded as the work responds to slight and obvious behaviors.
In Misium’s sculptures and installations visitors are given only minimal instructions for how they are to experience the work. This may be found in related drawings posted on the wall, the tactility of the artist’s manufactured surfaces, or entirely by chance. Discovery and recognition trigger reflection which leads to personal revelation. This is true in his early 2009 project, Skunk Works, an installation involving light, sound, and sensors, where visitors find themselves drawn into a web of lines and lights that appear to document their journey through the environment. Lights flicker and flash based on sound - both live and prerecorded - and movement is captured and projected in the space above the ceiling, only visible through openings made by the removal of tiles. Upon making these discoveries, visitors often find themselves dealing with a complex array of emotions, describing the experience as unsettling, playful, or comforting. The work ceases to exist once the journey is complete. Misium does not concern himself with the conversation of permanence. The art is in the memory of experience.
David Willburn is an artist and blogger working and living in Fort Worth.
Text by David Willburn