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Kindergarten / Palazzina dei Giardini Modena
Palazzina dei Giardini in Modena has just opened its new artistic season with a group show entitled Kindergarten, which presents six international artists – Futura, Mode2, Os Gemêos, Tom Sachs, Kostas Seremetis, Boris Tellegen (aka Delta) – connected with street art and popular culture.
As suggested by the title, the exhibition aims at presenting art as a sort of game, something that recalls the freedom and innocence of childhood.
Kindergarten looks like a playground where toys are replaced by artworks thought to interact with people of all ages, entertaining and provoking at the same time. At the entrance, under the cupola of the seventeenth-century building, the show displays Toyan’s, a sound sculpture by Tom Sachs, the American artist famous for the Chanel Guillotine and for his interpretation of commercial brands, like Hello Kitty, represented as contemporary icons. Close to the weird sort of jukebox by Sachs, the first room hosts the sculptures by Kostas Seremetis depicting two unusual and irreverent versions of Mickey Mouse – one black and one white – holding a revolver and making a provocative gesture (the finger!).
The other rooms of the Palazzina are more related to street art. Futura 2000, one of the first graffiti artists, contemporaneous of Jean-Michel Basquiat and Keith Haring, presents a bronze creature that looks like an alien, surrounded by mirrors and painted with numerous circles, which remind viewers of galaxies. Mode2, a painter and illustrator coming from Mauritius, uses sculpture to challenge new materials, while Boris Tellegen, a Dutch artist, who combines graffiti writing, industrial engineering and design, creates a large minimalist construction made of parallelepipeds, which emphasize the weight and nature of the material.
But what really stands out is the installation made by the twin brothers Otàvio and Gustavo Pandolfo, better known as Os Gêmeos. The Brazilian artists – famous for their style inspired by fabulous worlds populated by characters stolen from children’s fairy tales – show a site specific intervention created during their residence in Modena from the beginning of summer: a room full of spray painted bottle of wine and coloured loudspeakers hung on the wall and connected with a computer, which reproduces random music. Two drums – one for adults and the other one, smaller, for children – are placed in the middle of the space and visitors can play and create their own music.
All the works displayed in Kindergarten are based on the important issues of playing and enjoyment, sometimes lean towards irony, sarcasm and impertinence, and other times more related to pure happiness, which brings the artists closer to children’s feelings.
The exhibition, opened on June 30 with a DJ set by Howie B, will run until September 15. Admission is always free.
Monica Lombardi
