28/04/2014

Zimoun | 36 ventilators, 4.7 m3 packing chips

Last weekend we went to Lugano (CH) to see the latest work by the talented Zimoun (b. 1977, Bern, Switzerland), hosted by the Limonaia of Villa Saroli and curated by Guido Comis and Cristina Sonderegger, which closes the series of exhibitions initiated in 2011 by Museo d’Arte Lugano devoted to emerging artists.

In this occasion the young Swiss artist, one of the most brilliant of his generation, created a site-specific sound installation using five cube meters of packing chips trapped into a wire mesh placed in front of each window of the building and constantly shaken up by 36 ventilators operated by a controlling system. The result is a mesmerizing shower of small, snow-white “s” made of Styrofoam that spellbinds the viewer.

The work of Zimoun is based on simple electronic devices, generating repetitive movements, modular elements and sounds that interact with different environments changing the viewers’ perception of the space.His essential installations turn closed rooms into natural atmospheres where people can be pleasantly surprised by feeling the breeze, the water gurgling, the animals’ calls or the frenzy of crawling beehives or anthills.

«Using simple and functional components, Zimoun builds architecturally-minded platforms of sound. Exploring mechanical rhythm and flow in prepared systems, his installations incorporate commonplace industrial objects. In an obsessive display of simple and functional materials, these works articulate a tension between the orderly patterns of Modernism and the chaotic forces of life. Carrying an emotional depth, the acoustic hum of natural phenomena in Zimoun’s minimalist constructions effortlessly reverberates.» 

The exhibition runs through 11th July 2014.

Monica Lombardi 
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21/04/2014

Araki Teller Teller Araki

“Araki Teller Teller Araki” is the explicit title of a current exhibition held at OstLicht Gallery, bringing together two of the greatest contemporary photographers: Nobuyoshi Araki (b. 1940, Tokyo, Japan) and Juergen Teller (b. 1964, Erlangen, Germany). Curated by Gerald Matt in cooperation with Hisako Motoo (eyesencia) and Juergen Teller himself, the exhibition features a series of works specifically conceived for this initiative.

The provocative Japanese artist, one of the most prolific of our times, well-known for his portraits, shots of nude women, bondage and still life flower photographs, all characterized by a perturbing and sensual attitude, displays here his project Last by Leica, a visual and intimate diary that continues the previous series Life by Leica and Love by Leica. A controversial and radical approach distinguishes Teller’s research too, who opens the door of his private life through flash images, where colors are overexposed and subjects, spanning from fashion system players to loved ones, are depicted with a personal and instinctive touch that makes his work instantly recognizable.

This exhibition juxtaposes two unrivalled artists, highlighting their mastery of composition, color and tone, sometimes pale and washed-out, other times bright and stunning. Appealing to the explicitness of subject matter and using photographic effects bent to their will, both photographers, each in his own style, create pictures of an extraordinary intensity, which are both genuine and poetic, and, at the same time, brutal and straightforward.

“Araki Teller Teller Araki” is accompanied by an artists’ book, realized and designed jointly by Araki and Teller, which collects 300 photographs (some of them unpublished) and a double text that the artists dedicated to each other. The exhibition will run through 25th May 2014.

Monica Lombardi 
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07/04/2014

Piero Manzoni 1933 – 1963

This is a good period of the year for art lovers visiting Milan, since the city resurfaced out of its winter stupor with a high-level exhibition schedule. Besides its mainstream shows devoted to grand masters Kandinsky and Klimt, Palazzo Reale is also the home of a retrospective devoted to the genius of Piero Manzoni (1933-1963), one of the most significant and innovative Italian artists of the 20th century avant-garde.

The show, guided by a clear and essential path and a well-arranged set-up, retraces the short but striking career of the Milanese artist, displaying a selection of works that represent the main topics of his distinctive research: from the informal pieces of the early years, partially influenced by Enrico Baj and Lucio Fontana, to the famous Merda d’Artista (1961), undoubtedly his best-known work. It is amazing to see how Manzoni, within a short lapse of time, was able to leave his mark, bringing to question and satirizing the status of art object as it was conceived until that period.

In 1957 the artist initiated the series Achromes, white canvases soaked with glue and coated with gesso and kaolin (white clay often used in the manufacture of porcelain), which created three-dimensional surfaces; then in 1958 founded, together with Enrico Castellani and Agostino Bonalumi, the magazine “Azimuth” and the Azimut gallery, where he first exhibited his Lines, continuous ink marks traced on stripes made of paper of different length, rolled and closed into a tube with a tag explaining the content and sold by the meter – this work reached its peak in Linea Lunga (Line 7200m) created in Herning. During the ‘60s Manzoni worked on the Corpi d’aria (Bodies of air) and produced Fiato d’Artista (Artist’s Breath), a series of red, white and blue balloons, inflated and attached to a wooden base inscribed “Piero Manzoni- Artist’s Breath”. The material necessary to create the work was wrapped in a wooden box and sold with a user’s guide, while balloons inflated by the artist himself had to be payed extra. As in later Merda d’artista, this work also looked into the value of each artist’s act, underlying it in an ironic and provocative way.

Beyond the Basi Magiche (Magic basis), a series of wooden plinths that could be stood on to acquire the status of a ‘Living Sculpture’, the exhibition shows the Uova (Eggs), hard-boiled eggs certified by Manzoni’s fingerprint. These groundbreaking sculptures could have been eaten, creating a spiritual and physical union with the artist or kept in a small case that recalls the worship of relics. In both cases, there is a strong reference to religious themes and an important anticipation of the relational art developed during the mid-1990’s, aimed at creating a contact between artists and their audience, in a dialogue where process and motivation become more meaningful than the final artwork.

Piero Manzoni 1933-1963 will run through 2nd June 2014.

Monica Lombardi 
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01/04/2014

The art of Sister Corita

“Nothing is a mistake. There’s no win and no fail, there’s only make.”, wrote Sister Corita together with her students at the Immaculate Heart College back in 1967, summarizing, at the same time, the enthusiasm, passion, persistence and wit that has characterized her personal output though the years. Sister Corita Kent was born in 1918 as Frances Elizabeth Kent into an Irish-American Catholic family living in Iowa. At the age of five, she moved to Hollywood where she would later (at 18) enter the convent of the Immaculate Heart of Mary Religious Community.

Upon entering the Community, Sister Corita met her mentor and fellow art entrepreneur Sister Meg, with whom she would later travel, teach and work for more than a decade, becoming a sort of an establishment for the local creative community, collaborating and exchanging ideas with personalities like Buckminster Fuller, John Cage, Peter Yates, Virgil Thomson, Josef von Sternberg, Alfred Hitchcock, Saul Bass, Daniel Berrigan and Charles and Ray Eames. While teaching at the Immaculate Heart College, Sister Corita would use a myriad of different and mostly unorthodox techniques in showing her students how to think and look at the surrounding world. Her idea was that art was on the streets and in the marketplace: those were the sources students were asked to draw inspiration from.

In fact, Sister Corita’s work itself was primarily focused on text and vibrant color, manipulated type and images appropriated from the newly burgeoning consumer culture of her era. Rather than using the trappings of materialism to point out its flaws, however, she would radically reframe the elements she extracted from advertising logos and signage by spatially manipulating the text. She would then add quotations from sources as diverse as the Bible, author and philosopher Albert Camus, poet Rainer Maria Rilke, and contemporary pop songs by the Beatles.

After leaving the religious community in 1968, Corita Kent’s work has nevertheless changed, turning into a more subtle, nuanced approach to art making. Currently, two different exhibitions are celebrating her work, one at the Circle Culture Gallery in Berlin, and the other at Galerie Allen in Paris. Both exhibitions aim at retracing the richness and variety of Sister Corita’s work, bringing to life her spirit of collaboration, renewal, positivity and joy, that many students, art workers and teachers could still benefit from today.

“Let the Sun Shine In – A Retrospective” will run until May 10th 2014 at Circle Culture Gallery in Berlin, while “But, There Is Only One Thing That Has Power” will run until April 19th at Galerie Allen in Paris.

Rujana Rebernjak 
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31/03/2014

Regina José Galindo | Estoy Viva

Politics, Woman, Violence, Organic and Death, these are the five keywords and macro themes that guide the path of Estoy Viva, the exhibition with which PAC – Padiglione d’Arte Contemporanea in Milan – and Civita celebrate the work of the extraordinary art performer Regina José Galindo (b. 1974 Guatemala city).

Someone once said that art doesn’t have to be pretty, it has to be meaningful, feeling and returning the reality through the poetics of the artist, sometimes in direct and unpleasant ways. The work of Galindo definitely falls within this category, representing the power of a politically active art, involved with thorny social issues, without being merely rhetoric. Using her apparently fragile body as an expressive medium and forcing it to both mentally and physically arduous tests, the Guatemalan artist examines and denounces racial and sexual discriminations, cultural injustices and abuses of power that keep on distressing contemporary societies. Making reference to the violence of her country, Galindo creates images characterized by a strong intensity and a universal language depicting, most of the time, nasty situations aimed at breaking collective indifference.

Estoy viva presents a significant selection of works that encompass a unique research, which cannot help but arouse deep emotions: in Confesión (2007) the artist is dragged in a wretched room by a brute, who pushes her head in a can full of water while she cries and wiggles, without being able of break free; in ¿Quién puede borrar las Huellas (2003) a grieving Galindo, dressed in black, walks from Guatemala’s building of Congress to the National Palace holding a washbowl full of human blood where she dips her feet leaving prints on the streets as a protest against the presidential candidacy of Guatemala’s former dictator José Efraín Ríos.

In a dramatic performance focused on violence against women entitled Perra (2005) Galindo injured her body carving the word “bitch” on her leg, while in Himenoplastia (2004) she subjects herself to surgical reconstruction of her hymen, and in Piedra (2013) the artist turns herself into a stone-like lump while a man and a woman urinate on her. The comprehensive show also displays the latest part of Galindo’s research devoted to natural elements, which gets her close to the work of Ana Mendieta, another emblematic artist, who uses body as main art conductor.

Galindo’s sacrifices don’t give any answer, but raise questions that wake up the audience’s ethic and moral sensibility. Everybody is involved; no one can withdraw from the experience.
Estoy viva will run until June 8th 2014 at PAC in Milan.

Monica Lombardi 
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24/03/2014

Bill Viola | A Soul Keeper

The Grand Palais in Paris hosted the biggest retrospective, curated by Jérôme Neutres, devoted to the work of the pioneer of video art Bill Viola (b. 1951, New York), unarguably one of the most outstanding living artists. By exhibiting twenty different works – each of which was organized by follows three ontological questions (Who am I? Where am I? Where am I going?), rather than a chronological sequence – the show retraces over four decades of Viola’s research, conveying it, for the first time, to a wider audience.

Combining new media and traditional art forms, the American artist is able to capture and record feelings in his videotapes, architectural video installations, sound environments and performances, getting viewers closer to their characters and allowing them to fathom their intimacy. But you need to take your time to fully enjoy these works, where the atmosphere slows down and the views are dark and meditative.

The narrations created by Viola exploit a religious symbolism, re-contextualizing it in a timeless dimension, where spiritual issues and experiences play an important role. The four primordial elements, primarily fire and water, are essential factors of the artist’s poetics, contributing to the emotional involvement of the audience. Water, as a source of life and means of regeneration, is present in Tristan’s ascension (2005), where a still body is stretched out on an altar until some drops start to flow from the bottom upwards, turning into a huge flip-up waterfall that lifts up the man, or better his soul, to the sky.

Ascension appears also in Going forth by day (2002), which analyses the cycles of birth, death, and rebirth, while in Fire woman (2005) we see a wall of fire in the background, mirrored by a surface of water, and the silhouette of a woman, who slowly moves to the camera and suddenly opens her arms and plunges into the reflecting pool. In The Dreamers (20013) seven screens show people apparently asleep, who look perfectly static apart from occasional slow movements and bubbles that reveal a kind of underwater trance, while The quintet of the astonished (2002) puts up a choreography of gestures and facial expressions that instill different feelings: from pain to amazement and happiness, passing through anger.

Thanks to their pictorial quality and powerful sounds along with their hypnotic slow motion, Bill Viola’s works look like living canvases that reveal the complexity of human emotions and create a strong tension between the observers and the observed, the former of which cannot but feel entirely captivated.

The comprehensive exhibition of Bill Viola will run through July 21st 2014 at Grand Palais in Paris.

Monica Lombardi 
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17/03/2014

Ettore Spalletti Multiplied By Three

In the next few months, the work of the contemporary art master Ettore Spalletti (b. 1940, Cappelle sul Tavo, Italy) will be celebrated through a series of three exhibitions, all entitled Un giorno così bianco, così bianco (A day so white, so white), hosted by some of the main Italian art institutions.

The first scheduled show, curated by Anna Mattirolo, just opened at MAXXI museum in Rome with a huge environmental installation, while the following steps will be the exhibitions at GAM in Turin, curated by Danilo Eccher, which will feature a broad selection of works coming from the artist’ studio and private collections, and the one at MADRE museum in Naples, curated by the young and talented Andrea Villiani and Alessandro Rabottini, that will present a comprehensive retrospective starting at the beginning of the artist’s career.

Without overstating, Ettore Spalletti is one of the most influential art figures of his generation. Over the last forty years, Spalletti has created a personal approach that goes beyond the traditional boundaries of painting and sculpture. Using straight and undulating lines, minimal structures and colours, playing with lights, and materials, the artist has always been able to establish a unique relationship with the spaces, giving them a strong emotional impact, despite the apparent lightness of his pieces.

Each event will contribute in retracing Spalletti’s career through specific paths conceived to dialogue with different architectures, without a chronological order: from the recent works displayed in Rome to the earlier ones showed in Naples – some of them never seen before –, exploring the dialectic between abstraction and figurative art, passing through the selection made in Turin to recreate the atmosphere and energy of the artist’s studio.

The exhibition at MAXXI will run through September 2014. GAM will open on March 27th and close on June 14th, while the show at Madre will inaugurate on April 13th and run through 18th August.

Monica Lombardi – Images courtesy of Cecilia Fiorenza and Matteo Ciavattella 
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11/03/2014

Alice Ronchi | Colazione Sull’Erba Finissage

Colazione sull’erba (breakfast on the grass), the first solo show by Alice Ronchi (b. 1989, Ponte dell’Olio, Piacenza, Italy, living and working in Amsterdam) at Francesca Minini gallery in Milan is about to close, so this is the last occasion, for all those around who haven’t seen it yet, to enter the fabulous world of the young and talented Italian artist.

The exhibition, which borrows the title – and perhaps the pleasant atmosphere – from the well-known impressionist canvas, is a personal and unique creation of a dreamlike landscape, where “the stereotypical image of nature is depicted through smiling flowers, singing birds and a sun that never sets”.

Granddaughter of farmers, Alice grew up immersed in the nature, living it as a huge playground, which seems to have had a significant influence on her vision of nature, but also of urban fabric and artificial things that become original elements of her harmonious systems. Playing with titles, shapes and materials, the artist coins playful and curious suggestions: from the ambition of the small stones of Kilimanjaro, endowed with proper names, to larger configurations, to the fishes in love kissing each other depicted on grit of Turchino, passing through the “vain urban structures” of Flora, extravagant metropolitan constructions that recall the silhouettes of flowers and stems.

The light, abstract devices of Colazione sull’Erba, made of stainless steel, brass rod, bamboo and cardboards, apparently arranged in a random way, interact with the space of the Milanese gallery developing a non-linear exhibition path that looks like a narrative novel, midway between rationality and imagination, without a beginning or an end.

The show runs through 15th of March 2014.

Monica Lombardi – Images courtesy of Francesca Minini 
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24/02/2014

Michaël Borremans – As sweet as it gets in Brussels

The internationally travelling exhibition on the work of Michaël Borremans (b. 1963 in Geraardsbergen, East Flanders) just started its tour opening at the Centre For Fine Arts in Brussels (aka BOZAR). The awaited show, entitled As sweet as it gets, curated by Dr. Jeffrey Grove, is the first to bring together the contemporary Belgian artist’s drawings, paintings and films from over the last twenty years, retracing his artistic path and collecting around hundred works from private and public collections worldwide.

Dutch and Flemish artists have always played a relevant role in the art history. Past and present painters from this area seem to have an innate ability to go beyond the boundaries of this medium, combining superlative technical skills and vibrant materialism with unique and suggestive atmospheres that always make an impression on viewers. Michaël Borremans is no exception. With a flawless technique and a meticulous realism, he creates subjects who often appear in unclear and doomed states. The sepia and neutral tones of his paintings, along with their incompleteness instill concern and curiosity.

With a poetics that makes reference to historic characters, frequently recalling literature, photography and films, the artist builds austere, weakly illuminated worlds, where ordinary things become weird and unsettling. The melancholic or apathetic people, almost always absorbed, are all depicted in captivating scenarios, undefined by time or space. We should only take a wild guess what they are doing or thinking about. We have to complete the images, but no one could definitely solve their mystery. The only thing that really matters and lasts is the fascination with his powerful paintings, which is something that gets into you.

On the occasion of Borremans’ show, CINEMATEK interrogated the versatile artist about his interest in film and asked him to select 15 of his favorite titles, which will be projected during March and April 2014.

After its closure in Brussels on the 3rd August 2014, As sweet as it gets will move to Tel Aviv Museum of Art and Dallas Museum of Art.

Monica Lombardi 
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10/02/2014

Marco Bongiorni – EPITOME/HEAD/FEAR

EPITOME/HEAD/FEAR is the enigmatic title of Marco Bongiorni‘s (b. 1981, Milan) solo show, that opens the program of Rivoli2 – Fondazione per l’Arte Contemporanea: the new three-story art venue, placed in the heart of Milan and conceived as a hub for creative sharing and experimentation.

Retracing the last four years of the Milanese artist’s research, the exhibition focuses on the drawing – his main expressive form. But to reflect upon this language, Bongiorni goes beyond his traditional economy of means and preparatory forms: exploiting different materials and supports, he reworks images and found objects, combining sculpture and drawing to create finished pieces that are between flat figures and tridimensional artifacts.


On the raised ground floor, the artist presents Untitled_Teste Nere (2013), a maxi installation that fills the space with small sculptures made of wood sticks, books, historical pictures, fabrics and primitive portraits depicted with oil and graphite on paper and canvas. The complex setting-up, that recalls the artist’s studio, seems to point out an instinctive bond with handcrafted work and the pure act of building. The research of the essential drawing through the use of a linear mark, along with the process of assembling crowded but still balanced compositions, matches with the almost obsessive repetition of shapes and actions.


The artist’s presence is strong in each of his works. This is evident in the recurrent attempts of self-portraying – displayed also on the first floor – and it’s even clearer in the basement, where Bongiorni shows the ironic OBAOBABIKE (2013), a curious bicycle turned into a drawing machine that challenges its common characteristics. In a video that accompanies the real tuned vehicle hung on the wall, the artist rides the chopper-like bicycle, trying to find a motor strategy to keep the balance, while sketching a flower fixed on the handlebars. Playing with uncertainty and harmony, Marco Bongiorni gives his works up to their addresses proving that they only exist in the eyes of the viewer.

EPITOME/HEAD/FEAR will run until March 2nd 2014, don’t miss it!

Monica Lombardi 
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