ETTORE SPALLETTI | LIA RUMMA

Galleria Lia Rumma Via Vannella Gaetani 12 - 80121 Naples Italy EuropeT: +39 081 19812354 F: +39 081 19812406 M: W: www.liarumma.it   10 Nov 2011 to 31 Dec 2011
Artists in this exhibition: Ettore Spalletti
Ettore Spalletti opening: giovedì 10 novembre 2011 h 18.00 Galleria Lia Rumma, Via Vannella Gaetani 12 - 80121 Napoli Un giorno ho visto Spalletti disporre i cavalletti in studio in modo diverso. Gli ho domandato il motivo. Mi ha risposto che lavorava alla mostra per la galleria di Lia Rumma a Napoli. Ha voluto che lo spazio fosse vuotato e che il pavimento fosse lavato. Lo osservavo passeggiare nello studio in cerca di una luce, di un’ombra, come per trovare un’immagine per poi liberarsene un attimo dopo. La geometria dello studio poco a poco veniva scomposta dai tagli ordinati dei cavalletti. Ho sentito che aveva già precisato un percorso ma non riuscivo ancora a comprenderlo. Spalletti prepara le tavole meticolosamente, il retro viene coperto perchè non ama le sbavature. Dipinge tenendo le tavole in orizzontale, mi spiega che in questo modo la pasta di colore si stende meglio: “il colore si stende, asciuga, ispessisce, riposa”. L’impasto di colore viene dato sulle tavole, quasi alla stessa ora, per dieci o quindici giorni, fino ad ottenere uno spessore che non consente di capire se “il colore dalla superficie si muove verso l’interno del quadro o se dall’interno si muove verso l’esterno”. I tempi di essiccazione determinano quella leggera trama che traspare sulla superficie. Su quei cavalletti ha cominciato a posizionare le tavole, di diverso formato, ciascuna preparata con una cornice diversa, alcune rastremate, altre a sbalzo, altre ancora sottili su un lato e più spesse sull’altro. Ai miei occhi sfuggiva il disegno complessivo. Così Spalletti ha iniziato a definire i primi colori, uno dopo l’altro, ed a stenderli, uno dopo l’altro. Quando prepara l’impasto di colore gli abiti non vengono toccati dalla vernice, i gesti sono meditati, il dosaggio è sapiente. I primi colori erano tenui, un rosa impalpabile, un azzurro acquatico, seguiva un rosso porpora, poi il grigio che “meglio di tutti gli altri colori riesce ad accogliere”, infine il bianco sull’idea verticale della colonna e sulla pietra di alabastro tinta solo per metà. I colori però non erano ancora leggibili, soltanto dopo l’abrasione, quando i pigmenti si rompono e si distribuiscono come polvere di colore sul quadro, il bianco del gesso contenuto nell’impasto li fa vibrare. Quando d’improvviso i colori si sono rivelati nel loro definitivo cromatismo, Spalletti mi ha guardato accennando un sorriso: “d’incanto l’incanto di aver trovato una foglia di acanto”. Sulle cornici andava poi ad adagiarsi il luccichio della foglia d’oro o la rotondità della pasta d’argento. Le tavole, distese, una di fianco all’altra, lasciavano già intuire la loro ragione, poi, una volta appoggiate sulla parete, una dietro l’altra, d’improvviso si sono manifestate in tutta la loro presenza. L’andamento delle cornici imprimeva il movimento, l’oro andava a riflettersi sul muro, il colore viaggiava su di esse. In quel momento, come in una apparizione, tutto si è svelato. Ciò che prima non riuscivo a cogliere era lì di fronte a me come un tutt’uno. E’ stato soltanto allora che Spalletti mi ha detto che il suo desiderio era quello di far correre i colori lungo le pareti della galleria “come a dipingere un solo quadro”. Azzurra Ricci Mostre personali sono state dedicate a Spalletti (Cappelle sul Tavo, 1940) da istituzioni prestigiose come Museum Folkwang, Essen (1982), Museum Van Hedendaagse, Gent (1983), Kunstverein, Monaco (1989), Portikus, Francoforte (1989), ARC, Parigi (1991), IVAM, Valencia (1992), Guggenheim Museum, New York (1993), MUHKA, Anversa (1995), Museo di Capodimonte, Napoli (1999), Musée de Strasbourg (1999), Fundaciòn La Caixa, Madrid (2000), Henry Moore Foundation, Leeds (2005), Villa Medici, Roma (2006), Museum Kurhaus Kleve (2009). Diverse le partecipazioni a mostre internazionali, tra cui Documenta VII (1982) e IX (1992), Kassel e la XL (1982), XLIV (1993), XLVI (1995), XLVII (1997) Biennale di Venezia. - One day I saw Spalletti arranging his easels in the studio in a different fashion. I asked him why. He replied that he was working on the exhibition for the Lia Rumma gallery in Naples. He wanted the space to be emptied and the floor to be washed. I observed him as he walked around the studio in search of light and shadow as if he was trying to find an image and then liberate himself from it the very next moment. The geometry of the studio gradually was decomposed by the regular edges of the easels. I felt that he had already defined a sequence although I still could not understand it. Spalletti prepared the paintings meticulously. The rear of the painting was covered because he does not like smudges. He paints with the canvas placed horizontally; he explains that in this way the paint can be spread on more evenly: “the paint is spread, it dries, thickens and settles”. The paint is applied to the canvases, almost at the same hour, for ten or fifteen days, until it reaches a thickness that makes it impossible to understand whether “the colour of the surface is moving towards the inner part of the painting or whether the inner part is moving towards the outside”. The drying times creates the slightly loose-textured effect that appears on the surface. He began to position the paintings on the easels. Each painting had a different format and was prepared with a different frame, some of them tapered, some embossed, others thin on one side and thick on the other. I was unable to grasp the overall design. So Spalletti began to define the first colours, one by one, and spread them on, one after the other. While he was preparing the paint, his clothes were not touched by the paint. The gestures were meditated and the quantities were carefully chosen. The first colours were delicate, a very light pink, a watery blue, followed by crimson, then grey which “manages to absorb more than all the other colours” and, lastly, the white on the vertical idea of the column and on the alabaster, which is only half-painted. However, the colours were still not intelligible; only after the abrasion, when the pigments break up and are distributed like powder paint on the painting, the white of the chalk contained in the mixture begin to make them resonate. When the paints suddenly became clear in their definitive chromatic sense, Spalletti looked at me with a half-smile and said, “d’incanto l’incanto di aver trovato una foglia di acanto” (as if by some enchantment, the enchanting discovery of finding an acanthus leaf). The glitter of the gold leaf or the rotundity of the silver substance settled on the frames. The paintings, arranged one beside the other, left the viewer to guess the meaning; then, once they had been placed on the wall, one behind the other, they suddenly manifested themselves with the entire force of their presence. The pattern of the frames determined the movement, the gold began to be reflected on the wall, the colour travelled on them. At that moment, as if in a vision, all was revealed. Everything that I had previously been unable to comprehend stood before me as a unified whole”. It was only then that Spalletti told me that his intention was to make the colours run along the walls of the gallery “like painting a single picture”. Azzurra Ricci
Galleria Lia Rumma Milano

STEFANO ARIENTI | STUDIO GUENZANI MILAN

Stefano Arienti’s latest show consists of two works, both comprising polystyrene panels on which the artist has reproduced photographs of travel images. The exhibition’s title piece, Postcards, 1990–91, features eleven panels with images of tourist sites taken from postcards. Untitled, 1992, is composed of seventeen panels with images of photographs Arienti took during his travels. In both cases, the viewer encounters banal, typically touristic images that evoke both personal and collective histories and speak to the way private experiences can become the stock imagery of the public sphere—and vice versa.

View of “Postcards,” 2011.

Arienti emphasizes these dynamics through his use of space. The tall panels are propped against the walls, creating a pathway through the gallery. Neon tubes behind each allow light to pass through the perforated polystyrene, emphasizing the work’s expressive potential as well as its fragility. Walking through the exhibition, one has the sense of traversing both public and private domains; and, as light radiates out of the panels, pooling in the middle of the space, Arienti emphasizes of how deeply photography has entangled these two spheres.

Postcards was originally part of an installation exhibited at the 1990 Venice Biennale; looking at the work today, there is no mistake that it was a portent. Both pieces allude to the formal and conceptual lightness that would reach their peak the ’90s (as seen in the work of Maurizio Cattelan, Paola Pivi, and Vanessa Beecroft), and they anticipate the recent interest in cultural memory and the archive as an artistic paradigm. In an age when photography is more ubiquitous than ever, the prescience of Arienti’s two works continues to prevail.

Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.

Stefano Arienti

STUDIO GUENZANI
Via Eustachi 10
September 15–November 12

EVOL'S | UNDERGROUND CITY IN HAMBURG

In Nordkreuz (“Northern Cross”), Berlin-based street artist EVOL has created 

a miniature, underground city in the fields of Hamburg, Germany. 

The installation — which took him eight days to complete — found the artist 

outside of his typical urban environment, digging into a picturesque meadow 

to create a grid that viewers could actually walk through. The buildings’ compound-like, 

grey facade provides a striking contrast to the scenic surroundings, complete with 

dirt “roads.”

Check out the making-of the installation and the artist’s other work here.

© dailyserving.com

Art_prospect

GUILLAUME LEBLON | INTERVIEW

Guillaume Leblon in his studio. Photo by Selina Ting ©initiArt Magazine. 2011

The French artist Guillaume Leblon (*1971) creates site-specific installations, sculptures, videos and works on paper which transform our perception of the space and its function. Through a sort of staged presentation of his work, he charges his objects with metaphorical meanings, introducing a certain uneasiness that affects and stimulates our perception. Guillaume Leblon belongs to the generation of artists who believe that art is neither a representation of the world nor of one's knowledge, but rather an extension of the real in all its possibilities. As Lucas Cerizza puts it, Leblon’s work “does not come across as direct images, like head-on visions. Rather, it is a subtle interplay of hidden and revealed things, a slow process toward the discovery of an undefined place, the attempt to perceive an atmosphere.”

Guillaume Leblon is nominated for the Prix Marcel Duchamp 2011.
The result will be announced on 22 October 2011.

GL – Guillaume Leblon
ST – Selina Ting pour InitiArt Magazine

ST : You started showing your work when you graduated from the Rijksakademie in 2000. Since, you have been very much solicited by the international institutions, first in the Netherlands, then in Germany, Belgium, Spain, and Italy and finally you had your first exhibition in France in 2004. However, it was only until 2005 that you started working with a gallery (Galerie Jocelyn Wolff). Can we say that your work tended to be conceived for institutional context rather than for galleries? In your work, very often, we see an intervention on the architectural space of the museum.

GL : Definitely, what we can present in a museum or a contemporary art centre is very different from an intervention in a gallery, for example. Besides, it’s not a question of space or market constraint, but showing in a museum automatically implies exchanges with a curator. The projects were conceived through these dialogues. Also, for some obvious reasons, the relationship with space has to be reinvented in each exhibition according to the venue. I am not interested in museum architecture in the strictest sense. What interest me are the particular constraints that restrict the architecture. I accept these constraints as the intergratable elements in my work, that they can nourish the work and finally become an intrinsic part of the exhibition.

ST : This precision is very interesting and important because your work reminds one of architecture, particular certain works that employs architectural forms and elements, such as Intérieur-Façade (1999 – 2001).  

GL : That was the piece I did in Rijksakademie. It uses the codes of an architectural model, in a way it was a “modeling” of the real space in which I worked every day at that time. It’s true that I sometimes borrow titles from architectural catalogue, such as “view from entrance towards the stairs”, etc. These titles speak of images, i.e., what was shown in the image was not necessarily an architectural part or a sculpture but a situation, a point of view in the space.

Guillaume Leblon, installation view at MUDAM, Luxembourg, 2009. Works : Cold water I , II, III, IV, V. 2009, Pastel (gris bleu) sur papier, 200x140cm (avec cadre 216x156 cm) ; Channel. 2009, chêne brut, 575 cm (longueur) x 71cm (hauteur max) et 56cm (hauteur min.) x 102cm ; Site of confluence. 2009, coquillages, sable, matières organiques, fils, feutre et bois, taille variable, 8 feuilles de peuplier 250x125x1,6 cm, différentes formes.

ST : The placement and emplacement of a work inside an exhibition space is essentially the sense-making process of an exhibition. What is the most important element for you in terms of exhibition display?    

GL : The circulation is important. Often, I close the doors, confine the spaces, or I simple change the routing. I operate these spatial changes in order to oblige the audience to see the works from a certain way without restricting them. In other words, I want to offer the audience a certain point of view to look at the work so as to create a sense of strolling in the exhibition space, i.e. the exhibition becomes a landscape, a routing, without starting point nor ending point.    

ST : Does the exhibition context, the history of the museum or institution, etc. play a role in the consideration of an intervention in the exhibition space?

GL : The quality of the floor, the geology, the climate, the plants, the social condition… all the elements that describe the context and environment of an exhibition venue are the indispensable considerations in the thinking process. But there is no hierarchy between them. Then, of course, there are qualities that are specific to each exhibition space. In relation to these specificities, I have to take my position and elaborate a strategy that can enable the exhibition to exist as a whole, a totality. Such cohesion or coherence might not necessarily be à priori guaranteed in the space.   

ST : How to avoid the repetition even if the context and space varied from one exhibition to another ? 

GL : I get bored easily. I am impatient person. But I work to transform these defaults into quality. My constant preoccupation is to avoid being confined in the work process. I purposely leave the works open, instable and always standing-by. Such quality allows me to re-evaluate my work according to the exhibitions, either by expanding the pieces or diminishing them.

Left: Four Ladders, 2008, ailes d’un moulin à vent. Exhibition View: Four Ladders, STUK, Leuven, Belgium, 2008. Right: Four Ladders, 2008, Ailes d’un moulin à vent. Exhibition View : Fabricateurs d’espaces, Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne, 2008-09. Copyright image: Blaise Adilon

ST : If the studio is the site of creation and the exhibition is the context of manifestation, at which point is a piece of work judged complete and ready to be shown?

GL : When an object quits my studio, it might not be accomplished. The accomplishment is achieved in its destination. In other words, between the moment it quits the studio and the moment it is positioned in the museum, there is instability. The studio is not the site of completion. It’s the exhibition context which completes the work.

ST : Do the videos count as part of the totality of the work? How many videos have you made so far? What place do they occupy in your work?

GL : I have made 5 or 6 videos. They are just a sort of notes, drafts, or drawings that accompany my work. Sometimes, they are projected on a sculpture. In any case, they are not that kind of cinematographic films, but they work with the environment of the exhibition. So they are an indispensable part of my work. Generally speaking, I try not to take my works in any form of hierarchical order.

Guillaume Leblon, Notes, 2007.Vidéo couleur sonore. 7’22". Courtesy Frac Bourgogne, © Guillaume Leblon.

ST : There is always a performative dimension in your videos, such as Notes (2007) which you are showing right now in the Lyon Biennale 2001.

GL : There is certain implementation in my video work that highlights a more spontaneous and visually more performative dimension in the videos. At the same time, the notion of time which is specific to video has always been there in my work. I am always interested by the cinema except that I don’t have the patience to make long movies. I need spontaneity and rapidity. [Laughs] But I conscious that video allows a different way of narration, of saying things. Beside, an exhibition also has a performative quality in it.

Exhibition view : Guillaume Leblon, Kunstverein Düsseldorf, 2006. Works from left: Raum, 2006, plâtre, 230 x 500 x 600 cm (2006); Sans Titre, 2006. Bois de bouleau, vêtements, humidificateur / Birch wood, clothes, atomizer, 115 x 160 x 15 cm. Olives (2006) or Chrysocale (Lampe) (2005).

ST : A work that functions on the borderline between the interior and the exterior is the ubu Roi (2004). I have read some commentaries on this piece but still haven’t got a chance to see it in real. I don’t really understand the story of the dog…

GL : [Laughs] It was a piece for my first solo exhibition in France [AZIMUT, FRAC Bourgogne, Dijon, France]. There were a private garden and guarding dog next to the art centre in Bourgogne. I drilled a hole on the wall separating the art centre and the garden. What interests me was the bouleversement in which the domestic space entered into the exhibition space, except that there is a piece of Plexiglas attached to the hole. Whenever a visitor entered the art centre, the dog would run towards the hole and bark at the person – as a way to defend its own territory! Thus, it was us who were inside a dog-house and the dog outside in territory. It was very beautiful.

ST : Something banal, normal, easily ignored, suddenly become metaphorical, such as the phantomlike presence of the dog in the work that evoke the ideas and the paradoxes of the situation: the reverse of the roles, of the space, of a hierarchical system, etc. As you have mentioned several times that you don’t like give priority to things. But the choices of certain elements are not innocent either.       

GL : It’s true that there is a profanatory aspect in my work. Usually, they are the elements that appeared to be natural in where they were. For example, at the exhibition in Porto, Portugal, a street musician arrived at the exhibition and started playing as if he was a homeless playing in the street. Of course, he was part of the show. For me, it was a gentle way of bringing the exterior into the interior and at the same time, it was very violent because the exhibition space was supposed to be a venue with its proper function, i.e., dedicated to art: a bit like a church with a sacred status.

Exhibition view : Guillaume Leblon, Augmentation and dispersion, 2008. Centre d’art contemporain Culturgest, Porto, Portugal. Courtesy of the artist and Centre d’art contemporain Culturgest, Porto, Portugal.

ST : So, it’s intrusive…

GL: Yes, it’s intrusive ; it’s rather a kind of poetic profanation than provocative.

ST : Does the image of a spectator exist inside your imagination at the moment when a piece of work is conceived?

GL : At the moment when one considers the space as the departure point of an exhibition, the spectator’s point of view is implied. There is also the ambiance, the body, etc., that affect the space.

ST : Thank you!

Guillaume Leblon, exhibition view : Après la pluie, Musée départemental d’art contemporain, Rochechouart, 2007. Liste des oeuvres: L’arbre, 2005, 600 cm long, bois, plastique. Structures, 2006-2007, dim. variable. bois, carton. April street, 2001-2005, 16 mm, couleur, 8 mn.

Guillaume Leblon
Born in 1971 in Lille (France). Lives and works in Paris.

Personal exhibitions (selective since 2008): 2011 - Facing the dry dirt, The Suburban & The Poor farm experiment, Little Wolf, Wisconsin, USA; - Fondation Paul Ricard, Paris, France, curator : Alessandro Rabotini. 2010 - L’Entretien, theatre piece written by Thomas Boutoux & Guillaume Leblon, le Temple, Paris, France; - Strange form of Life, Projecte SD, Barcelona, Spain; - Monumento Nazionale, Centre Culturel français, Milan, Italy, curator : Alessandro Rabotini ; - Someone Knows Better Than Me, Le grand café, Centre d’art contemporain, Saint-Nazaire. 2009 - Réplique de la chose absente, Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris, France ; Site of confluence, MUDAM, Luxembourg. 2008 - Augmentation and dispersion, Centre d’art contemporain Culturgest, Porto, Portugal ; - Parallel walk, Centro Gallego de Arte Contemporaneo, CGAC, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; - The Extra Ordinary, galerie Projecte SD, Barcelona, Spain; - Four ladders, STUK, Kunstencentrum, Leuven, Belgium ; - Maisons sommaires, Centre d’art contemporain, Domaine de Kerguéhennec, France.

Guillaume Leblon is represented by the Galerie Jocelyn Wolff, Paris.
http://guillaumeleblon.com

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