Aldo Mondino e Tarek Abbar
from 07 April 2015 to 11 April 2015
Milano
Aldo Mondino / Tarek Abbar
The works by Aldo Mondino (Turin, 1938–2005) on display in Via Anfiteatro were created in 1961 and belong to the artist’s early Parisian period. They are large-scale works on paper, rich in colour and movement, in which the echoes of Surrealist aesthetics can still be felt – in particular the influence of Tancredi, to whom Aldo was an assistant. These early works serve as a prelude to the Anatomical Tables, presented in ’63 at the Galleria il Punto in Turin.
For Mondino, the Anatomical Tables are metaphors for the crisis of contemporary society, depicted through the organs of the human body; a sort of internal mapping of the organism achieved through a tangle of rapid, colourful brushstrokes in vibrant hues. It is in these early works that Mondino begins to translate abstract concepts into tangible symbols. Unconcerned with any pedagogical intent, and never dogmatic or ideological, Mondino, from the early 1960s onwards, combines the seriousness of political commitment and subversive intent with the lightness of play and irony. He always acts in total freedom, yet with thoughtful awareness, driven by a deep intellectual desire to bring out the truth.
The works of Tarek Abbar (Madrid, 1976) are also large-scale drawings on paper and constitute the cartography of his political fiction project ZATO. Maps traced with a meticulous and obsessive stroke of black ink, interspersed with splashes of red, in which unidentifiable buildings and landscape features repeat and multiply endlessly. Like Mondino’s works, these are “debut works”, as they are being presented to the public here for the first time.
ZATO is a Russian acronym, short for “Closed Administrative Territorial Formations”: these are secret Soviet cities, space research centres and sites for the manufacture of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons; nameless settlements, traceable on maps only by the number of kilometres separating them from a nearby town.
Tarek Abbar introduces an element of play and turns history on its head, catapulting us into an indeterminate time in which Japan, rather than opening up to the West, forges political and commercial ties with Russia. Absorbed by the Soviet Union and under its sphere of influence, the Japanese archipelago is transformed into a concentration of ZATOs and industrial collectives: Abbar’s urban maps bear witness to this imaginary Edo-Real-Socialist era. In these delirious metropolitan landscapes, rendered in the Yamato-e style and devoid of any real geographical references, the disorienting alternation of aerial and frontal perspectives distorts distances and confounds the certainty of vision.
The works of Aldo Mondino and Tarek Abbar, though formally very different, converge and intertwine in Via Anfiteatro through the shared conceptual premises underpinning their respective research: the serious and profound observation of reality; a love of travel understood as a quest for the elsewhere; political commitment tempered by a playful approach and subtle irony; the pure gaze that embraces wonder and amazement – all of which, in short, can be defined as enrichment through flights of the imagination. Looking at Mondino’s anatomical plates and Abbar’s imaginary maps, I could not help but think of Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Flatland.
Reverend Abbott speaks to us of such enrichment through fantasy and imagination, describing Flatland as a state inhabited solely by flat geometric figures: lines, triangles, squares and polygons that move on a two-dimensional plane and live rigidly ordered within a stifling structure. They cannot even conceive of the third dimension, nor are they able to broaden their perspective on reality. Flatland is therefore a metaphor for the flatness and rigour of Victorian social structure, told with masterful irony.
Abbar’s urban landscapes, too, convey a flatness, a two-dimensionality that recalls the traditional Japanese Yamato-e painting style. Yet, by contrast, they evoke the three-dimensionality of our cities, the complexity of the world around us, the depth of a well-studied and calibrated Invention. Similarly, Mondino’s flat Anatomical Tables allude to the movement and multi-dimensionality of our emotions – to the stereoscopic structure of our inner world.
Like Abbott, Abbar and Mondino too offer ironic criticism. Tarek distorts our view of reality through a political fantasy; Mondino, short-sighted all his life, will never wear glasses. Through their works – and the imaginative power of an ‘other’ perspective – they allow us to dream, to access an extraordinary vision. And, to further expand this vision, I asked Federico Florian to write a short story – a tale of Abbar and Mondino’s encounter at the Casa Chiusa in Via Anfiteatro.
Paola Clerico
Milan
CASE CHIUSE #02
By Paola Clerico
Via Anfiteatro 9
20123 Milan
Opening: 7 April 2015
8–11 April 9.30am–7.30pm
For Mondino, the Anatomical Tables are metaphors for the crisis of contemporary society, depicted through the organs of the human body; a sort of internal mapping of the organism achieved through a tangle of rapid, colourful brushstrokes in vibrant hues. It is in these early works that Mondino begins to translate abstract concepts into tangible symbols. Unconcerned with any pedagogical intent, and never dogmatic or ideological, Mondino, from the early 1960s onwards, combines the seriousness of political commitment and subversive intent with the lightness of play and irony. He always acts in total freedom, yet with thoughtful awareness, driven by a deep intellectual desire to bring out the truth.
The works of Tarek Abbar (Madrid, 1976) are also large-scale drawings on paper and constitute the cartography of his political fiction project ZATO. Maps traced with a meticulous and obsessive stroke of black ink, interspersed with splashes of red, in which unidentifiable buildings and landscape features repeat and multiply endlessly. Like Mondino’s works, these are “debut works”, as they are being presented to the public here for the first time.
ZATO is a Russian acronym, short for “Closed Administrative Territorial Formations”: these are secret Soviet cities, space research centres and sites for the manufacture of biological, chemical and nuclear weapons; nameless settlements, traceable on maps only by the number of kilometres separating them from a nearby town.
Tarek Abbar introduces an element of play and turns history on its head, catapulting us into an indeterminate time in which Japan, rather than opening up to the West, forges political and commercial ties with Russia. Absorbed by the Soviet Union and under its sphere of influence, the Japanese archipelago is transformed into a concentration of ZATOs and industrial collectives: Abbar’s urban maps bear witness to this imaginary Edo-Real-Socialist era. In these delirious metropolitan landscapes, rendered in the Yamato-e style and devoid of any real geographical references, the disorienting alternation of aerial and frontal perspectives distorts distances and confounds the certainty of vision.
The works of Aldo Mondino and Tarek Abbar, though formally very different, converge and intertwine in Via Anfiteatro through the shared conceptual premises underpinning their respective research: the serious and profound observation of reality; a love of travel understood as a quest for the elsewhere; political commitment tempered by a playful approach and subtle irony; the pure gaze that embraces wonder and amazement – all of which, in short, can be defined as enrichment through flights of the imagination. Looking at Mondino’s anatomical plates and Abbar’s imaginary maps, I could not help but think of Edwin Abbott Abbott’s Flatland.
Reverend Abbott speaks to us of such enrichment through fantasy and imagination, describing Flatland as a state inhabited solely by flat geometric figures: lines, triangles, squares and polygons that move on a two-dimensional plane and live rigidly ordered within a stifling structure. They cannot even conceive of the third dimension, nor are they able to broaden their perspective on reality. Flatland is therefore a metaphor for the flatness and rigour of Victorian social structure, told with masterful irony.
Abbar’s urban landscapes, too, convey a flatness, a two-dimensionality that recalls the traditional Japanese Yamato-e painting style. Yet, by contrast, they evoke the three-dimensionality of our cities, the complexity of the world around us, the depth of a well-studied and calibrated Invention. Similarly, Mondino’s flat Anatomical Tables allude to the movement and multi-dimensionality of our emotions – to the stereoscopic structure of our inner world.
Like Abbott, Abbar and Mondino too offer ironic criticism. Tarek distorts our view of reality through a political fantasy; Mondino, short-sighted all his life, will never wear glasses. Through their works – and the imaginative power of an ‘other’ perspective – they allow us to dream, to access an extraordinary vision. And, to further expand this vision, I asked Federico Florian to write a short story – a tale of Abbar and Mondino’s encounter at the Casa Chiusa in Via Anfiteatro.
Paola Clerico
Milan
CASE CHIUSE #02
By Paola Clerico
Via Anfiteatro 9
20123 Milan
Opening: 7 April 2015
8–11 April 9.30am–7.30pm
Opere correlate
Nessuna opera correlata trovata