Can I Step On It?
from 30 March 2016 to 7 May 2016
Torino
Can I step on it?
Carl Andre, Darren Bader, Alighiero Boetti, Jason Dodge, Lara Favaretto, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Gabriel Kuri, Phillip Lai, Aldo Mondino, Mike Nelson, Henrik Olesen, Ian Wilson
Can I Step On It? consists of a tightly curated selection of works by artists from different generations, a series of pieces that refer to horizontality—to how physically, narratively and dimensionally they occupy that portion of space—representing an opportunity to bring to light the idea of flattened sculpture, which at times requires visitors to walk over it, whilst in other cases that very possibility is simultaneously suggested and denied, a series of concepts concisely expressed by the exhibition’s title.
Originally conceived with the carpet in mind—the crossing of times and cultures one might imagine when thinking of it, and often the emergence of the metaphor of travel through the ‘flying carpet’ of fairy tales— the exhibition has been enriched by a broader vision, tending more to focus on how the sculptures occupy the floor, offering a varied perspective through the different approaches expressed by the works of the selected artists, a range of perspectives opened up by their works and by the dialogue between them and that they generate.
From the extraordinary expressive power of a long sequence of metal squares by Carl Andre, to Ian Wilson’s elusive ability to play with appearing and disappearing, tracing and insinuating himself into that fine line between nothing and something with his 1968 work *Circle on the Floor*; similar concepts are also expressed by Henrik Olesen with his *Cable*, a faithful cast of a cable that presents itself as the ideal and mimetic residue of how information—and therefore power—is transmitted today; and again in Jason Dodge’s Plant Life, a work that takes the notion of an ‘in situ’ piece to its extreme, the result of collecting outdoors what remains on the ground from the life of flowers and plants in specific locations, and presented as naturally as possible, as if the wind were blowing.
Alighiero Boetti’s carpet, part of his 1993 exhibition ‘De Bouche A Oreille’ at Le Magasin in Grenoble, speaks of a lifelong fascination with the cultures of the East and the continuous exchange with them, alongside the participation of others in the creation of his work. A similar desire is also expressed in the work of Aldo Mondino, whose ‘Mekka Mokka’ cuts across cultures through verbal assonance, suggesting religious rites and daily rituals, such as praying, drinking and making coffee.
Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster’s Tapis de lecture invites us to a different kind of ritual, suggesting the idea of gathering and the exchange of thought and culture through the ‘sentimental education’ proposed by the artist and shared with the public, who are invited to read books selected by the artist whilst seated on a comfortable, spacious carpet.
Lara Favaretto’s sequence of time-worn, rusted Innocenti pipes, with the exception of a single one covered in deep blue wool threads, offers the chance to reflect on the idea of abstraction in an unconventional way, a work that breaks the seriality of the ‘system’ of tubes through the signs of time and the appearance of colour, whilst inviting visitors to walk on the artwork, albeit at their own risk, given the precarious nature of the surface laid on the floor.
An ethereal quality of ephemeral transience and of something familiarly orderly and hidden is expressed by Phillip Lai’s Skin and Bones; close by, on what resembles a strip of desert land, or even a small children’s playground, littered with cigarettes and coins, Gabriel Kuri’s work brings to mind the surface of a distant planet, and is ironically titled Donation Box.
Surprisingly, the association of three unrelated words is literally materialised in Darren Bader’s work *persian rug and/with tripod and/with sous chef*: two objects and a human being and their profession are named and appear in reality as if taken from a literary passage in which the words are, however, freely associated by the viewer.
Part of the exhibition is Mike Nelson’s long-term installation Procession. Process. Progress. Progression. Regression, recession. Recess, regress., which takes place over several months in the Gallery’s ‘In Residence’ space and which, in the artist’s own words, was intended to appear ‘almost like the remains of a Kemalist modernist building’.
Can I step on it?
Mekka Mokka, 1988
50 kg di caffè in grani e disegno su carta da spolvero
220 × 140 cm
Opere correlate
Nessuna opera correlata trovata