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It is no easy task to try and define, or at least outline, the creativity of a specific geographical area. Over the last few years, there have been a series of exhibitions that have raised geo-political issues, and to the point of creating the need for a whole new field of investigation. This all began with the phenomenon of China’s rapid cultural and economic growth and ultimately lead to the inclusion of many avant-garde Chinese artists in the first Venice Biennial, curated by Harald Szeemann. This also led to a succession of exhibitions such as “Out of the Red, Voilà la Chine” and “China Power Station,” which opened together with “Uncertain States of America” at the Serpentine Gallery in London during the last Frieze Art Fair. |
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Chronicles of Our Magic Hour – Milovan Farronato
It is no easy task to try and define, or at least outline, the creativity of a specific geographical area. Over the last few years, there have been a series of exhibitions that have raised geo-political issues, and to the point of creating the need for a whole new field of investigation. This all began with the phenomenon of China’s rapid cultural and economic growth and ultimately lead to the inclusion of many avant-garde Chinese artists in the first Venice Biennial, curated by Harald Szeemann. This also led to a succession of exhibitions such as “Out of the Red, Voilà la Chine” and “China Power Station,” which opened together with “Uncertain States of America” at the Serpentine Gallery in London during the last Frieze Art Fair. At the same time, the need for this new international investigation of regionalized creativity was given even more push by the Royal Academy of Art with the show entitled “USA Today,” which provided recognition of the current, celebrated state of North American artistic super-creativity.
But, within the geo-political sphere, interest has also been aroused in other countries—by other institutions and imaginative curators: from Catherine David’s “Arabian Presences” to the recent inclusion by the current artistic director of the next Venice Biennial, Robert Storr, of an Indian pavilion as part of the group show curated by Storr himself at the Arsenale—not to mention his open-ended request for proposals for the creation of a special African pavilion. The Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin also dedicated to India its “Subcontingente” exhibition. Additionally too, it is currently offering an overview of the entire Far East with its show entitled “ALLLOOKSAME?” In many cases, these exhibitions are in-depth studies designed to provide samples of all that which is held to be meaningful and which currently merits attention.
However, in other cases (and perhaps these are the more interesting ones), an attempt has been made to outline that distinctive “essence” of a geographical region. Very often, these exhibitions have played a more diagnostic role with regards to the status quo and, at other times, a more prognostic one with regards to art to come. And while in the West our gaze frequently falls upon that which is going on in the East, it is only fair that the East should look back with a certain amount of interest to the latest innovations in the West. The Arario Gallery has formed part of this interpretational horizon for some time—initially with the enormous exhibition, “Hungry God—Indian Contemporary Art” and then with “Art in America.”
With “Our Magic Hour,” it’s Europe’s turn. But what exactly is this “magic hour,” and in what way does the exhibition form part of this previous debate?
First of all, it is not supposed to be a hortus siccus, a showcase of colourless, tasteless specimen. This is not a question of sampling, and the exhibition certainly does not set out to provide an exhaustive overview of European art. On the other hand, “Our Magic Hour” set out to describe some aspects of typically European cultural heritage through the work of the six artists on show: Monica Bonvicini, Roberto Cuoghi, Hans Op de Beeck, David Renggli, Ugo Rondinone and Markus Schinwald. Each of them had the task of outlining a cultural tradition, an approach or an attitude that might, in some way, identify a sense of belonging to an infinitely diverse reality. And, while Op de Beeck reflects a typically Belgian surrealist model, the work of the Swiss artist Renggli recalls an artistic tradition more closely linked to arte povera skilfully blended with features of Trans-Alpine folklore. And Schinwald shows here that he could not have but been born and bred in Vienna.
The title of the show has been borrowed from a work by Ugo Rondinone—an enormous neon sign made up of rainbow colours—but it could be the title of a series of love songs or a top-ten of various romantic approaches: ironic (as in the case of Renggli), melancholic (Rondinone), minimal (Bonvicini), conceptual (Cuoghi), nostalgic (Op de Beeck) or simply bizarre (Schinwald). The magic hour has perhaps already passed, or perhaps we would like to project it into the future, but the magic hour rarely coincides with the present. It’s a question of individual mythologies, which do not often come to an equally happy ending.
Roberto Cuoghi’s song Mei Gui is a work on injustice and is presented as an attempt—albeit mined from the outset—to reach back to the original song, now lost in the sands of time. The video Ten in Love by Markus Schinwald shows convulsive actions, forms of coercion within a graceful choreography, enacting a sort of relational mechanism. Rondinone thrusts us into a padded landscape, featuring the cast of an ancient olive tree, the white ghost of a tree that withholds the element of time gone by. From this environment, through a reflective wall, which gives off an enigmatic smoke, we are invited to enter another structure—again, monochrome white—in which paper confetti snow falls slowly but surely. Hans Op de Beeck with his Table (1) presents us with a table covered with the leftovers of a meal that has now been finished. It is an invitation to regress to our childhood, to relive our memories in order to bring the image to life. This flashback into the past is favoured by the proportions of the work having been slightly enlarged. Monica Bonvicini in her Blind Shot defines a state of non-communication, and through a drill “hanged” from the ceiling yet still able to give off a few signs of life, examines the tension bound up in the gender issue. David Renggli turns on the light inside a black spot. It could be a workshop, but it could also be a living room, or perhaps a modern chemistry laboratory in which the beakers and test tubes have been replaced by scrap iron, wood and chainsaws. It is a tangle of lines and symbols, a sort of abstract naturalism, a mass of interweaving signs, also in this case based on elements from the heart of European culture.
While this is the emotional temperament generated by the exhibition, visually there are a number of strong contrasts. The “white” works (like Op de Beeck’s table or Rondinone’s environments) and the “black” ones (like Renggli’s living room and the black leather that envelops Bonvicini’s sculptures). There is a continuous opposition that brings back into play an age-old contrast which has now been pulverised into infinitesimal variations within the same period and the works of the same artist: that between the “Apollonian” and the “Dionysian”. White versus black, like full versus empty, like life versus death, like rational versus irrational. In fact, all the works possess a strong sense of vision together with a characterising structural component. Vision in the sense of sudden inspiration, not in the sense of something detached from us or all-transcending, but rather as a logical consequence of a life that manifests itself in such a way that it is not possible to comprehend all the different stages until the work is standing there in front of our eyes. A vision which invades the very architecture, which tames the spaces around it. This is what happens, for example, in Op de Beeck’s sculpture which calls on us to alter our parameters of perception in relation to the space in which it is exhibited, or in Bonvicini’s work which prevents the entry of space in order to make her partially moving image even more solemn and inaccessible. On the other hand, Markus imprisons the movement of his performers through the clothing, stances, and set designed and created entirely by him. Cuoghi follows the logic of musical composing to bring about his vision. Rondinone articulates his narrative in three acts, countering two analogous realities—or perhaps in contrast—with another work presented as a visual palindrome. Instead, Renggli opts to delineate his recognition within a regular and well-defined perimeter.
Thus, the Apollonian and the Dionysian are continually piled one on top of the other within the exhibition as well as within each single work.
