ART-PRESENTATION: Jannis Kounellis
Jannis’s Kounellis work stood out from the beginning for its search for a new kind of spatiality. The abandonment of a traditional concept of pictorial representation along with a radical escape from the canvas provided Kounellis in 1967 with the language that he has been using ever since to articulate a spatiality he extracts from different places and contexts.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Galleria Continua Archive
The work of Jannis Kounellis is not influenced by current events, but by universal, timeless themes. “I look among emotional and formal fragments for deviations from history. I am desperately searching for unity, even if this is inaccessible, utopian, impossible, and, precisely for this reason, dramatic”. Having contributed to the birth and development of Arte Povera, Kounellis has in more recent years come to orient his work around the problems associated with the role of the artist and the social mission of art in contemporary society. Jannis Kounellis works with “Structures of resistance” that have their own weight and elude everything that is vague and suggestive. Whether doors, large windows filled with rocks or books, fragments of sculptures or stone columns, these structures restore sovereignty and power to common mat-ter. At other times, they may take on the form of thin metallic walls, supporting shelves laid with bags, by turns empty and full. The centre of the exhibition space at Galleria Continua is occupied by a large installation specially conceived for the Moulin de Boissy. The wardrobes in this piece have been used by the artist before, having appeared in other important works and exhibitions. Wardrobes interest Jannis Kounellis for their capacity for receiving, for containing, while evoking the simple universe of common people. Here he uses the wardrobes to describe a circle, traversed in its centre by a line of coal, another material that has been pre-sent in his work for many years. This ‘corridor’ cuts the circle, introduces a straight, geometrical division into the agglomeration of bodies. The cut evokes the rapidity of the unerring, precise gesture of a painter. Strong and clear, it separates out a body made up of memories and intimate, human histories. Beneath the mezzanine, one finds a number of panels that together form the word NOTTE, evoking a particular atmosphere, a moment of hesitation. The word appears without either positive or negative connotation: it is, rather, an observation, a realisation. It is indicative neither of a frozen condition, nor a flat chromatism. The work, on the contrary, acts as a sort of theatre. The exhibition also brings together a series of works each the same size and made with metallic materials and black coats. Industrial beams, sheet metal and clothing inform one another in a contrasting poetry of matter. The size of the paintings, 180 x 200 cm, marks them with the measure of Man, something Kounellis is continually communicating to his work. Appearing likewise in his use of doors, windows, and wardrobes, this measure is perhaps the clearest statement of Jannis Kounellis’ humanism.
Info: Galleria Continua, 46 rue de la Ferté-Gaucher, Boissy-le-Châtel, Duration: 18/10-8/5/16, Days & Hours: Wed-Sun 12:00-18:00, www.galleriacontinua.com
