ART-PRESENTATION: Conversation Piece Part 3
Through different exhibitions and activities, Fondazione Memmo aims to support the maintenance and development of visual arts and culture in Rome and the continuous activity of the Academies and foreign cultural institutes, which have helped to form new generations of artists from all over the world over the last several centuries.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Fondazione Memmo Archive
”Conversation Piece-Part 3” is the third part of the series of the exhibitions at Fondazione Memmo Arte Contemporanea in Rome, and intended to chart the presence of Italian and foreign artists currently living in Rome or particularly attached to the city. Jonathan Baldock, Piero Golia, Magali Reus and Claudia Wieser have been asked to reflect on a specific suggestion, linked to the nature of objects and their specific use in the artistic practiceIt is about that principle of defamiliarization of an object proposed by Jasper Johns in the early ’60s with the statement: “Take an object / Do something to it / Do something else to it” that gave birth to a phenomenon that will be the leitmotiv of an entire generation of artists and critics. The works by: Jonathan Baldock, Piero Golia, Magali Reus and Claudia Wieser, on presentation in the exhibition, want to give their opinion within this historical and complex debate by expressing, each one with its own language, the amazing and unexpected power of an everyday object that, thanks to the artist, enters into the “other” dimension of an exhibition space. Jonathan Baldock’s work takes the form of painting, sculpture, installation and performance, all with a sense of the uncanny. Sewn patches of felt replace painted background in Baldock’s paintings and encase carved blocks stacked as monumental monolith or dispersed as prop. Piero Golia’s large-scale projects and conceptual project proposals bear equal weight for the artist. Often times grandiose in scale and proportion, if not seemingly impossible Golia’s ideas are full of provocation and confrontation.As an artist who has hardly ever worked from a studio, his ambitious ideas tend to infect and motivate producers, curators, and organizers that support his work. Whether Golia is running an intellectual salon in a speakeasy or crushing a bus to fit the dimensions of an art fair booth, his practice always calls attention to the personal agency of the artist and the social and economic context in which he works. Magali Reus has designed a spatial installation, her sculptures often resemble the furniture and equipment of modern domestic interiors and public spaces, most frequently functional objects such as fridges, seating, pots and pans. Interested in the graphic language of the objects that surround us, Reus identifies and makes use of formal qualities that carry specific associations. Claudia Wieser creates drawings, sculptures, wall installations and tapestries based on the principle of geometric Abstraction. Influenced by the work of Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee, who embraced spirituality as part of their aesthetic process, Wieser broadens their ideals to consider the coexistence of abstraction and physiological experience. The exhibitions is an opportunity to discuss on the work of different artists, who offer a great variation in research, poetry, and techniques, but it is also a moment of dialogue with Rome and its ancient and contemporary history.
Info: Curator: Marcello Smarrelli, Assistant Durator: Michela Tornielli di Crestvolant, Fondazione Memmo Arte Contemporanea, Via Fontanella Borghese 56b, Rome, Duration: 17/12/16-2/4/17, Days & Hours: Mon & Wed-Sun 11:00-18:00, www.fondazionememmo.it
