ART CITIES:Venice-The Hidden Dimension
Throughout his career the American anthropologist and cross-cultural researcher Edward T. Hall , introduced a number of new concepts, including proxemics, polychronic and monochronic time, and high and low context culture. In his second book, “The Hidden Dimension“ (196), he describes the culturally specific temporal and spatial dimensions that surround each of us, such as the physical distances people maintain in different contexts.
By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Marignana Arte Gallery Archive
“The Hidden Dimension” at Marignana Arte Gallery in Venice is a two-stage exhibition project, is based on Edward T. Hall’s book. The book is a fundamental discipline which sets out to explain how we are influenced and influence our own lives on the basis of how distant we are from one another: from what is known, from what we love and respect, but also from what we do not know, do not comprehend, what we fear, perhaps because it is far from us physically and therefore also sensitively and emotionally. A fascinating concept, and one which Hall set out to apply also with regard to 20th Century visual arts with regard to the issue of the perception and construction of space, and which more broadly he exploited to analyse and improve – through a description of the effects caused by different distances, the conformation of the living environment, of architecture and of cities. The first part of the exhibition is curated by Clarissa Tempestini and the participating artists are: Vanessa Safavi, Tyra Tingleff, CCH, Laura Renna, Francesco Candeloro and Enrico Boccioletti. The second part of the exhibition will be curated by Ilaria Bignotti featuring another six artists, opening in May 2017 to coincide with the opening of the Venice Biennale. Vanessa Safavi combines multi-layered cultural and art historical references in the form of objects, materials and pictures transporting them from the resources of her own multicultural background, her travels and her ethnological research. Nature and science versus culture or philosophy, her work often borrows diverse shapes. Different references to important women artists like Carol Rama, Louise Bourgeois, Lynda Benglis and Alina Szapocznikow can also be traced in the works. Tyra Tingleff is interested in a moment when language ceases and another mode of communication begins and carries its own time signature and bodily engagement with image and space. Her paintings are ideally to be sensed as much as to be seen. She operates through a dynamic rhythm of construction and deconstruction, moving through the workings of a painting both in and between complex layers of colour. CCH a young artist from Tuscany, at one hand uses military duct tape as colour, line, energy and strength. Already employed on others surfaces, mostly mirrors, in those works in is thought like a thick, solid but well-structured presence which upholster the canvas, a square, strictly regular and geometrical. On the other hand it is increased the topic of ambiguity, of contradiction, of negation, of silence, all fundamental elements in CCH’s philosophy. Laura Renna lives and works in Modena, Italy. She develops her research using sculpture, installation and photography. In the installation “Paesaggio” (2010), Laura Renna recreated a real landscape of marks through a long and elaborate on-site birth process, a work that oscillates between art and science, abstraction and the concreteness of material, between naturans nature and tamed nature. Francesco Candeloro’s practice constitutes a philology of light, it informs the very making of his objects, their origin as well as their effects. Perspex panels are cut using a laser, and photographic emulsions, of cityscapes and physiognomies, are inscribed on surfaces by means of ultraviolet rays. These surfaces, in turn, transform light as it passes through vibrant, translucent panes, whether as free-standing sculptures, window fixtures or carefully crafted cubes pinned to gallery walls or set on its floors. Enrico Boccioletti in his work plays with the paradoxes of a material world bathing at the source of digital intangibility, relationships and value in networked communities, perception of the self and expectation, performance anxiety in condition of overexposure to information, space and time in over-excited lifestyles into an accelerated culture, arrangement and re-interpretation of pairs of opposites such as presence/absence, real/virtual, actual/possible, in form of intertwined concepts. The works on view address the spaces determined by their presence and interaction, the peculiar distances not only between them but also between the materials and their consistency, emergence, ephemerality or persistence, their shape and size, as well as the reactions of visitors, called upon to be activators of visible situations and to change experiences on the basis of their own feeling and being in the space.
Info: Curator: Clarissa Tempestini, Marignana Arte Gallery, Dorsoduro 14, Rio Terà dei Catecumeni, corner with calle Lanza near Chiesa della Salute, Venice, Duration: 11/2-29/4/17, Days & hours: Tue & Wed 14:00-18:30, Thu-Fri & Sat 11:00-13:30 & 14:00-18:30, www.marignanaarte.it
