print April 1992

Giuseppe Penone

Giuseppe Penone’s interventions into the growth of trees in Alpi Marittime (Maritime Alps, 1968) constituted the beginning of his artistic path, which immediately converged with the orbit of arte povera. In Alpi Marittime, the passage of time is an essential factor for constituting form, and coincides with a ritual of transformation. Penone altered the direction of growth of three artificially interwoven shrubs. He traced the outline of his body by inserting nails in the trunk of the tree and then cast his hand in steel; this hand was then placed to clasp the trunk at one point so that it enters

print October 1991

Michele Parisi

These two exhibitions of Michele Parisi’s work demonstrate the convergence of an image and a critical act. The subject of his work is the process of revising and reinterpreting the conceptual experience as a historical phenomenon and as an esthetic choice. According to Parisi, conceptualism is not a canonic system but a terrain where gestation and regeneration occur and new images arise. The problem posed here is whether conceptual practice can admit the risk of the image, violating what is sometimes taken as an esthetic tautology. Images also question the value that the minimalist and conceptual

print March 1991

APOCALYPSE NOW

Life goes on. More than it deserves.
—Karl Kraus

CAN ONE EMERGE FROM the Last Judgment alive? Yes, if one betrays the Last Judgment for theater. Luca Ronconi proposed and achieved this betrayal in the staging of Die letzten Tage der Menschheit (The last days of mankind), the monumental “tragedy in five acts with prelude and epilogue” written by Karl Kraus between 1915 and 1919. The author himself always maintained a hostile attitude toward the possibility of the work’s being performed—turning down even directors like Max Reinhardt and Erwin Piscator—preferring to have the piece presented through

print October 1990

Alfredo Pirri

In this recent show Alfredo Pirri combined Minimalist and Conceptual elements in an environmental mise-en-scène. The exhibition’s title, Gas, intentionally refers to an operative but invisible energy that pervades the piece. In the first-floor space this energy was expressed through an investigation of the nature and the origin of reflection, analyzed within what Pirri calls the “system of illusion.” The theme of reflection has animated much of his work, and the current show functions as a critical analysis of illusion, effected through the transformation of illusory elements into actors in a

print May 1990

Per Barclay

The structures that Per Barclay exhibited were presented as sparse elements in an abstract landscape. One wandered among them as if in an ambiguous garden without center, where decorative details could be multiplied to infinity. In this rarefied space, all routes are really equivalent; there is neither entrance nor exit. The prevailing reference point seems to be that of a pallid science fiction that describes an alien world without judging it. The structure in the center room had a cold luminosity; two rectangular glass basins, nestled one within the other, rested on a thin wooden base. Both

print February 1989

Wolfgang Guy

Wolfgang Luy’s work was articulated in different ways in the two spaces of this gallery. The upper floor contained a single environmental installation, the lower floor six structures, four arranged on the floor and two on the walls. The installation piece, Echo and Schatten (Echo and shadow, 1988), featured seven tall raw-wood columns wedged between floor and ceiling in an irregular circular pattern. Together with the supporting columns of the gallery, they formed a sort of temple. The equilibrium of the wood columns was precarious; each trunk rested upon layers of blue-painted wood, cut out in

print March 1985

Tony Cragg

Tony Cragg’s work, throwing together everyday objects in unexpected combinations, seems the result of some catastrophe, an explosion, perhaps; and an explosion can have many different effects. Typical of his art, all of which shown here was from 1984, are two montages of plastic bits and pieces, hung on the wall in a form of drawing; and a spiral path, composed of a variety of wood objects arranged according to height, which runs from the floor to the top of the cupboard that makes up the last step (or, going in the other direction, the first). The two wall pieces, one of which was located at

print December 1984

“Coerenza in Coerenza: dall’Arte Povera Al 1984”

Views of catastrophe are both realistic and visionary. Thus the best way to move through the space of “Coerenza in coerenza” (Coherence within coherence) was as if one were looking at the show from the future, from an as yet unknown time—as if one had been born after the apocalypse. This was like a series of ruins to be deciphered, a place of forgotten rituals which slowly revealed themselves through the residual presence of arte povera. From this perspective the whole show could be seen as a gigantic allegory, in part because of the architectural context in which it unfolded—the Mole Antonelliana,

print September 1984

Ivens Machado

The work of Ivens Machado, a Brazilian artist showing here for the first time in Italy, oscillates between two approaches. He chooses his materials from the residue of urban detritus, sometimes redeeming them and transforming them in playful decorative schemes, elsewhere presenting them precisely as the flowers of ruin. Cement (both fresh and colored by oxidation), splinters of glass, wire mesh, tiles—these are the constituents of the pieces that Machado installed over the two floors of the gallery.

The lower floor was simply a container for the various works, but its arrangement clearly illustrated

print April 1984

Omar Galliani

Omar Galliani’s recent paintings and drawings shift the focus of the work some critics have called “neomannerist painting” to the edges of the Italian Renaissance. So-called neomannerist work displays an academically rigorous drawing style and a traditional painting technique; its inspiration derives from the historical period of Mannerism. It is not a markedly different phenomenon from neo-expressionism, nor does it show a different attitude toward problems of figuration. It simply refers to a different tradition. The result is a flood of allegories in chiaroscuro, falsely dramatic and falsely

print December 1983

Shirazeh Houshiary

These pieces by Shirazeh Houshiary, a young Iranian artist who works in London, are presented as “sculpture” in the traditional sense of the term. They tend toward closure, toward a formal autonomy independent of their surroundings; their direction is one of concentration rather than expansion. In their self-satisfaction they favor rounded, curved, full forms, with some schematic anthropomorphic references whose drama is smoothly resolved. The discourse on material is decidedly more interesting than that on structure. Houshiary works with an impasto mixture of mud and straw which enlivens his

print Summer 1983

Giulio Paolini

Giulio Paolini’s works in this show of pieces from 1981 to 1983 seem to be devised to suggest the void that lurks behind every pretext of meaning; they are carefully composed to celebrate the vanity of their existence. The multiplicity of phenomena that comprise the work display a mannerism that evokes a lack of meaning, a void, outside history. In the act of criticizing myth Paolini continually revives it; in pointing out illusion he produces delusion—scenes and figures which allegorically embody the concept of the autonomy of form independent from history. Art inspired by this concept exists

Luciana Rogozinski