“Francis Bacon and the Existential Condition in Contemporary Art”

While any attempt at imitating Francis Bacon would irremediably descend into mannerism, this aptly titled exhibition, “Francis Bacon and the Existential Condition in Contemporary Art,” gestures at artistic lessons that can be gleaned from the twentieth-century master. Curators Franziska Nori and Barbara Dawson juxtapose the work of five contemporary artists with some of Bacon’s more private and unusual works, all rarely exhibited in Italy. The result effectively conveys the artist’s modus operandi: photos cut out and glued together; reproductions of works by Michelangelo or Velázquez, torn from books, onto which Bacon then intervened; snapshots of friends and lovers. It is his anguished weltanschauung, then, that is especially highlighted within the work of the participating artists.

See, for example, the practice of Nathalie Djurberg, who investigates the darker sides of the human mind through her now-famous puppets (which are on view here along with video installations), or the powerful painting of Adrian Ghenie, whose work analyzes this medium as a code, cleverly reinterpreting heterogeneous sources with which he finds his autonomous and contemporary way in painting. Likewise, the syncopated spaces of Chiharu Shiota are invaded by a site-specific installation made of black wool thread interwoven to build an intricate but oppressive web that intercrosses the Eastern calligraphic tradition with the performative lessons of Marina Abramović. Arcangelo Sassolino, in a different, disturbing manner, raises the question of the relationship between the work and the viewer, with his bachelor machine, in which a thick steel rope is connected to a hydraulic system that runs the length of the room. Annegret Soltau’s photocollages, suspended between personal story and collective experience, play off these themes by describing constriction and violence, for instance in N.Y. FACES—surgical operations series, 2001–2002, where the artist collages together images of the September 11 terrorist attacks with pictures of a complex dental operation she had. These artists open up multiple viewpoints within a pressing, polysemous journey through the apprehensions and lacerations of the human heart. It is a one-way voyage that flings us out from the highly symbolic precincts of art into the neuroses and daily contradictions of life.

Translated from Italian by Marguerite Shore.