21 May 2018
Come,come,my baby come
I will show you the world
Come ,come, my baby come
I will cover your nightmares
Jain -Come
From the presentation of the exhibition: “Dancing with Myself investigates the primordial importance of self-representation in artistic production from the 70s to today and the role of the artist as a protagonist and as the object itself of the work. Through a wide variety of artistic practices and languages (photography, video, painting, sculpture, installations …), of cultures and proveniences, of generations and experiences, the exhibition highlights the contrast between different attitudes: melancholy and vanity, the ironic play of identity seems political autobiography, existential reflection and the body as sculpture, effigy or fragment, and its symbolic representation. ” The beauty of an exceptional event is that it is exceptional and an exceptional event repeated every year no longer has anything exceptional “said Martin Bethenod, Director and CEO of Palazzo Grassi / Punta della Dogana announcing the new exhibitions of Palazzo Grassi and Punta of the Customs after Damien Hirst. but yet, entering Palazzo Grassi, the absence of the enormous statue of Hirst leaves it like a sense of emptiness.
Let’s start from the fact that we appreciate the curatorial choice of Punta della Dogana. Here we talk about the body of an artist, the vanity of the artist and the symbolic use of themselves. Although it is an exhibition already presented elsewhere, we are certainly facing many additions. Compared to the continuous consumption, to fashion, of the other than itself, to whom we have dedicated many writings, here we finally talk about ourselves, without pretension. It is not a trivial thing. There is not even a self-portrait in the classic sense. The body is depicted, photographed, sculpted, but it is not a subject of representation. 32 artists are represented, including Marcel Bascoulard, Marcel Broodthaers, Damien Hirst, Giulio Paolini are added to those already presented in Essen in 2016
Yet we stop at the threshold of the digital age. The exhibition itself is inscribed in a period, with some temporal leaks such as the surrealist Claude Cahun (1894, Nantes, France – 1954, Saint Helier, Jersey), in which some of the theoretical foundations have already been expressed, many insights on what is our current condition, the body could be used as a place of political frontier, of gender, of fragility. Not yet, or not fully (perhaps only as an allusion or suggestion) as an application of possible cooperation through technologies, with all the consequences both conservative and creative that this entails. Basically Benjamin had already hypothesized, referring to the possibility of increasing the power of the view given by photography, the optical unconscious. It is not necessary to go back to the Freud of the Discomfort of Civilization, with the definition of technology as a prosthesis that humanity has developed to widen its powers, is enough the dear Vaccari, who in the ’70s, joyfully declared “the apparatus of photograpy has autonomous capacity organization of images in symbolically structured forms “. We are in this exhibition at the limit of the mutation of the body, where everyone could still imagine having an identity to be investigated, to relate with others and with society as a whole. At the same time, a sort of subsumption was born, where this identity multiplied in an enlarged way, in some respects emptied back to places, memories, external bodies and accomplices. There is also a formal delimitation. There is no Fluxus here. Although there are represented some performative practices, there is not that idea of the body as “space to suffer, to feel the whole complex of emotionality, of fear, of anguish” (Gina Pane). The bodies exposed are more ironic than sufferers. Fluids remain hidden, sensuality is alluded to, no Chris Burden gets an arm shot.
The potentiality of the body is verified. Bruce Nauman in Lip Sync tries to synchronize with an audio that he hears in the headphones and that always repeats the same phrase of the title. But after a while he can not do it any more and the errors increase. Ulrike Rosenbach asks herself, with “Do not you think I’m the potentiality of the body is verified. Bruce Nauman in Lip Sync tries to synchronize with an audio that he hears in the headphones and that always repeats the same phrase of the title. But after a while he can not do it any more and the errors increase. Ulrike Rosenbach asks herself, with “Do not you think I’m an Horsewoman” – 1976 – what her social role is as a woman and as woman artist. And if she had internalized the limits imposed by the society ? Gilbert & George consider their immediate life a work of art. Here are the famous photos on various supports, reminiscent of the windows of a chic church. But also poor Paulo Nazareth believes the same thing, only that his life represented is a journey from the favelas to New York with other outcomes. Feliz Gonzalez Torres opens the exhibition with curtains made of rows of red and white spheres, which must be crossed to access Punta della Dogana. They stand for the illness and death of his partner and his pain, caused by AIDS in an intersubjective context that is only completed with our involvement. Alighiero & Boetti presents himself in a self-portrait statue in which water is thrown on his head with a pump. The latter is heated and creates steam, which rises continuously. Thus he represents ironically both the artist’s creative process and his illness (he would die shortly thereafter for a brain tumor). In any case, for the choice of modifying its name, it is always there to question the single con-closed identity, in favor of the multiplicity of the subject. Cindy Sherman stages all kinds of stereotypes with grotesque disguises, crumbling the social foundations of female identity, revealing how every identity is an artifice. In this sense, the first images let us glimpse the self-timer cable that reveals the mesa on stage.
On the other hand, Martin Kippenberger, with cross-dressing, places androgynous characters, emotional states and fluid sexual identities.
There are no conclusions to be drawn here, perhaps some impressions. It is not possible because we are not neutral observers, it is not a sort of development of the history of the spirit, in which gradually the experiences are maturing , in a strange homogeneous place and time, which allows us to draw conclusions. It has never been like this: without a return to the nineteenth-century positivist idea it is not possible to consider the mannerism an evolution of the baroque, the renaissance is not better than the Middle Ages.
The theoretical and practical evolution develops as the technological potential increases, its influence and is influenced, in the context of the market in which every expression is immersed. Otherwise we should hypothesize that Nauman really was so poor that he had nothing to work with in his study and therefore used his body . And that the difference between a ’70 video and a contemporary one is not only an improved definition . It is a more complex process in which everything stay together, without nostalgia.
And so, while in our DNA changes according to this process, here you can see a progressive change in the use of the body. First of all, the medium on which it is imprinted. In the sense that the technology progressively takes itself more seriously. The artist’s body becomes an expressive content, emerging from the immediate representation of himself. Studyes about its relationships with others and wants to make a good impression. So embellish its image, more and more sought after. From the photos of the 70s to those of this century, the change is not only technical, but also of conscience. Also in wanting to address the same issues.
The irony is diluted and breaks into two rivulets. More and more we can found or figures commited to their role or that have fun with amusing and alienating paradoxes, like Cattelan.
The hope is that really, as said by the curator, the next room of this strange and rich ethnographic museum, will be about the current one, to see what brought the Market again his umpteenth crisis, relating it with this exhibition, if it still makes sense to do it.
I will show you the world
Come ,come, my baby come
I will cover your nightmares
Jain -Come
From the presentation of the exhibition: “Dancing with Myself investigates the primordial importance of self-representation in artistic production from the 70s to today and the role of the artist as a protagonist and as the object itself of the work. Through a wide variety of artistic practices and languages (photography, video, painting, sculpture, installations …), of cultures and proveniences, of generations and experiences, the exhibition highlights the contrast between different attitudes: melancholy and vanity, the ironic play of identity seems political autobiography, existential reflection and the body as sculpture, effigy or fragment, and its symbolic representation. ” The beauty of an exceptional event is that it is exceptional and an exceptional event repeated every year no longer has anything exceptional “said Martin Bethenod, Director and CEO of Palazzo Grassi / Punta della Dogana announcing the new exhibitions of Palazzo Grassi and Punta of the Customs after Damien Hirst. but yet, entering Palazzo Grassi, the absence of the enormous statue of Hirst leaves it like a sense of emptiness.
Let’s start from the fact that we appreciate the curatorial choice of Punta della Dogana. Here we talk about the body of an artist, the vanity of the artist and the symbolic use of themselves. Although it is an exhibition already presented elsewhere, we are certainly facing many additions. Compared to the continuous consumption, to fashion, of the other than itself, to whom we have dedicated many writings, here we finally talk about ourselves, without pretension. It is not a trivial thing. There is not even a self-portrait in the classic sense. The body is depicted, photographed, sculpted, but it is not a subject of representation. 32 artists are represented, including Marcel Bascoulard, Marcel Broodthaers, Damien Hirst, Giulio Paolini are added to those already presented in Essen in 2016
Yet we stop at the threshold of the digital age. The exhibition itself is inscribed in a period, with some temporal leaks such as the surrealist Claude Cahun (1894, Nantes, France – 1954, Saint Helier, Jersey), in which some of the theoretical foundations have already been expressed, many insights on what is our current condition, the body could be used as a place of political frontier, of gender, of fragility. Not yet, or not fully (perhaps only as an allusion or suggestion) as an application of possible cooperation through technologies, with all the consequences both conservative and creative that this entails. Basically Benjamin had already hypothesized, referring to the possibility of increasing the power of the view given by photography, the optical unconscious. It is not necessary to go back to the Freud of the Discomfort of Civilization, with the definition of technology as a prosthesis that humanity has developed to widen its powers, is enough the dear Vaccari, who in the ’70s, joyfully declared “the apparatus of photograpy has autonomous capacity organization of images in symbolically structured forms “. We are in this exhibition at the limit of the mutation of the body, where everyone could still imagine having an identity to be investigated, to relate with others and with society as a whole. At the same time, a sort of subsumption was born, where this identity multiplied in an enlarged way, in some respects emptied back to places, memories, external bodies and accomplices. There is also a formal delimitation. There is no Fluxus here. Although there are represented some performative practices, there is not that idea of the body as “space to suffer, to feel the whole complex of emotionality, of fear, of anguish” (Gina Pane). The bodies exposed are more ironic than sufferers. Fluids remain hidden, sensuality is alluded to, no Chris Burden gets an arm shot.
The potentiality of the body is verified. Bruce Nauman in Lip Sync tries to synchronize with an audio that he hears in the headphones and that always repeats the same phrase of the title. But after a while he can not do it any more and the errors increase. Ulrike Rosenbach asks herself, with “Do not you think I’m the potentiality of the body is verified. Bruce Nauman in Lip Sync tries to synchronize with an audio that he hears in the headphones and that always repeats the same phrase of the title. But after a while he can not do it any more and the errors increase. Ulrike Rosenbach asks herself, with “Do not you think I’m an Horsewoman” – 1976 – what her social role is as a woman and as woman artist. And if she had internalized the limits imposed by the society ? Gilbert & George consider their immediate life a work of art. Here are the famous photos on various supports, reminiscent of the windows of a chic church. But also poor Paulo Nazareth believes the same thing, only that his life represented is a journey from the favelas to New York with other outcomes. Feliz Gonzalez Torres opens the exhibition with curtains made of rows of red and white spheres, which must be crossed to access Punta della Dogana. They stand for the illness and death of his partner and his pain, caused by AIDS in an intersubjective context that is only completed with our involvement. Alighiero & Boetti presents himself in a self-portrait statue in which water is thrown on his head with a pump. The latter is heated and creates steam, which rises continuously. Thus he represents ironically both the artist’s creative process and his illness (he would die shortly thereafter for a brain tumor). In any case, for the choice of modifying its name, it is always there to question the single con-closed identity, in favor of the multiplicity of the subject. Cindy Sherman stages all kinds of stereotypes with grotesque disguises, crumbling the social foundations of female identity, revealing how every identity is an artifice. In this sense, the first images let us glimpse the self-timer cable that reveals the mesa on stage.
On the other hand, Martin Kippenberger, with cross-dressing, places androgynous characters, emotional states and fluid sexual identities.
There are no conclusions to be drawn here, perhaps some impressions. It is not possible because we are not neutral observers, it is not a sort of development of the history of the spirit, in which gradually the experiences are maturing , in a strange homogeneous place and time, which allows us to draw conclusions. It has never been like this: without a return to the nineteenth-century positivist idea it is not possible to consider the mannerism an evolution of the baroque, the renaissance is not better than the Middle Ages.
The theoretical and practical evolution develops as the technological potential increases, its influence and is influenced, in the context of the market in which every expression is immersed. Otherwise we should hypothesize that Nauman really was so poor that he had nothing to work with in his study and therefore used his body . And that the difference between a ’70 video and a contemporary one is not only an improved definition . It is a more complex process in which everything stay together, without nostalgia.
And so, while in our DNA changes according to this process, here you can see a progressive change in the use of the body. First of all, the medium on which it is imprinted. In the sense that the technology progressively takes itself more seriously. The artist’s body becomes an expressive content, emerging from the immediate representation of himself. Studyes about its relationships with others and wants to make a good impression. So embellish its image, more and more sought after. From the photos of the 70s to those of this century, the change is not only technical, but also of conscience. Also in wanting to address the same issues.
The irony is diluted and breaks into two rivulets. More and more we can found or figures commited to their role or that have fun with amusing and alienating paradoxes, like Cattelan.
The hope is that really, as said by the curator, the next room of this strange and rich ethnographic museum, will be about the current one, to see what brought the Market again his umpteenth crisis, relating it with this exhibition, if it still makes sense to do it.
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