Exhibitions, Germany, Köln, 23 October 2014
The Call of the Wild
Since the beginning of my artistic journey, I've always been driven to learning more about the world around me. I felt somehow divided between the desire to capture the essence of the 'real' world and the feeling that reality could not be really grasped. Each time I thought I had begun to unravel the mystery, I also felt how difficult it was to hold on conceptual positions that would last unchanged with time. I believe that people always move in the wake of their relationship with reality, and that artists are no exception, but for their tackling with reality on an artistic dimension. This is why it was so difficult for me to accept 'isms' and, even more, to recognise myself in any of them. And yet, how can one deny the differences between all the various ways of interpreting the world?
Initially, I have tried to accept the preconception that reality was discreet from imagination. Realism separated from Surrealism. With time, however, I began to think that this position was quite absurd. Art expression changes when the interpretation of reality changes, when the concept of what is 'real' changes. So what we now call 'surrealism' is not different from the discovery that our dreams, feelings, passions, and emotions are all part of reality, and that they affect and change it just like a street, a building, or the invention of a miraculous drug. Distinguishing between reality and imagination implies distinguishing between nature, reality and culture, in other words creative imagination serving the transformation of nature. There is a deep and bidirectional dialogue between 'reality' and 'imagination', which is building the world and constantly changing it, through a never ending metamorphosis.
Nature and nurture cannot be separated!
At the beginning of the new Millennium, I introduced an exhibition about Magritte's pipe - for some time the focus of all my reflections - with a nursery rhyme, which I believe still offers a good summary of my relationship with the world:
I am a postmodernist
a lot in summer, less in winter
Then conceptual I become
when you hurt me, make me harm
I think thoughts blue, red the flesh
believe in art, but just in part
I am a postrealist
while staring, of you I lose sight
I have since been sort of obsessed with the will to build some object, which would also be a concept per se. It did manifest to me some years later, in the shape of an image rolled up into a small cone. Its coiling motion would allow me to hook up reality with time: I had found my concept-object in the shape of a little cone!
Today, I believe that reality is a very fleeting entity, of little meaning if outside time and space, or outside a relationship. That is why I thought I could design my installations in yet another way: I can build objects which adapt to the available space, and may contain, for example, X-ray films and wood, such as in this case. I think that the same object/work may change function and meaning, depending not only on the materials and shapes forming it, but also on the context it belongs to, the relation established with the object, the environment hosting it, and the spectator watching it.
This is how this work in progress, entitled The Call of the Wild, after the famous novel by Jack London, came to existence. I have populated it with objects that I have transferred from my thoughts to the visible world, made out of X-ray films - my favourite material - and walnut branches - my favourite tree - and designed to reproduce a forest - my favourite place. One can play with them, and turn them into many different fantastic characters, imagining that they are alive, moving around and doing things.
Just like kids, I can change their positions and names, give them powers or take their powers away, consider them good or evil, put them together or divide them, make them live in peace or war. So, when a knight meets another knight, they can stage a duel, or when he meets a third knight, he may stop being a knight and become a three-headed monster, and the witch may put down her poisoned apple and become a harmless lap dog. In this exhibition, Cinderella may choose between a too Charming Prince and a landless Prince, the witch may dedicate her life to teaching to the Sorcerer's Apprentice, while the court jester may make fun of the Elves and be careful about deviant Elves, who are quite dangerous.
But, if you think you have seen a little velvet cone on a knight's shoulders, it might well be that Little Red Riding Hood was here.
No character in this work is fictitious, nor is any resemblance to actual persons or places coincidental.
Margherita Levo Rosenber, Genoa, october2014
die kunstgalerie
St.-Apernstraße 20, 50667 Köln
MARGHERITA LEVO ROSENBERG
THE CALL OF THE WILD
Contemporary Art Exhibition
Opening
Thu, October 23rd, 2014
5 pm - 10 pm
at the
Modern and Contemporary Art Fair
koelnmesse, Hall 1 and 2
Messeplatz 1
50679 Cologne Deutz
Since the beginning of my artistic journey, I've always been driven to learning more about the world around me. I felt somehow divided between the desire to capture the essence of the 'real' world and the feeling that reality could not be really grasped. Each time I thought I had begun to unravel the mystery, I also felt how difficult it was to hold on conceptual positions that would last unchanged with time. I believe that people always move in the wake of their relationship with reality, and that artists are no exception, but for their tackling with reality on an artistic dimension. This is why it was so difficult for me to accept 'isms' and, even more, to recognise myself in any of them. And yet, how can one deny the differences between all the various ways of interpreting the world?
Initially, I have tried to accept the preconception that reality was discreet from imagination. Realism separated from Surrealism. With time, however, I began to think that this position was quite absurd. Art expression changes when the interpretation of reality changes, when the concept of what is 'real' changes. So what we now call 'surrealism' is not different from the discovery that our dreams, feelings, passions, and emotions are all part of reality, and that they affect and change it just like a street, a building, or the invention of a miraculous drug. Distinguishing between reality and imagination implies distinguishing between nature, reality and culture, in other words creative imagination serving the transformation of nature. There is a deep and bidirectional dialogue between 'reality' and 'imagination', which is building the world and constantly changing it, through a never ending metamorphosis.
Nature and nurture cannot be separated!
At the beginning of the new Millennium, I introduced an exhibition about Magritte's pipe - for some time the focus of all my reflections - with a nursery rhyme, which I believe still offers a good summary of my relationship with the world:
I am a postmodernist
a lot in summer, less in winter
Then conceptual I become
when you hurt me, make me harm
I think thoughts blue, red the flesh
believe in art, but just in part
I am a postrealist
while staring, of you I lose sight
I have since been sort of obsessed with the will to build some object, which would also be a concept per se. It did manifest to me some years later, in the shape of an image rolled up into a small cone. Its coiling motion would allow me to hook up reality with time: I had found my concept-object in the shape of a little cone!
Today, I believe that reality is a very fleeting entity, of little meaning if outside time and space, or outside a relationship. That is why I thought I could design my installations in yet another way: I can build objects which adapt to the available space, and may contain, for example, X-ray films and wood, such as in this case. I think that the same object/work may change function and meaning, depending not only on the materials and shapes forming it, but also on the context it belongs to, the relation established with the object, the environment hosting it, and the spectator watching it.
This is how this work in progress, entitled The Call of the Wild, after the famous novel by Jack London, came to existence. I have populated it with objects that I have transferred from my thoughts to the visible world, made out of X-ray films - my favourite material - and walnut branches - my favourite tree - and designed to reproduce a forest - my favourite place. One can play with them, and turn them into many different fantastic characters, imagining that they are alive, moving around and doing things.
Just like kids, I can change their positions and names, give them powers or take their powers away, consider them good or evil, put them together or divide them, make them live in peace or war. So, when a knight meets another knight, they can stage a duel, or when he meets a third knight, he may stop being a knight and become a three-headed monster, and the witch may put down her poisoned apple and become a harmless lap dog. In this exhibition, Cinderella may choose between a too Charming Prince and a landless Prince, the witch may dedicate her life to teaching to the Sorcerer's Apprentice, while the court jester may make fun of the Elves and be careful about deviant Elves, who are quite dangerous.
But, if you think you have seen a little velvet cone on a knight's shoulders, it might well be that Little Red Riding Hood was here.
No character in this work is fictitious, nor is any resemblance to actual persons or places coincidental.
Margherita Levo Rosenber, Genoa, october2014
die kunstgalerie
St.-Apernstraße 20, 50667 Köln
MARGHERITA LEVO ROSENBERG
THE CALL OF THE WILD
Contemporary Art Exhibition
Opening
Thu, October 23rd, 2014
5 pm - 10 pm
at the
Modern and Contemporary Art Fair
koelnmesse, Hall 1 and 2
Messeplatz 1
50679 Cologne Deutz
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