art
twelve o’clock, July 7, 2021 – 3:05 pm
Long-distance dialogue between two works by the American and the photos of the young Italian-Lebanese artist portraying Beirut after the explosion at the port on August 4, 2020
of Marilena Di Tursi
closely linked to the opening of the Archaeological Museum of Santa Scolastica the duet that the Kunsthalle gallery in Bari dedicates to Dennis Oppenheim and Francesca Matta, a teacher and a young woman proposed in a dialogue on thematic harmonies developed in different keys. The newborn space, directed by Antonio Ottomanelli (with Ruggero Montrasio and Gian Luca Bianco), lent the work of the American artist Western Piece for the exhibition The forms of desire, hosted in the Archeologico: a double horse unhorsed in its greatness unnecessarily monumental celebrates the fall of the Wild West and by extension the collapse of all those narratives dear to the postmodern. By Oppenheim, historical exponent of conceptual and land art and therefore focused on the object, placed in environments that modify its perception, we find two works: Theme for a Major Hit and Sponge Truck. The first, installation, is a soundtrack composed by the artist who also gives his face to the puppet, peremptorily gliding in the center of the space and negligent in following the rough melodies. The other is a drawing, a project for environmental interventions on a small and large scale.
Atmosfere da day after
Artists of the caliber of Oppenheim are on display in the guise of tutelary deities, in whose furrow to identify still viable points of investigation. The juxtaposition with Francesca Matta, Lebanese living in Milan where she graduated from Naba, arises from a common relationship with the external space, modified or modifiable by human action. Gravid of conflict in the case of the young artist who photographs Beirut after the tragic explosion of 4 August 2020, avoiding to sift the tragicity from the front. Rather, looking for it in detail, in the suspended atmospheres of the day after when the devastation requires reparative silences. A group of photos of different sizes, taken with a 35 mm analog camera, reveal details of rough machines, mounds of rubble like piles of garbage, ladders stuck in a compact patch of sea, black like an evil shadow. During the generous art weekend, two other appointments to follow: at the Pino Pascali Foundation in Polignano a Mare, the exhibition Dialoghi: Pino Pascali / Gino Marotta. Artifici Naturali and the anthology by Iginio Iurilli at the castle of Monopoli.
July 7, 2021 | 15:05
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