calendario eventi  :: 

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14/9/2007

Group show

Musee D'art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Metropole, Saint-Etienne

Michelangelo Pistoletto, Zeng Fanzhi, Hwang Young-Sung, Soonja Ha

From the start of the 1960s, Michelangelo Pistoletto (Biella, 1933) was producing, as part of the Pop Art movement, reflecting works that reproduced individuals evolving in their everyday social environment. Within the same context, in 1965-66 he created various objects with a direct relationship with the living environment: furniture, mirrors, architectural elements, model sculptures etc. As an active member of the Arte povera movement, he turned to various materials for producing these works, while continuing his work with mirrors. He extended the scope of reflection of these and multiplied the images captured according to positions, angles, relationships with location and space.

By circulating his Progetto Arte manifesto in 1994, he directed his work towards a global project that resumed the main axes of his previous work and that also encompassed the socio-political advances that were characteristic of the artistic utopias of the 1960s, which are re-emerging today. In this manifesto, the work is an experimental field of action initiated by artists rethinking the workings of the world via offices and sections. According to this design, the work carried out by participants is wholly centred around a clearly-defined path: art is at the core of responsible social transformation. Then, artistic creation can be used for this undertaking, which is meant to invest education, politics, religion, work, communication, the economy and the production in which the artistic function is incorporated.

In order to implement this project, the artist created Cittadellarte in Biella, a place for artists to produce and to live, the activities of whom were “displayed“ outside for the first time, in an enormous triple installation, the arrangements of which enable an understanding of explored and analysed pathways, and prospective commitments in the structures of society.

The entire exhibition, a joint enterprise with ramifications in Spain, overseen by Pistoletto, is a series of interventions and information on the sections of the overall project. Art does not result in works, but in systems, images, environments, information and proposal counters, the whole creating multiple subjects for reflection with an essentially social impact.

Love Difference, Artistic Movement for an InterMediterranean Politic (2002) is one of the projects of the Politics Office of the foundation.

The museum’s large, central room is taken up by an installation by Michelangelo Pistoletto: Tavolo Love Difference (2003-2007), is a large, mirrored table in the shape of the Mediterranean surrounded by 20 seats representing the countries on the Mediterranean shoreline. In the image of this table, Love Difference brings together people and institutions from around the Mediterranean so as to construct new perspectives that go beyond cultural and civilisational conflicts. Among its founding members are people from the world of art and culture, but also economics, geography and sociology teachers. Love Difference is a network that serves as a starting point for sharing experiences and knowledge between people in different disciplines, who share the conviction that creation can play a part in transforming society. Each year, therefore, projects by young artists receive logistic, financial and human support from the Love Difference network. Events, meetings and exhibitions are also organised, so as to raise awareness among the public of the importance of meeting and of cultures.

http://www.cittadellarte.it and http://www.lovedifference.org

Mirroring Love Difference, the Museum is exhibiting several of its major pieces from the Arte Povera movement.

Born in Wuhan, China in 1964, Zeng Fanzhi is one of the generation of Chinese artists who have recently been propelled onto the international contemporary art scene. In contrast to those who have directed their work towards western formulas, Zeng Fanzhi has retained a personal and cultural identity, which is nevertheless free of the political ideology and successive economic revolutions he has witnessed in his country.

Zeng’s work rests on his experience. In 1993, he left the province of Hubei in which he was born and moved to Beijing. Urban life, solitude and observing the “habits and customs” of city dwellers were the basis for a series that brought him fame (Mask, 1994-2000).

In this series, the red neck scarf and smile – a symbol of the success of Communist China – immediately attract one’s focus, the masks disturb and fascinate, creating a feeling of uneasiness through their grotesque features.

From 1999, Zeng removed the mask. Portraits, with nostalgic eyes and aristocratic pouts, look at us from a slight angle. It is this fixedness that forms a reference point when one then notices that these faces move upwards in a large, vertical, skidding movement.

Since 2004, Zeng’s works have crossed a radical turning-point. His landscapes – either including people or deserted – and his portraits are scarred by small, frenetic brush movements. Each stroke inflicts a new direction to the whole within a proliferating dynamic. Rather than making up the whole thing, they comprise a part of it, like a sudden multiplication of limbs on a body that have decided to win their autonomy. A poetic Gorgon.

Zeng’s exhibition shows the artist’s different working stages via a gallery of portraits similar to those that existed during the 18th and 19th centuries in Europe. At that time, the Orient exerted considerable fascination, and a great many people derived their inspiration from Asia, without actually having set foot in its countries. For his exhibition in the Museum, Zeng Fanzhi is having fun – to a certain extent – with this utopian vision.

A catalogue is available at the museum shop (17 €).

Hwang Young-Sung was born in GwangJu (South Korea) in 1941.
By using signs and by the primitive representation of elements that are identifiable by everyone, Hwang’s portrayal establishes a balance between language codes, universal systems of reference, cultural specificity and his personal sensibility. Organised in a grid, together the signs provide an open but well-reasoned interpretation. In its detail, each element, its shape and its colour adjustment is thought out in minute detail. Within this precisely-defined formula are spread the proliferation and experimentation of meaning and memory.

The Mudeungsan region, in which GwangJu is located, is mountainous, covered with bamboo forest, persimmon orchards, hilly areas and marshland. This extremely rich natural environment is suited to the creation of a fertile imagination. Hwang’s pictures recall ancient Korean legends and ancestral tradition. Dotted around are tigers and snakes, hibiscus flowers and masks. With its associations with Buddhism, this visual story emphasises the vital thread linking nature with culture in Asia.

The subdued colours, as earthly as they are vibrant, are ones that are used in everyday life in Korea. Organised within Hwang’s “grid”, they ricochet off one another. A random interpretation is then possible, by shifting one’s gaze from one sign to a sign of the same colour or by creating a compound visual rhythm – blue, black, yellow, blue, black, yellow, etc. – a melody.

This is how, at the centre of these paintings, there is an installation made up of five hundred metallic spheres. These are suspended from the ceiling at different heights, which creates horizontal viewing angles on several levels. Like a musical verse, in one place you find a quaver, in another a flat and in another a sharp. People can then interpret the division as they wish.
A catalogue is available at the museum shop (17 €).

Soonja Han was born in Seoul (South Korea) in 1952. She has lived and worked in Paris since 1983.
When she arrived in France, Soonja Han attempted to free herself of her “baggage”. Having made a clean sweep of all sources of influence, both Asian and western, she devoted herself wholly to her research, an introspective process in which spontaneity and automatism predominate.

The circle appeared at the centre of this research. This usually stands out against an immaculate white background. At the same time, it is the centre and starting point of an endless movement. For Soonja Han, this form is inseparable from the colour that inhabits it. Clean, very lively colours make the whole form resonate. These circles sometimes intersect one another while retaining their total autonomy, following the example of what was stated by Gerhard Richter: “I noticed that one could put colours side by side. This provides a nicely anarchic effect”.

Both in her installations and in her paintings, the artist opts for multiplication: of size, of colour, and with all the complexity that these different combinations underlie. Soonja Han absorbs herself with the meditative possibilities of this type of work: thought about the colour is supplemented by a measured movement.
During this, her first exhibition at a French institution, a video produced using digital animation and projected onto two painted, circular screens will also be shown.

In this film, coloured discs move around on the same screen or from one screen to the other. For Soonja Han “These animations are living, moving drawings”. These shapes intersect one another and join for a moment, so creating new ones from it that one can sometimes identify. This is what is called the figurative capacity of the abstract idea.
A catalogue is available at the museum shop (15 €).

Musee D'art Moderne de Saint-Etienne Metropole
La Terrasse - Saint-Etienne

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