THE AMBIGUOUS LIGHTNESS of BEING - an Homage to Milan Kundera
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THE AMBIGUOUS LIGHTNESS OF BEING - an homage to Milan Kundera CURATED BY OMBRETTA AGRÓ ANDRUFF 02.13.2016 - 03.31.2016 difficult birth and the physical repercussion he has had to endure hung on a wall and hidden underneath a skin of shimmery tinsel. throughout his life. Musco’s practice is also inspired by nature and A fan positioned in front of the installation ‘sculpts’ the works its architecture, engaging classic and contemporary themes of endlessly: at once shiningly shrouding and carelessly revealing birth, nutrition, renewal and community. In Aves, his most recent the grey heaviness of concrete, cheerful layers of tinsel reminisce “The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us Salvadorian Ronald Morán and Slovak, London-based Jaroslav series, the images appear minimal and restrained on the surface, potential fun times and glorify triviality and lightheartedness. to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to Kyša, both explore somber socio-political issues in their yet they reveal their complexity and compelling visual poetry be weighed down by the man’s body. The heaviest of burdens is installations, sculptures and drawings by way of ‘dematerializing’ when examined up close. The feathers, created by the weaving of Korean GYE HOON PARK takes the struggle between therefore simultaneously an image of life’s most intense fulfillment. the very forms that they represent. thousands of naked human bodies, are gently floating against a lightness and weight to a greater existential platform. His delicate The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, pitch-black background, frozen in a magical dance, engaged in an works on paper, through the repetitive act of perforation, become a the more real and truthful they become. Conversely, the absolute MORÁN addresses the silence of power and aggression, from ongoing paradox of lightness. meditation on his uncomfortable feeling regarding his self identity. absence of burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar into domestic to gang-related violence, using materials such as white Park believes that the artist’s goal is to examine the philosophical heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become thread and white polyester foam that, while projecting a benign The mourning following a profound and sudden loss is the trigger struggle of existence through his/her art making process. only half real, his movements as free as they are insignificant. appearance belie the true threatening nature of the absconded or for Disco Punch, the installation presented by the Romanian What then shall we choose? Weight or lightness?” alluded objects. With Muro sin Sombras (Wall without Shadows) collective APPARATUS 22. Vacillating between surface Lebanese, Venice-based, MARYA KAZOUN’S practice is the artist creates an ephemeral wall using white thread: suddenly and depth, movement and stillness, exuberance and severity, also deeply rooted in her personal journey, each work having its Milan Kundera, The Unbearable Lightness of Being the ‘wall’ that is usually associated with strength, stability or vying for attention and cold inaccessibility, each work in the own narrative inspired by childhood memories and her rich and durability, a barrier that divides, but also protects us, becomes its series is a metaphor conveying inner turmoil. Disco Punch is complex cultural background. Kazoun is a multidisciplinary artist I first started thinking about an exhibition inspired by the Franco- own ghost in this play of tension between presence and absence, in fact dedicated to the late Ioana Nemes (friend, lover, brilliant whose elaborate installations often come alive through dramatic Czech novelist’s masterwork in 2002. While it never came violence and subtlety. artist and founding member of Apparatus 22) and allude to the and disquieting performances. The artist weaves and mends with to fruition at that time, its concept lingered for a long time to collective’s feelings of loss and grief, expressing the void left after thread, pearls and stones; she mixes humble and semi-precious resurface only 14 years later, as the project presented today at KYŠA also uses the brick as a metaphor: while in Morán’s wall her bewildering departure. Deeply personal experiences and materials to give life to her interior world, inhabited by horrifying Diana Lowenstein Gallery. The exhibition, as presented here, was the bricks become transparent, and yet maintain their ‘allegorical’ thoughts are given solid body in texts inscribed on concrete slabs and shocking figures that however, contain a singular and triggered by a series of encounters with several artists that took weight, Kyša renders his Brick weightless by defying the laws of place over the last couple of years while traveling throughout physics enabling it to literally float in the air. The brick becomes Eastern and Central Europe as well as Cuba. a monument of resistance. As explained by the artist: “It refers to throwing bricks at the demonstrations, it symbolizes the growing The featured artworks encompass a wide variety of media trend of the protest in the time of crisis of democracy all over and approaches, yet they are all somehow connected to the the world, but it does not offer any alternative. That is why the dichotomy of lightness and weight, either because of their brick is just aimlessly hovering in the space”. The second work ephemeral nature, the real or apparent lightness, or weight, of the presented by Kyša, Monument for Fallen Monuments, is in my materials employed to create them, or because of their ability to view an allegory of the impermanence of the powers-that-be address profoundly personal as well metaphysical issues and and becomes a poetic ‘swan song’ for the monuments that are express them in subtle and poetic forms through their practices. erected to immortalize them. Even the heavy and durable material the artist uses, iron, is ‘disintegrated’ and presented as weightless Kundera, in response to the question noted in the excerpt above, powder that seems to be gracefully dancing thanks to the pull of tells us that Parmenides, the Greek philosopher who lived in hidden and yet powerful magnetic forces. the sixth century BCE, came to the conclusion that lightness is positive and weight negative, however I find myself in agreement Other artists are driven by a more intimate approach: triggered by with the author when he claims that “the only certainty is: the profound personal experiences they address a sense of loss, re- lightness/weight opposition is the most mysterious, most birth and existential malaise that through their work raises above ambiguous of all”. their personal sphere to tackle universal meanings. It is their ambiguous nature, in fact, the thin red line that connects Italian, New York-based, intricate RONALD MORÁN / MURO SIN SOMBRAS, 2015 MARYA KAZOUN / Travellers from Ouppala, 2013 ANGELO MUSCO’S white thread Murano glass the artists and artworks in the exhibition. photo-based works and performances find their roots in the artist’s dimensions variable dimensions variable JONATHAN CALLAN’S body of work explores the of another form of painting: painting that “mutates” not on the relationship of disembodied knowledge to embodied experience canvas, but in water, and with results that the artist can only partly and materiality. Perhaps because of his critical preoccupation with control. Pediconi uses a multitude of substances to paint on water: language and its limitations, Callan often works with text - books, plaster, tempera, organic materials, oil, acrylic paints and inks. maps or photographs - as a source material. His methodology Through her work she explores different media, from photography consists of amplifying the physical aspects of the object by to video, installation and performance. The three photos and embedding, dissolving, cutting, scratching, folding or punching video presented are part of the series Red created in 2010 in which until the original form is barely identifiable. Through this sometimes we witness the delicate abstract compositions and mesmerizing violent, often obsessive process, Callan develops a system of dance created by an egg yolk and other foods as they are gently inquiry, which both drives the work and generates meaning. He released into the water. is presenting here ‘Tristan and Isolde,’ a book that is almost completely obliterated and whose residues are exhibited as ashes It is thrilling, after an hiatus of almost 15 years, to see this exhibition from a glorious past gathered with what remains of the binding in a finally come to life. Reading once again Kundera’s masterwork, Plexiglas box. two decades after its publication, has been an uplifting experience, as have been the countless studio visits and eye-opening The last group of artists is concerned with physical phenomena conversations with the artists in the exhibition. of perception, inspired in part by how humans respond to and interpret certain natural manifestations. Nicaraguan, Miami- In a recent interview curator and art historian Carolyn Christov- Bagarkiev said that: “artworks are somehow this place where BEATRICE PEDICONI / RED, 2011 MICHELE CHIOSSI / CARRARA ARABESQUE (DETAIL), 2015 based, MARISABELA TELLERÍA in most of her works Single Channel video, 6’26dz (looped), color Carrara marble, stainless steel, neon investigates the realm of visual perception and how we respond to Lacan’s theories of the inability to access the real except through dimensions variable dimensions variable physical phenomena particularly within quiet, seemingly unaltered the imaginary and via the symbolic are actually confirmed”. This Ed. 1/5 + 2AP situations that require slower viewing and experiencing. Tellería’s quote came back to me when, half-way through Kundera’s book, subtle installations are studies of light and color including a wall the narrator says: “A single metaphor can give birth to love.” These that not only exists as a structure but as an active, resonating two statements suddenly merged in the understanding that “a mesmerizing beauty.