This book is an anomalous and layered object. It is split into chapters, following the way the Matrice exhibition was developed and completed over many months of work. Some key phases in the construction of the project in fact took place in the period prior to its opening, in a form that straddles the private dimension of an artist’s work and the public dimension of the exhibition. As also discussed in the critical text, Jacopo moved his studio to the spaces of the Fondazione Carispezia in the months preceding its opening. Here, within a triangular, uterine structure, the physical ‘matrix’ of the exhibition to be precise, he produced most of the works that would then be exhibited. And indeed many things took place inside it. The catalogue thus attempts to account for all of this. The colour photographs were taken by photographer Andrea Rossetti to document the two moments in which the project came into being. The first is made up of the so-called ‘invisible exhibition’: in order to understand the genesis of Matrice, we in fact need to understand how the exhibition is the final result of the ‘real’ exhibition that no one but the artist and very few others had the pleasure of seeing. All the works in this closed space, built in the very heart of the Foundation space, were in fact displayed on the walls, yet destined never to be seen by any visitor and then to be brutally dismembered. As the photos show, the works displayed are covered with a series of sheets to prevent them from being seen during Jacopo’s performance a few days prior to the opening. Only the photographs installed horizontally above the sculptures are partially visible. In the centre of the room, on the other hand, we can still see the tools used in the creation of the works, and the musical instruments that would later be played during the performance. The second moment taken by Rossetti consists of the actual Matrice exhibition itself, which the public could then view during its opening months. Andrea is one of the world’s leading exponents of that fine art which is the documentation of artworks and especially of contemporary art exhibitions. It is indeed an approach that requires great sensitivity and critical outlook. It is a translation process in which a – fruitful – betrayal of the material to be translated is and always will be necessary. A loving and respectful betrayal which was indeed requested by Benassi when he brought Rossetti on board for this task. The two sections of the catalogue must therefore be seen as a true collaboration between the two, in the wake of the many already developed by Jacopo with other artists in the fields of performance and sound research. The black-and-white photographs in the book were instead all taken by Jacopo Benassi or devised, prepared and coordinated by him. They recount the most performative and moving moments of the exhibition and its making, and are very much integrated with Andrea Rossetti’s work, adopting the same brutality with which Jacopo intervened in the Foundation exhibition space.
“The coalition emerges out of your recognition that it’s fucked up for you, in the same way that we’ve already recognized that it’s fucked up for us. I don’t need your help. I just need you to recognize that this shit is killing you, too, however much more softly, you stupid motherfucker, you know?” ― Fred Moten
Please join us this Saturday, September 10, for an evening of outdoors readings/performances to mark the closing of Dark Advances: ‘Affect Aliens’ & Revolutionary Despair—an installation featuring works by Spiros Kokkonis, Candice Nembhard (okcandice), Kari Rosenfeld, Lou Lou Sainsbury and Kwamé Sorrell.
Dark Advances: ‘Affect Aliens’ and Revolutionary Despair tunes into the hum, tremble, or murmur by which everything now rises to the surface. Not a human song, but the perlocutionary utterance of what Stefano Harney and Fred Moten speak of when they write of the movement of the earth against the world—an underground, black rhythm, chant or riot, that one “can’t join from the outside.” What does it want? Nothing, except perhaps to unground the ground—to reveal “the hole in the ontological project,” as R.A. Judy has it—by unearthing the bones that fire our great toxic machinery.
Dark Advances devotes its breath to this cosmic piece of anti-music, and to practices aimed at its amplification. To those ‘affect aliens’ who, faced with the ways of the world, promote neither the promise of utopia, nor despondent resignation, but the world’s collapsing: ‘unworlding’, or what one might describe as the ambivalent third way of revolutionary despair.
Please note: Lou Lou Sainsbury’s new video work descending notes and sound piece The Law of Desire is Fascist made with Kari Rosenfeld and commissioned by Gasworks London will be showing on the day. Visit the basement between 6-9 pm.
Motto Berlin Salitzer Str. 68 (im Hinterhof) 10997 Berlin
Lou Lou Sainsbury, descending notes, 2022. With Raffia Li and Ada M. Patterson. HD Video, 17:45 min.
*** Spiros Kokkonis was born in Athens, Greece, where he currently lives and works. He’s co-founder of the artist-run space Grace/ Athens. Operating in a very specific context—politically, socially, and culturally—the artist creates images both influenced by and dealing with aspects of contemporary life. Spiros’ work has been exhibited at Athens Conservatoire, Parko Eleftherias, Art Space Pythagoreion, Saigon Athens, SHED London, Grace / Athens and Onassis Cultural Centre.
okcandice (one word, all lowercase) is a writer, artist-curator, poet and musician based between Birmingham, England and Berlin, Germany. Their multi-disciplinary practice is explained as «i’m working on it», dealing with grief, love, queer identities, oration in Black cultures and archival materials. okcandice is a co-founding member of the collective poet & prophetess and founder of the queer film series ALL FRUITS RIPE. They host the experimental broadcast Bedtime Stories on Cashmere radio and work as a freelance curator, (song)writer and creative producer.
Kari Rosenfeld (b. Houston, TX) is an artist currently based in Berlin, Germany. Kari’s work is focused on ontology, political and social affect, religious and mythological narratives, image, genre, and attachment. They have degrees in American Studies and Philosophy from the University of Texas at Austin and graduated from Dutch Art Institute Masters of Art Praxis in 2021. They were a co-founder and Artist in Residence at the Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Science—Alexandria where they facilitated courses in theory and visual media.
Lou Lou Sainsbury is a trans artist based in Margate, UK & Rotterdam, NL, working in live performance, video, writing, installation and textiles. She identifies as a time traveller, making things that unwrite histories of living beings into mythopoeic dreamscapes, informed by queer and ecological activisms.Recent performances and group exhibitions include: Whitstable Biennale (2022), Centre for Contemporary Arts Prague (2021); Yaby and La Casa Encendida, Madrid; Nottingham Contemporary; Tate Modern, London; Yaby, Madrid (all 2019); and Flat Time House, London (2018).
Kwamé Sorrell (b. 1990) is an artist, poet, researcher and writer. Kwamé is co-founder of BlackMass Publishing, an independent press focusing on re/de/contextualizing black and African social vernacular through image and text. He lives and works under the sun. His work is rooted in language and form, as a way to explore the gap between art and tradition, music and sound, space and time; constantly in transition. (this bio is subject to change)
Curator and Editorial Advisor: Amit Kumar Jain Translation: Kadamboor Neeraj
Stranded in Najibabad (Uttar Pradesh) during the lockdown, Ahmadzai like others was uncertain about what the future held, and if she would be able to visit Kabul to be with her husband. It was during this time, confined in her barsati (terrace) studio room at her parents home that Ahmadzai delved into a practice of writing letters to her husband, revealing to him in a one-sided communication her anxieties, daily routine, loss of loved ones and their marriage.
Titled Nafas, or the Isolation Diaries, the letters include references from poetry and writings of Rabia Basri, Jalauddin Rumi Balkhi, Bedil Shanaz, Jaun Elia, Faiz Ahmed Faiz, Ghalib, T.S.Elliot, Virginia Woolf, Hermann Hesse, Dostoevsky and Nietzsche, each having their own impact on Ahmadzai’s life and her thought process as a contemporary artist.
These letters highlight the concerns of a woman, who is unable to come to terms with her life in flux- one with its roots in a country where religious isolation, propaganda and intolerance have become a norm, and the uncertainty of life and political instability in the other. The series, as well as an earlier series titled Lihaaf, comments on the state of the marginalized societies, such as Muslim women, where many such voices are never heard or spoken of.
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Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai’s (b. 1988) works are deeply connected to the experiences of women that rarely find a voice and are subdued under societal and political pressures or are bound within religious orthodoxies. Her works, though narrate a personal experience, are inspired by a much larger community of women who have been marginalized in history. Working within a disciplined studio practice and through collaborative community projects such as Lihaaf (Quilt), Arshi has struck a powerful chord with contemporary feminist art theory.
Her prolific art practice finds its foundation in the history of stitching by rafoogars (darners) of Najibabad. Surrounded by a large community of women who share their embroidery over songs, compassion and sisterhood, it was only natural for Arshi to turn to the fabric as her canvas. These exchanges have led to large scrolls as well as smaller works, where she juxtaposes image and text to comment on women and their roles, their sexuality, their freedom and their desires- some in love and some victims to political terrorism. An avid reader of poetry and philosophy, she not only questions patriarchy, but demands that her voice is heard and accepted.
Arshi Irshad Ahmadzai graduated with a Bachelors in Fine Art from the Aligarh Muslim University, 2011 and a Masters in Fine Art from Jamia Millia Islamia, New Delhi in 2013. Her first solo titled Nafas (Isolation Diaries) was held at Blueprint12, New Delhi, 2021. Her group exhibitions include ‘May we meet again’, a collaborative project for Noor Riyadh light festival, Saudi National Museum, 2021; ‘Head in the Clouds’ at Chatterjee & Lal, 2021; ‘Seeds are being sown’ at Shrine Empire Gallery, 2020; The India Art Fair, 2020; ‘Out of your shadow’ by Blueprint12 at Gallery Espace, 2019 and a solo presentation at 1Shanthi Road Gallery in 2019. She is one of the recipients of the Five Million Incidents grant from the Goethe-Institut, New Delhi and the Inlaks Fine Arts Award in 2019.
In the space where the Perú-Chile border meets the Pacific coastline, lies a triangle of approximately 3.7 hectares. Known as the “Triángulo Terrestre”, this piece of land has been causing diplomatic disputes between the two nations since the middle of the 20th century. Despite its relatively small size (equivalent to Parque Kennedy in Lima or Madison Square Park in New York) and having no agricultural, commercial or strategic value the Triángulo Terrestre has been in dispute since the signing of the 1929 treaty between Perú and Chile. The disputed land has acquired a symbolic value employed at different times by the governments of each country for political purposes.
In April 2017, HAWAPI, in partnership with Galería Metropolitana (Chile) took a group of 13 artists (5 Peruvians, 5 Chileans, 1 Bolivian, 1 Israeli and 1 North American) to camp in Santa Rosa—the closest village to the “Triángulo Terrestre”. During four days camping on site, the group generated a series of artistic interventions and actions to contemplate in situ the social, political, economic and physical impact created by this dispute; before moving to Tacna where they staged an exhibition of their work in the independent cultural centre, Laramamango.
We are pleased to invite you to “Mind The Gap”, the three-days-opening of the Cazul101 group show featuring works of Dan Perjovschi, Anca Bucur, artistic duo SABA (Silvia Amancei and Bogdan Armanu), Nicoleta Moise, Adriana Preda, Ioana Gheorghiu and Megan Dominescu.
28 April, at 6pm @ Motto Berlin Skalitzer Str. 68 10997, Berlin
Regularly using the subversive and progressive message in their practice, the artists are invited to reflect on the current political situation due to the high rise of extremist regimes in Europe and build a bridge between past and present, personal and political, highlighting the historical events that endangered the freedom of the individual.
The group show “Mind The Gap” is an alarm signal where image and text communicate to question and eradicate the toxic extremist behaviours experienced by the artists in the geographical space they develop their work.
After the three opening days, on 1st of May, from 7pm, the artist Dan Perjovschi will be present for an artist talk about the synthesis of the last years and the current situation in Europe.
Robert Brambora (born in 1984, Germany) lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He completed his studies in the class of Rebecca Warren at the Kunstak.
The work of the artist takes as its subject the current neoliberal system and its impact on the individual, as measured under Marxist analysis. It particularly approaches issues such as working conditions, school dropouts, stress-related illnesses, anxiety and loneliness, the housing crisis, and overpopulation as so many causes leading to alienation in our contemporary societies. Also at the heart of his questioning is the analysis of a sense of loss of points of reference, of a form of time distortion generated by these stress conditions. The artist seeks to extract the waking hallucination – the onirism – from these crisis situations. Robert Brambora practice primarily develops itself in two ways: he creates on the one hand paintings and ceramics, in the realm of traditional techniques and media, and on the other hand large format panels upon which texts are laser-engraved. The most recent text works address issues such as the real estate market crisis and financial speculation. These texts are based on political journals, excerpts of conversations and comments from internet forums, as well as personal notes. The artist draws equally from scientific articles from medical journals, evoking afflictions related to anxiety, as well as theoretical essays on the economic competition faced by individuals. These extracts are then reworked, superimposed on each other to create a three-dimensional pictorial space, which sometimes evokes the outlines of architecture.
Laura Owens (b. 1970) is one of the most celebrated American artists working today. For 25 years she has asked probing questions about the parameters of painting.
In this exhibition, her works responded to Van Gogh’s last paintings. Throughout 2020 Owens lived in and around Arles, and her new work came out of meticulous research into the history of the city and of Van Gogh’s connections there.
Like most artists, Owens has known Van Gogh’s work since she was a child, and she has looked at his art in various ways throughout her career.
The seven actual Van Gogh paintings shown at the Foundation in Arles included loans from museums with which Owens has a deep connection.
Laura Owens has often addressed the spaces where she has exhibited. For this exhibition she created a vast painting, in the form of a unique hand-painted and silkscreened wallpaper installation, which covered the entire walls of the rooms where the Van Gogh’s works were exhibited.
Many of the motifs in the wallpaper come from designs made by Winifred How, who worked in London as an artist and designer shortly after Van Gogh was alive. The installation drew a suspended universe between premodern and contemporary, inspired by How’s work.
Co-curated by Bice Curiger (artistic director of the Foundation Vincent van Gogh Arles) and Mark Godfrey (British art historian, critic, and curator), the exhibition shared how Laura Owens explores the images, colours and methods of Van Gogh, creating a conceptual framework for her investigations.
Published after the exhibition at Foundation Vincent van Gogh Arles, France (19 June – 31 October 2021).
Gianfranco Baruchello (1924, Italy) is an artist, filmmaker and writer who has experimented with the transversality of artistic languages since the late 1950s. He has in particular created short-circuits between apparently irreconcilable domains and fields like art and agriculture, or the regulations of governance of a fictitious company and economics. His painting contends with uncertainty and uses white as a field of the possible. In these spaces, he imagines the coexistence of essences of images and words, which he organises in all directions. Thus, writing is present in one way or another in all his practice and constitutes the very essence of the work presented at the Project Space (4th floor).The Psicoenciclopedia possibile is an impressive and complex project that Baruchello began in 2017 and finished in 2020. It is a sort of deconstruction of the encyclopaedia system presented in the form of an imposing book of 816 pages. Commissioned and published by the Istituto dell’Enciclopedia Italiana, founded by Giovanni Treccani, the book in fact subverts the structure used by an encyclopaedia and creates a complex system that links, through unexpected convergences, 1200 entries (in the first section) and 200 plates (in the second). The entries are taken from texts (some published, some not), notes and transcriptions of Baruchello’s dreams, while the images are the result of a long process of selection and editing from various sources.
Baruchello thus puts to the test, this time in a book, the systems of organization (causes, effects, narrative sequences, links) of seeing and knowing. Like in all his other works, from painting to objects and even installations, the encyclopedia also dismantles the most solid and anchored links to venture into the uncertain and the possible, into the “pleasure of thinking”, by means of an ars combinatoria that does not exclude the different or insignificant. Overall, the artist analyses the 21st century, entering into the multiplicity of possible viewpoints and pointing up the fact that, in the end, knowledge is something subjective and always open to interpretation.
In parallel, the Cinema Dynamo is showing a series of films made by Baruchello between 1968 and 2008 on the subject of processes of classification, archiving and inventory, the editing of which has similarities with the procedure used in the Psicoenciclopedia.
Lastly, as an adjunct to the exhibition, the Genevan artist Ambroise Tièche — who is also the author of an encyclopaedic work, to which he has devoted more than ten years: the Dictionnaire encyclopédique lacunaire — has organised a programme of performances and readings that “will give a voice” to the Psicoenciclopedia, with the participation of Cléa Chopard, Alix Debraine, Gilles Furtwängler, Federico Nicolao and Leonardo Pellicanò.
The exhibition project has been conceived as an organic whole, embracing a catalogue, the exhibition at Project Space, the Cinema Dynamo film programme, and the readings and performances aimed at celebrating, in spite of its obvious and — perhaps — necessary incompleteness, this umpteenth colossal effort by this legendary Italian artist.
This exhibition is part of a cycle of presentations of the Psicoenciclopedia possible undertaken by the Fondazione Baruchello, which benefits from the support of the Italian Council (7th Edition, 2019), program to promote Italian contemporary art in the world by the Directorate-General for Contemporary Creativity of the Italian Ministry of Culture. After Geneva, Baruchello’s Encyclopaedia will be presented at the Bibliothèque Kandinsky – Centre Georges Pompidou in Paris (25 September–24 October) and at CIMA in New York (6–12 December).
The first edition of the Psiconeciclopedia possibile is being published in French by Motto Books for the occasion of the show. It includes an extract translated from the entries as well as essays that offer a French-speaking public a fundamental introduction to Gianfranco Baruchello’s colossal project.
The exhibition, on view from 14 September until 17 October 2021, is curated by Andrea Bellini and Carla Subrizi, with the collaboration of Ambroise Tièche.
