Anri Sala - AS YOU GO

Anri Sala - AS YOU GO February 26–June 23, 2019

Drafted by Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev and Marcella Beccaria

Anri Sala creates film and music installations, sculptures, photographs and drawings that investigate ruptures in history.

The exhibition takes the form of a “parade,” where video works (Ravel Ravel, Take Over and If and Only If) and their developing narratives travel across the entire space. Visitors can let themselves stroll with the flow, accompanying its nomadic substance across the consecutive rooms, gaining ground, or experience the itinerant works from a laid-back position, standing or sitting, as they pass them by.

"I am refining the parade as much as I can here in the studio. I cannot wait to join you in Rivoli for a little bit of reality, because I am spending too much time in simulations and the virtual.

I was thinking of giving the exhibition a title. AS YOU GO.

In English or Italian—MENTRE VAI?

Visually I find the English more musical (although Italian is a much more melodic language.) AS YOU GO looks like DO RE MI FA SOL…

Through this parade, the exhibition as a whole becomes a musical instrument that relies on the visitors’ bearings to gain its full dimension…

…until they belong together.

I am interested in the idea that there is no destination to reach, that the finality is in the trajectory…

And also in the awareness 'que même si le delifé se déroule dans le présent' (continuous present) 'et simultanément dans toutes le salles' (ubiquitously,) 'la notion du future' (future tense) 'sera omniprésente. D’où aussi ce sentiment qui nous contraire quand on voit un film entrer dans la salle par la gauche après qu’on l’aie vu à l’instant sortir par la droite.' The fact that the future (in a temporal sense) emerges from the back (spatially) where we just passed through produces 'un trouble.'

That said, I do not think I have found the words to articulate the essence of this work.

Yes, how could you? They produce intervals, spaces in between bodies."

Anri Sala (Tirana, 1974) is a contemporary artist who lives and works in Berlin. After having lived for many years in Paris, he represented France at the 55th Venice Biennale in 2013. He studied at the National Academy of Arts from 1992 to 1996 and in 1996-98 he studied video at the École Nationale Supérieure des Arts Décoratifs in Paris. In 1998-2000 he attended the Postgraduate Studies in film directing, Le Fresnoy, Studio National des Arts Contemporains, Tourcoing. Some most recent solo exhibitions include: The Last Resort, Garage, Moscow (2018); Anri Sala, Museo Tamayo, Mexico City (2017); Anri Sala: Answer Me, New Museum, New York (2916); NO NAMES NO TITLE, The Helena Rubinstein Pavilion for Contemporary Art, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Black Box: Anri Sala, The Baltimore Museum of Art, Baltimore, The Present Moment, Middle Hall, Haus der Kunst, Munich (2014); Ravel Ravel Unravel, French Pavilion, 55th Venice Biennale, Venice (2013); Anri Sala: Louisiana, Louisiana Museum of Art, Humlebaek; Anri Sala, Centre Pompidou, Paris (2012); Anri Sala, Serpentine Gallery, London (2011). Sala has received the Vincent Award (2014), the 10th Benesse Prize (2013), the Absolut Art Award (2011), and the Young Artist Prize at the Venice Biennale (2001). He has taken part in many group exhibitions and biennials, including the 57th and most recent Venice Biennale (2017), the 12th Havana Biennial (2015), the Sharjah Biennial 11 (2013), the 9th Gwangju Biennale (2012), dOCUMENTA(13) (2012), the 29th São Paulo Biennial (2010), the 2nd Moscow International Biennale of Contemporary Art (2007), and the 4th Berlin Biennial (2006).