Lawrence Weiner: Inclined enough to roll

From October 30, 2009 to January 10, 2010 the Fondazione Merz presents a site-specific project by conceptual artist Lawrence Weiner.

The American artist has chosen to relate to the premises of the Fondazione and to Mario Merz’s work through 3 large-scale works which will be set up both inside and outside the Fondazione.

The project is based on the building’s history, developing from its industrial architecture, which is of great historical value for the city, from the days of its original use as a power plant to produce energy for the Lancia car manufacturers to its present-day conversion into an industrial structure containing artworks. Moreover, there are here, as in most of the artist’s works, subtle traces of the particular morphology and geography of his host city. In Weiner’s words to present the exhibition: I have an idea for a simple frieze that in fact sets the tone of the relationship between my work and Mario’s work. It puts the 3 sides of the building into a perfect perspective without taking away what I think is a beautiful building standing in the landscape.

Weiner places his writings in three different places, inside the Fondazione’s exhibition space and around it, and specifically on the main wall of the exhibition room, on the front frieze and on the circles situated on the bottom of the outside basin. Each phrase strongly relates to the surrounding environment, each one complementing the other to create altogether a single concept. Weiner uses elegant and functional fonts with striking monochromes to compose propositions as texts describing process, matter and relations. Intended for the circulation of ideas and meaning, a single statement can be indefinitely adapted into a myriad of forms and languages. The artist’s concise theoretical observations appear on buildings, books, small objects, and even in song lyrics and films. His way to dematerialize the art object into pure language has marked a turning point in art history. According to Weiner: 1. The artist may construct the work; 2. The work may be fabricated; 3. The work need not to be built. Art is something human beings make to present to others to understand their place in the world.

As is customary, Weiner’s works will be juxtaposed to works by Mario Merz. Weiner himself requested one of them in particular: it is a large igloo made of glass, numbers and newspapers, for as the artist sees it, the igloo has always personified for me a cairn placed in the world to continually commemorate the conflict between byzantine and the rational. The overall & the specific. Almost as if there were a consistent conflict worthy of Dante every time a work of art was made.

Lawrence Weiner
Inclined enough to roll
Kurator: Beatrice Merz