Shōzō Shimamoto in conversation with Christian Flamm, Piero Golia, Daniel Knorr, Eric Wesley

Shōzō Shimamoto in conversation with Christian Flamm, Piero Golia, Daniel Knorr, Eric Wesley
07.03.2018 - 27.04.2018

Galleria Fonti is pleased to announce the group exhibition ShōzōShimamoto in conversation withChristian Flamm, Piero Golia, Daniel Knorr, ShōzōShimamoto, Eric Wesley.

The exhibition will be the secondofa series of group shows in which guest artists and artists of the gallery program will deal with the topic of abstraction showing both existing works orspecifically works realized for the occasion.

The five artists involved will interactwith each other on the ideaof abstraction used as a pretext to develop anthropological or psychological analysis, to better express a personal visual universe or simply to evoke landscapes, bodies, signs, and so on.Acriticaland expositive ideal dialogue between the 50s and 70s production realized by Shimamoto in Japan and the recent production by the artists of the gallery, a conversation in time and space on two different way to approach artistic experimentation.

The show is in collaboration with Associazione Shōzō Shimamotoin Napoli which, through theirGeneral Archive,promotes and supports the artistic research of the Japanese artist.

The research about abstraction by Shōzō Shimamoto, the biggest representative of the Gutai group, starts during the 50s and immediately ordains him as a revolutionary pioneer of the artistic experimentation of the Rising Sun.Shimamoto wasthe first one to dare, to cross the line, in a sort of continuous challenge to burst out every form of vital energyand to give "concreteness" to the expressive ideal of "empty-full", philosophical idea of the Zen Buddhism, synonymous of essential, choice of abstraction and resettingin which the empty defines the action.

In the artistic practice,that process translates itself in a more directexploration of the artwith nomediation, that in painting is reachable trough the "prohibition of the brush", a tool representing the distance between the body of the artist andthe final result.Through the imaginative ability, not conditioned by superstructures and other involvements, the artist reflects about the innocenceas pure experiencewhich, transferred to the conceptual picture of our latitudes, obtains spontaneity and fate.

That is visible in the first Drawingsof the 50s and in the Ana Esquisse(works with holes) of the 60s in which the leitmotifis an action painting with no purposebecauseart is in life and reveals itself in the here and now of the action.

Inthe work by Shimamoto the gestural aspect is processual and temporal, that's why what is considered painting is confused and remains as trace, index of its action. The essence is in the variety of relations that, involving more people for the originality of the sign and consequent astonishment, obtain intersubjective, public and communicativeform as in the case of the calligraphic practice -spiritual discipline in Orient -in which the use of brush is allowed because sticking perfectly to the body,directly connects the spirit to the material ( Red A on red, 1975 ).

Christian Flamm’s installation Quoted Out of Contextseizes this idea of incorporating a symbolic visual language while continually trying to disassociate from it. The postcards feature images of previous drawings in which Flamm uses pictorial codes from art, film, music, literature, and advertising, that form part of a common cultural knowledge and social memory. As a means of exploring the varying associations between meanings that stem from the images themselves and from the assumptions that are brought to them, Flamm juxtaposes the already ambivalent images with the solid black surfaces that surround them in the postcard rack. The alienation of the images from their representative connotations is further exemplified by their sculptural mode of display, which prevents the postcards from being interpreted as a souvenir.

The embroidered canvas Untitledconcludes the negation of any form of representationalism and dissolves the meaning into abstraction.

Thefloorinstallation realized in black and white ceramic tiles reproduce the sentence Make Of That What You Wishusinga font designed by Christian Flamm himself.This statement should reflect the modular/varying character of the elements used, letters per se, and the observer's expectations and prospects.

In Depression Elevation Daniel Knorr explores the surface of cityscape using a series of resin sculptures cast from impressions of city streets.

Knorr’s topographical concern is biopolitical; while infrastructure is produced by the state to facilitate connectivity, it also proscribes social movement and imposes parameters upon a population. The city’s vast and complex network of roads leaves an indelible mark upon the wide, flat plane of thecities, begetting a cultural landscape dominated by car culture and urban sprawl.The hollows of the street, however, worn by the ravages of time and human use, provide a small footprint of the city’s past. In casting from these puddles and potholes, Knorr catches history in his mold, engendering form and substance from a literal void. The resultant sculptures derive an evocative power not from their undeniably beautiful façade, but from the intimate aura of a swiftly fading past.In Reconstruction, two metal plates are welded together on one side. The attachment of the two plates on the floor produces a kind of tent construction.

In formal terms, the work alludes to 1960s Minimalism, exploring cultural, economic, and social developments during and after this period. While Minimalism was referring to the phenomena of systemizing the resources andindustrializing their exploitation, this work examines the results of this phenomena. The concept of the work depicts the loss of resources, both physically and psychically, meaning also the loss of humanitarian help and understanding for actual social developments.

Piero Golia
deals with the expectations placed upon artists and how they appear in public, but equally considers their ability to generate a social fabric. The work exhibited isthe final result of a performance by the artist took place at Kunsthaus Baselland in 2017 where The Painter,a huge robot that moves along lengthy tracks, begins to paint. “In my opinion” says Golia, “we should seek open models in which the viewer has the possibility of forming their own narrative.” This is exactly what is possible by interacting withthe painting robotThe theatricality of it cannot be ignored. “Abstract painting,” Golia remarks, “is all about theatre; if you think about all the images showing Pollock in his studio, for example, pouring paint on canvas which lay on the floor. But something that interests me here as well is this idea of narration. As the robot reacts to the people who enter the space –one after another they break the normal story of the exhibition. In the end, the paintings will tell you the story of the exhibition. So the painting canbe understood as a narrative.”

The paintings realized by Eric Wesleyare related to the second solo exhibition the artist realized in the gallery in 2012.In occasion of that show titled The Natural Order of Things,Wesley expounded on the notion of nature versus human intervention or creativity.The exhibition consisted of a performative installation that the artist identifies as the first stage of a revolution: the relocation of all material , a sort of personal storage, from the upper floor of the building to the lower floor where the gallery is located. That was a rotational movement with the measure of one quarter in relation to the ideal cross section of the building.

The intent was to establish a context of positive change and development in terms of both the physical and the intangible. A simple, rudimentary operation to construct a rule which set literally the art work in motion. Through connecting the physical and natural occurrence a revolution (rotation) to the spiritual.