TRACCE by DANIA ZANOTTO

Excerpt of the catalogue presentation of Tracce written by Gloria Vallese, historian of art and curator of CREAM ON MADNESS.

For this intervention at San Servolo, Dania Zanotto has imagined a group of five tents, an entire small village placed under the trees. These tents are “shamanic”, with reference to a sense of intense of communion with nature, and also to a "living outside", living far away, in a nomadic dimension,  suspended between travel and exile. Lightly moved by the breeze, they are are built out of gauze and with materials that suggest natural objects, like ice and bark. Inside, bowls, pillows and carpets are laid on a carpet of  anthracite sand,  which initially is circular, but which the wind removes day by day, changing slowly its shape. 

Suspended  to the trees are clothes; evocation of the worn  clothes, deserted by the spirits, that the Tungusi abandon hanging them to the branches in the forest. These also, like the tents, are evocation of an era, perhaps mythical, in which men understood the language of birds and the signs of the nature. 

This diaphanous village of houses without roots, quiet and silent, animated only by the wind, evokes absent human beings. It is ideally in dialogue with the former patients of the San Servolo asylum,  the crazy "guests" relegated here, away from the community; guests whose perception was altered, and therefore, like the shamans,  forced to isolation.

Also in the European tradition, like in the rest of the world, madmen and idiots were considered in a certain way prophets, and lived isolated, wandering at random when they were not restricted. A condition in many ways similar to that of the shamans, who, when announcing a prophecy or the pronuncing the formula for an healing, lead themselves to a crisis followed by hallucinations, and are feared and kept away from the community for such behaviours, that themselves are not able to control. 

A refined use of materials (those that appear as ice or bark are actually special resins, set on a base of gauze that makes diaphanous and disembodied this ghost village), together with the idea of a house which is no more than the materialization of a thought, may suggest a relationship between these creations by Dania Zanotto and some of the work of the Asian sculptor Do Ho Suh. Emigrated to the USA from his native Korea, Do Ho Suh evokes to the most minute details the house left in his homeland with thin inflatable structures in transparent plastic, hung from the ceiling, floating and without roots. 

In fact, the points of departure are very different, because Dania Zanotto’s inspirational objects for sculpture and installation are, and have been for a long time,  the tents and textiles of the ancient nomadic civilizations.  The nomadic garment is loaded with symbols, hides among its folds ornaments, amulets, objects of everyday life,  expands its meaning and function to the point of becoming a sort of mobile home, whose contours coincide with the boundaries of body. The nomadic tent, on the contrary, is a minimal home, the spare, essential furniture of which must meet the most diverse needs of living.

TRACCE (TRACES)

(gauze, resin, plastic, paint, 

polyurethane, sand, metal)

Variable size 

(each element diameter/height 200 x 250 x 280cm)

2008

LUSTRALE by BARBARA TABONI

Excerpt of the catalogue presentation of Lustrale written by Gloria Vallese, historian of art and curator of CREAM ON MADNESS.

The old San Servolo lore tells of a friar who became mad; he was transferred elsewhere, but asked insistently to be brought back to what, mysteriously, he called "the island of sound". In a small building equipped with Gothic windows and a bell tower, Barbara Taboni has placed an audiovisual installation expressly designed for this intervention of CREAM on the island.
Lustrale (2008) welcomes the visitor who climbs the old stairs asceding to a little lobby, a place opened on all sides to the wind and sea. Here, a video shows sea waves elaborated into an almost abstract rhythm, accompanied by a sound of sea, also revised and turned into a musical background. These two simple environmental elements, chosen and rearranged, accentuate the sensations that the visitor is living since his trip in the lagoon and his contact with the island. Two dummy legs in kneeling position, a minimal sculptural element put next to the Gothic window, create a vague reference to the iconography of the Annunciation, focusing on the issues of ecstasy, voices in the air and mystical revelation.
The abstract and stylized figure of dummies, and the serial replicas, have long been for Barbara Taboni favorite themes: as in a series of plaster casts taken from human feet, all different and individuated, treated as portraits (Standing Feet, 2005). This work is sometimes showed with the video Sacer Movie Feet (2006). It shows feet walking barefoot, and sinking in the white snow (the setting is that of Val Camonica mountain, where the artist was born), highlighted by an audio track based on the sound of crunchy snow; the very sound, the artists assures, of whiteness and stillness.
In Psike 07, on show at Open 10, a series of female dummy busts, cast in plaster, stood on the green grass, giving with their whiteness and regular disposition the vague suggestion of a cemetery. Their whiteness was immediately altered by free interventions made by the public on the figures, by means of the wax color sticks made available next to each figure. In a few hours, the work underwent an intense work of transmutation, accepted by the artist as an integral part of it. In his final appearance, Psike 07 recalled a memorial vandalized by a world from which the sense of memory has disappeared, and which leaves a trace of himself through an act that, however primitive, can still be defined creative if one accepts, and takes literally, the duchampian sentence according to which "sont les spectateurs qui font les tableaux"…

LUSTRALE 2008, installazione audiovisiva, gesso , video,sonoro, endless loop

NOW by GIACOMO ROCCON

Excerpt of the catalogue presentation of NOW written by Gloria Vallese, historian of art and curator of CREAM ON MADNESS.


Eleven human figures are gathered in a group. Two of them hold a sheet, looking at something inside it. They are children: slender-bodied, with innocent, curious expressions. But they are also black, horribly burn; they are walking corpses, although they do not seem aware of it. What we see within the sheet, is the spectral face of a gas mask. It it a toy? They do not seem to know. Seen closely, these tragic figures are also exquisite pieces of sculpture: the sweetness of the strange, half-burned faces is something that stays in the memory of the observer. Among the works devised by CREAM for Open 11, this by Giacomo Roccon is the most classically sculptural, based as it is on the physical impact of the three-dimensional figures, and on skilful moulding.
The work alludes to the scandal of child soldiers, an horror of our time; but also to the disturbing and eternal mystery of children who dream the war make it a play, and, unaware of pain and death in real life. But the layers of meaning do not detract from the formal beauty of this strong group of sculptures. Conceived in ideal relationship with the terracotta Chinese army of Ch'in Shih Huang Ti, the small platoon of children soldiers interacts with the idyllic peace and the silence of the garden of San Servolo, which forms a deep contrast with the disturbing message from the author.
Who, in this case, focuses on notes for him unusually delicate, being in other occasions a rather robust hyper-realistic sculptor. As in Game Over, lifesize figure of a young pregnant woman sitting on the ground, numb and dishevelled, surrounded by cases of cigarettes and pills (Prize ARTE 2006 for sculpture, in the section Academies of Fine Arts). Or in Fallen Angel, a work created in 2006 for Open 9, life-size human figure bandaged from neck to foot in white gauze that left only the face uncovered, suspended by chains to the metallic beams of the outdoor structure in which it was exhibited (a vague evocation of the medieval habit of exposing high, at the sight of all, the corpses of the executed). Conceived expressly for the metal carpentry designed to host it, it drew clever benefit from the environmental elements, in particular from the sea breeze which slightly and melancholically rocked the inert figure and its long hanging hair.


NOW, 2008, resina poliestere, ferro, stoffa, dimensioni variabili

SLEEP OUT by CRISTINA TREPPO

Excerpt of the catalogue presentation of Sleep out written by Gloria Vallese, historian of art and curator of CREAM ON MADNESS.

Sleep out (2008) consists of a series of iron “beds” painted white, similar in their structure, but almost all different from each other. In their seriality and in some other features, they evoke the institutional dormitories as found in military barracks and in hospitals, particularly psychiatric hospitals.

The "beds" are placed outdoors, in the idyllic peace of the garden of San Servolo, a step away from the windows which, through the boundary wall, look in the distance Venice and the poignant beauty of other corners of the lagoon, underlining a concept of freedom denied, an unnatural condition of sweetness and rest which involves separation and pain.

Inspired by archival images and objects relating to the history of madness, including those kept in the small museum of madness of the island, the bed/cage is also seen here as a container (of stories, memory, loss, pain, madness. ..). Some items (dolls, photos, blankets, pillows, a glass) are kept within them: as often the beds, as a reaction to the depersonalization of institutional places, become for their tenants a miniature house that harbors, under the pillow, under the mattress, between the folds of the sheets, fragments of that emotional and personal world from which the patient/convict/ soldier is separated.

Phrases embroidered, or stubbornly carved, allude to another theme: the suspended, idle time of detention and illness.
Other hints, like shirts which tie up around the body, evoke the idea of containment, without becoming a too direct quotation.

With Sleep out, on-site-work that tries to listen to what a place has to say with its history, Cristina Treppo carries on her ongoing meditation on an object like the bed, common and utilitarian but very rich in symbolic content. Talamo rosso (2005), a work with which in 2006 the artist was included among the finalists of the first edition of the International Prize Arnaldo Pomodoro for the young sculpture, is an installation composed of a scarlet double bed, mattress and pillows resting on very frail stacks of drinking glasses, an icastic representation of the delicate emotional balance of our time. Secrets and Lies, site-specific work in front of the Hungaria Hotel at Venice Lido created in 2006 for Open 9, was a fragile alcove of white lace placed incongruously under the open sky, in open relationships with the promises of the romantic old majolica facade of the hotel. Even this case, as in Sleep Out, an intimate structure like the bed had been deprived of the protection of the walls, underscoring the vulnerability of its tenants.

With a contribution entirely original and personal, Cristina Treppo adds to the number of women artists who are marking in our age a turning point to the language of sculpture, permeating it with a new attention to emotional values and materials and practices typically feminine: just a few examples, particularly near to Cristina’s world, are Louise Bourgeois with her tragic tissue "dolls", Kim-Soo-Ja with her needle and thread, Petah Coyne with her clusters of soft materials which entangle little souvenirs and small objects of everyday life.

The series of "caged beds" presented in San Servolo are only a part of Sleep Out, a complex project in progess which includes in its complete form a larger number of elements, and a series of photographs taken in the impressive abandoned interior of the former Centre for Mental Health of Udine (Italy).

Sleep Out
Installation (iron, paint, net,
fabric, polyurethane, plaster,
resin, wire, fluorescent lamps,
found objects)
Variable size
2008

CREAM STRAITJACKETS at OPEN 11

Apart from CREAM ON MADNESS, we prepared for OPEN 11 an exhibition entitled CREAM STRAITJACKETS. It is a special project related to the maintheme of our show - The Madness: seven straitjackets made out of jeans tissue, elaborated and worn by the artists.
The seven straitjackets in jeans, a fabric symbolic in itself, have been expressly designed by the fashion house RJC of Verona, Italy, sponsor of the exhibition.

ANTI LULLING FIELD by MARTIN-EMILIAN BALINT

Anti Lulling Field, hypnotical field of corn poppies larger than life, consists of 1300 red plastic flowers. The aim of this work is to go beyond the usual description of madness, showing how unstable one's relationship with reason and clearness of mind can be. With the approach of the visitor, the flowers in the centre of the little plantation start to sway, producing a feeling similar to the one experienced when one finds himself/ herself in the middle of a high vegetation and perceives some movements in distance, without knowing what caused them. At least for one moment, that unidentifiable entity becomes the cause of an intense and primary fear, which takes us beyond the boundaries of normality. Anti Lulling Field, moreover, allows us to experience a singular game of mirrors: the agent causing the fear (the visitor who releases the movement sensors situated around the corn poppies field), is also the one who experiences its effects.
So may be the case with hallucinations, when we can see things as if they were real, out of us, when they are actually only a product of our mind.

excerpt of the catalogue presentation of Anti Lulling Field written by Gloria Vallese, historian of art and curator of CREAM ON MADNESS.

Anti Lulling Field
plastic, iron, electric devices, sensor, paint
130 x 525 x 525 cm
2008

CREAM ON

We are very glad to announce a very fresh and interesting article on E-FLUX about our show CREAM ON MADNESS within OPEN 11. The show is taking place on San Servolo Island, between 27th August and 28th September 2008. For reading the article, please click on the E-FLUX logo.

CREAM ON MADNESS website

This is the microsite of the CREAM ON MADNESS Show within OPEN 11! Take a look by clicking on the image above!

THE CREAM COLLAGE (by Nebojsa Despotovic)

Il primo collage del gruppo CREAM (per la Mostra CREAM ON MADNESS presso OPEN 11)
Gloria Vallese (il curatore della mostra)
1. Martin-Emilian Balint
2. Nebojsa Despotovic
3. Giacomo Roccon
4. Barbara Taboni
5. Cristina Treppo
6. Giuseppe Vigolo
7. Dania Zanotto
+ Resi Girardello (non presente nella mostra)