SPOTLIGHT - PREMIO COMBAT PRIZE 2012
This is "Spotlight", the brand new art column which completes the offering of Premio Combat Prize. With this column, we want to contribute an in-depth analysis of the art world and its protagonists, with interviews and analyses of the contexts and relationships behind it.
In this first release, the winners of the last edition of PREMIO COMBAT PRIZE 2012 are interviewed by Angela Madesani, Francesca Baboni, Laura Barreca e Martina Cavallarin.
Bo Christian Larsson "The Destroyer"
Francesca Baboni - The artwork winner of Premio Combat Prize contains all the thematics of your artistic and poetic view, that we can find in your articulate work. As a matter of fact, you usually don't work just with painting and drawing, but with performance as well, translated into videos, photographic frames and installation. The power of nature, something that eludes from human control, life and death: these thematics are related to the North European culture. Can you talk about that?
Bo Larsson - I guess it is accurate to say that the thematics in my work are closely related to and reflect the culture of northern Europe, and particularly of Scandinavian countries, where I was born. My relationship with a certain kind of harsh and beautiful nature has always been strongly instinctive and it is more interesting for me to deal with it, than for example with the urban landscape. In nature you clearly see things that die and decay and become nurture for something else, while in a city they get hidden or taken away; I feel that this is wrong and creates a bigger distance between life and death. I am also heavily influenced by all kinds of classic stories and clichés. I think the forbidden touching use of ordinary symbols is the best way to get a message across, whatever you are trying to say. It is like saying a mouthful, words will get lost, even if the thought is clear. The inner vision has always been the most important starting point of all my works and in this regards drawings and paintings can be seen as a sort of map. I use drawings and paintings as basis for my creative process and from there I develop the conceptual part - as for example in performances, happenings, sculptural works, videos and installations. The further away I move from the intuitive drawn line, the more conceptual the work become.
F.B. - What are your projects and programs for the future?
B.L. - At the moment I am preparing some new shows and bigger projects, in institutional spaces as well as in commercial ones, especially in Sweden, Denmark and Germany.
F.B. - You work mostly abroad, both in institutional museums and in private galleries, do you think of coming in Italy soon? What do you think about the Italian artistic scene?
B.L. - I would be happy to work in Italy and I hope that I will have this opportunity in the near future. As far as the Italian art scene is concerned, unfortunately I am not very well informed, but Arte Povera has of course inspired me much, especially the works of Janis Kounellis and Piero Manzoni, whose work “Socle du monde” is the starting point for a biennale with the same title, in which I am involving. It takes place in the Herning Museum of Contemporary Art in Denmark and starts in September. So, at the moment, this is the closest connection I can find to the Italian art world, except for the great honour of having won Combat Prize's painting category, of course.
Giovanni Mantovani "Mind the gap"
Angela Madesani - Can you speak about your artwork, winner of PREMIO COMBAT PRIZE? Can you explain us how it is set inside your artistic path?
Giovanni Mantovani - “Mind the gap” is a familiar sentence for people that usually take the London underground: it is used in order to alert people to the space between the platform and the train door. My homonymous project takes inspiration from a journey in London and from one of the many second-hand market stalls: I saw some photographs, in a really sunny day, becoming almost transparent. Some graphic signs that came out from the pictures, kept my attention, and became the real cause of the purchase. With my work I try to avoid the oblivion of these pictures: by taking pictures of them, they can reborn in a new vision and come out from the shame of disappearance. I consider the pictures found in market stalls as things without any emotional meaning, empty bins ready to be transformed. My previous work, “Lavagne” (2010), started from the same assumption. A blackboard hanged up on wall attracts my attention. In front of this black display, I can still see the signs that our teacher used to make us understand the world. Conscious of the oblivion that loom over it, I decide to turn that item into a picture, using the camera. This process allows me to make it indelible as I can place it in other scenarios where it fades into its surroundings. The image comes back as an object, which wakes up the awareness of one's gaze.
A.M. - The size of your photograph, very small and in clear opposition with the gigantism trend, have surprised lots of people. Can you speak about this choice?
G.M. - The dimension of the artwork I chose for PREMIO COMBAT PRIZE (“Mind the gap”), came out at the same time the project started. The picture, which belongs to a larger project, has been found and discovered in London’s markets just because of its size. Those photos belong to family photograph albums of unknown people and tell us any instant of their personal and private lives. The research for this project came from Aby Warburg’s sentence: “God is in the particular”. Little items, that represent snatches of reality, have always taken my attention because of their capacity to open breaches of daily life in which we can find the prose of the world. This study started when, for the first time, I saw “The Passion of Joan of Arc” by the Danish director Carl Theodor Dreyer, in which there are two separate screenshots about a fly that rests and scampers on Renee Falconetti's face, who plays Joan. In that exact moment, a small and insignificant thing, that come out from the unknown and overpowering out-field, appears on screen and alters filmic space opening a third dimension. These are the small things that distract me, as they divert one's attention from what should attract it, so that it seizes our gaze to reveal again the sense. The choice of exhibiting this work is in relation to the necessity of revealing those little “bursts” inside reality that disclose the unexpected. From my point of view, these little objects are the punctum, mentioning Roland Barthes, in which you can feel the infra-subtle enchantment hidden between reality folds. After all, it is like playing “treasure hunt”: there are some clues, you can try to understand them and if you are lucky you will find the treasure.
A.M. - Your work is on the meaning of photography as recording, as path. This surely starts from an analogic picture. Can we speak about it?
G.M. - The original is an analogic picture (dated 1945), a simple item recording a special family moment. Certainly, it is a track of a past so strong to come back to us. This project tries to investigate the photographic sense itself, that is to say the capacity of light to be the medium by which the latent image of reality takes shape and makes itself tangible, giving us the perception of the invisible. In this sense the image is analogic, because it still keeps an original bond with the referent item. Methodologically, I backlit the image with a overhead projector and then I have taken the picture; the original picture is now changed showing us a potential one, visible only with the light. A new picture has been generated by the light. As the picture of family is a memory, the left one becomes a place of memory (objective registration of something that has happened) without any sentimental implication. My intention is to give it back to a new life by which the memory can revive. Maybe these found pictures didn’t wait anything else than be discovered in order to find again their state of memory. In my project the referent role is the most important one, because it is by it that we can generate a new image, closer to the law of conservation of energy: energy can be neither created nor destroyed, but transformed.
Radenko Milak "Bordello of Warriors (Sarajevo 1993)"
Laura Barreca - Your artworks draw the attention on the representation of violent acts, scenes of guerrilla, where you choose to use black and white colors in order to focus the attention on the cruelty of history and events. In what way do your personal experience and the latest history events of your country contribute to build the identity of your art?
Radenko Milak - We live in a dramatically and radically divided society. People usually have different opinions about recent events. This is really important for me and for my paintings and drawings. I think that art is only an instrument that helps us connecting and reflecting about the past. There is one thing I know for sure: when we want to think and build the future, we have to use the fragments of the past. In our society in Bosnia, in Herzegovina and all the Balkans, we are now trying to think about the future, but it is difficult for us to perceive it because the past is everywhere in the public spaces. This is the reason why I usually use documentary photography and war photojournalism as the starting points for my paintings and for research in general. So, photography and war representations in photojournalism really influence my art. It has been correctly noticed that violence, guerrilla and conflicts are prominent in my art; actually, the political context and the recent past of my country are the subjects that really determine the identity of my artworks. To me and my generation the relevant question is: “what is the future for us and how can we include our past in it?”
L.B. - In 2005, you founded a contemporary arts centre with a group of artists. How much weight does the artist's social value carry on the reconstruction of the identity and history of a place?
R.M. - We founded Protok, Centre for Visual Comunication, in Banja Luka in 2005, as a group of young and enthusiastic artists. We had this idea to create a platform for the critical analysis of our society and political situation, using contemporary art as vehicle to promote critical thinking and social behaviours. Our vision is to create an aura of critical art which is able to start a dialogue within the community. The result of this work was the setup of the Biennal of Contemporary Art, Spaport in 2008, an exhibition which included a large number of international curators and artists. At the moment we are working on a new research model for our next projects, which include the creation of a network to promote new intercultural connections.
L.B. - The selection of subjects and the ability to make an “historiographical analysis” is a specific choice. Let's talk about the artwork that you exhibited at PREMIO COMBAT 2012.
R.M. - The drawing I submitted to PREMIO COMBAT PRIZE 2012 is one of a series of drawings about the Bosnian war in 1992-1995. Even if PREMIO COMBAT PRIZE entails the choice of a single artwork, it is difficult for me to talk about a drawing as a separate entity. Indeed, I have always intended to show these drawings as a mural installations, where a number of drawings represent a single composition. As I have already mentioned, my art is based on documentary photography and newspaper news, because I believe that any reconstruction needs to originate from shared images and knowledge that are part of us and of other people. My reflection is centred on individual identity and collective past, on its capacity to create fascination and threat, legitimation and conflict, to objectify and translate itself in alienation. In order to make people understand my research I hope to hold a new exposition next year in Livorno, showing more about me, my drawings, my paintings.
Francesca Cirilli "What new perspectives_Delhi"
Martina Cavallarin - In order to continue the exploration of the contemporary, in my opinion, an artist needs to learn to be flexible and explore 4 different directions: have an important cultural legacy, forget the memory in order to have the energetic genuineness of her days, have an obsession and express such obsession through powerful work, which can communicate necessity and thoughts. You, Francesca, have a degree in contemporary history and I can see this in your work.
Francesca Cirilli - Yes, indeed my past studies influence my projects greatly, particularly terms of approach, themes and reflections. As you said, before my photography diploma at IED in Torino, I did a contemporary history degree at Pisa University, besides two years of a degree in natural sciences. This is a path that I agree is a bit disconnected and “tortuous”, but that I believe is a good ground for my work. My photography work is related to my studies in contemporary history and political economy (my dissertation subject) at the Faculty of Literature and Philosophy, to my studies and love for nature, and last but not least to my knowledge of photography and history of art. All this mixed with my life experience and the immediacy of ideas, visions and sensations I get from my life. My interests have developed in time, as well as my knowledge, and with them, my thoughts and concerns, the urgency and obsession for social and environmental emergencies (usually related) that we are experiencing these days; I try to observe and analyse their processes and mechanisms, with an eye on the past and one on the future, reflecting about where they come from and why, but above all where they will take us. My interest focuses on the manifestation of instability and divergences, which I try to represent with an approach sometimes documentary and sometimes metaphoric or symbolic.
M.C. - Francesca, you are interested in building an image of reality. In some way your artwork can also be part of a relational and social art.
F.C. - My reflections are oriented to the external world, I try to observe how the social, environmental and economic context influence people, how it reflects on the way spaces and places model themselves and are modelled by our way of living, of relating with the rest of the world and people. This is why my work is connected with relational and social art. But above all, and maybe in the closest definition of relational and social art, my work as a photographer, tells us the physical presence and the direct participation of my person in situations and places, involving relationships, contacts and comparing with others, who sometimes live really different lives from mine. Certainly, besides the messages, goals, visions and inspiration of thoughts that I wish to communicate, the most important relational and social part starts from the moment of the image realization, or even more it resides in the time while I get to know people, places or situation, time that precedes the shots. And I must admit that this is the thing I like more about being a photographer.
M.C. - You have worked inside a factory in Torino, occupied by Roma people, now destructed. So it was a research between urban structure urban habitat and social relationships, discriminations, soul motions and collective unease.
F.C. - The themes you have listed are exactly the same of my project, called “La fabbrica è piena_Habitat” (… I see you have used the same word). The photographic series is just a part of a bigger project, that also includes a documentary film, which I realized as the director of photography (“La fabbrica è piena. Tragicomedia in 8 atti”) under the direction of Irene Dionisio, and a video installation about the different declinations of various reflections on the same subject. The photographic project in particular is organized around the “bedrooms”, the private niches that some unemployed homeless Romanian people have found in a big old FIAT factory, abandoned and now demolished. So these are pictures of spaces and some portraits. You have perfectly met the main points behind my work, subjects that we cared about and that made us do this kind of project (demanding in terms of amount and working time, but above all, hard as personal, psychological and relational engagement ). The observation is the first input in order to create the chain of reflections connected for a part to the history of Torino, the city where I live, and in general to the factory and capitalism system, but also to the nowadays crisis inside the working system with all the problems related to migration, unemployment, and city’s spaces organization… Therefore, many levels of meaning that are added up and stratified, stories that become complex and interconnected, different interpretations, open questions to me and to others, situations that riflect the existential personal condition as well as the uncertain one that we share and that affects us all.
