Download Catalogue - Paola Anziché

the collection of objects (the gloves of immigrant
workers, the discarded letters of shop signs) and
a subsequent remake that uses painting and wall
drawing, Paolo Piscitelli redefines the very notion
of labor through a method based on doing, which
resembles a care-and-maintenance intervention
on human activity.
Paola Anziché: Ingombri
Hundreds of cardboard boxes, scotch tape,
paper overalls to be worn. With a series of images,
narrated or fixed to the walls of the room
that will host the workshop, the artist will invite
participants to build points of support from the
cardboard boxes, and attach them to their own
bodies. The point of support thus becomes a
base and, at the same time, a clutter. It creates
new points of balance, but it is also an obstacle
to normal mobility: walking, standing, standing up,
approaching each other. The single buildings will
be allowed to remain isolated, or can be added
one to the other, thus generating a complex, temporary
architecture.
The theme of Ingombri perfectly mirrors some
of the interests, peculiarities and expressive
modes of Paola Anziché’s research. Spaziando
and Tapis-à-porter, her works on exhibit at Greater
Torino, testify to the continuity between the
finished work, offered to the public’s interpretation,
and the workshop activity. An object (a carpet,
net, box, or t-shirt) is used by the artist as a
‘tool’, an ‘interaction device’ given to the spectator
to activate a shared experience in the realm
of perception of space and body. Coming as it is
from everyday life, and made of ‘simple’ materials
such as fabric or paper, this object is a referent
for more or less explicit symbolic meanings:
the carpet, as a metaphor of nomad life, covers
a portion of floor and ground, and, if taken figuratively,
becomes a territory. Through warp and
weft, the net weaves and exposes a set of nodes,
ties and webs. The box welcomes, encloses, and
moves things, preserves and removes, functions
as a storeroom and a house, as both a full and
empty space. Beyond individual results, it is with
this object type that Paola Anziché opens what
she refers to as a ‘sculptural process’ that constantly
throws into question elements such as
building, fixing and undoing. The artist’s choice
of the terms of an oxymoron (the process / the
4.
I am quoting the beautiful title of a
workshop held in 2009 at London’s
Tate Modern. The British institution
and, in particular, its rich offer for the
adult public, is a reference model for
the research the Fondazione Sandretto
Re Rebaudengo has focused upon
in recent years, aimed at developing
proposals for new activities intended
for a non-school public
sculpture) as her operating limits, is her way of
questioning the notions of balance, stability, immobility
and, at the same time, their opposites.
She does this within the context of a collaboration
with other people, in a condition we could
describe as Physical Thinking. 4 Asked to place
themselves next to a large carpet hanging in the
middle of her study, involved in a choreography
of steps and movements amid a net of rubber
bands, 5 or encouraged to encumber their bodies
with a temporary cardboard prosthesis, the people
invited to Paola Anziché’s actions test, gauge,
and share with her a series of habits written on
the body as a surface of exchange between themselves
and the world. “The body is the home, it is a
shared experience”, says the artist quoting Lygia
Clark, an artist who, along with Helio Oiticica, is
one of her key reference figures. Anziché makes
this reference explicit when she pays a ‘homage’
to them, doing reconstructions and researching.
The habits of the body, which the artist otherwise
calls ‘familiarities’, are pushed beyond
their limits: put to the test of time and resistance,
they finally release their tension. In Ingombri the
sculptural process, seen both individually and collectively,
is all about identifying an eccentric point
of balance that transforms the box into a support,
crutch, shell or carapace. The documentation
work she will do during the workshop is part
of her usual working method. Photography and
video, as Francesca Pasini rightly pointed out, “(...)
on the one hand make us understand the perceptual
movement of reality, on the other hand stage
the decision process that is necessary to endow
the image with a certain specific figure and not
another”. 6
5.
The actions described respectively
refer to: the operation documented
by a series of photographs taken
in the artist’s study in 2008 during
the Progetto Passaporto; Paesaggi
Istantanei, Cavallerizza Reale/Manica
Corta, Torino 2009, curated by Lisa
Parola; Aggrovigliamenti. Un omaggio
a Lygia Clark, Meteorite in giardino,
Fondazione Merz, Torino 2009,
curated by Maria Centonze
This text, and the projects it describes
and analyzes, are part of a research
I am carrying out thanks to the study
grant I received from the Fondazione
Giovanni Goria “Progetto Master dei
Talenti ” Fondazione CRT for the year
2009-2010.
6.
Francesca Pasini, introductory text to
the artist’s personal exhibition Tapisà-porter,
curated by Francesca Pasini,
Careof, Milan, 2009.
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