The Venetians of Pawel Althamer

‘It is a major achievement to realize that the body is only a vehicle for the soul’- Pawel Althamer

Pawel Althamer is a Polish artist known for his multi-media approach to creating the relationship between sculpture and human psyche. His innovative practice continuously experiments with sculptural expressions that play on social collaboration. The works do not derive solely from personal talent, but through the cooperation of other individuals, commonly being family members, who act as models. Their role is a part of the play between the real and the invented, a main aspect to Pawel’s sculptural portraiture.

My fist Pawel experience was during his latest exhibition at the International Biennale 2013 at the Arsenale of Venice where the artist applied human sculptural with the intentions of expressing the forms as the habitat for the soul. Walking into the space filled with over fifty skeleton-like bodies was curious and refreshing in comparison to the overwhelmingly prior spaces filled with paintings, sculptures, architectural models, objects and abstract casts. Pawel’s plastic ribbon forms are not intended to be a simple reproduction of invented bodies, but of real-life Venetians. Each character is individually studied. The face and hands are molds of volunteered bodies and stories in order to give life to the exhibit. The sculptures that fill the Arsenale hall exhibit individuals in positions that are directly connected to them. Though the viewer will doubtfully understand who they are nor how their positions are of any relevance, the space has an inarticulate dynamism.

It is not a random decision nor a simple artistic choice to create original molds of faces and hands of existing Venetians. ‘Hands and face play an important role for human communication. They are the main source of information to discriminate and identify people, to interpret communicative signs as hand and face gestures and to understand emotions and intentions based on facial expressions.’ (Baltzakis, Pateraki, and Trahanias, p. 1141). Initially the human form is visually interpreted as a vague structure that slowly transforms and perceived as the facial features and hand gestures become more defined. Facial expressions are an easily acceptable articulation of human character interpretation. The selection of the two body parts is related to their conscious connection. After all ‘our hands reveal a lot about what is going on in our heads’ (Weinschenk). 

It is Pawel’s approach to non-verbal communication is essentially linked to the real-life molds of Venetians. Their success is also in relation to their opposition to the plastic skeleton structures that has a unique capacity to link the past of the Arsenale to the presence of the exhibition. The‘external features provide a context that improves our ability to recognize and to match internal features’ (Froud, Shelton, and Atherton) The forms speak of the dead and their gestures and expressions create a cultural context where the location, materiality, and forms are directly associated with Venice, the Arsenale, and the Biennale.

Pawel’s sculptures are prof that understanding the process of production from concept to implementation is important in valuing art. Without knowing the details, the work is seen differently. Not necessarily worse, just different. Exhibit goers at the Arsenale walked into the space with initial appreciation; which defends the works success as art; but the artistic genius, so to speak, is definitely in the development, movement, procedure and technique of the Pawel intentionality: a unique collaboration of psychology and the human form.

The Biennale Channel interview with the artist Pawel Althamer

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arxAYO-ERtg

Bibliography

1. Baltzakis, Haris and PAteraki, MAria and Trahanias, Panos. ‘Visual tracking of hands, faces, and facial features of multiple persons’ in Machine Vision and Applications. 2012. No. 23. Pp. 1141-57
2. Biennale Channel.‘Biennale Arte 2013 - Pawel Althamer’ in YouTube (online). Published on May 29, 2013 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=arxAYO-ERtg [lat sited: 12/30/2013, 21:07]
3. Dobrin, Arthur. ‘Facial Expressions: Universal VS Cultural’ in Psychology Today (online). June 25, 2013
4. Frowd, Charlie D. And Shelton, Faye and Atherton, Chris. ‘Recovering Faces from Memory: the Distracting Influence of External Facial Features’ in Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied. 2012. Vol. 18, No. 2, pp. 224-38
5. Mahmoud, Marwa and Robinson, Peter. ‘Interpreting hand-over-face gestures’ at University of Cambridge. Doctoral Publication 2011
6. Navarro, Joe. ‘Body Language of the Hands’ in Spycatcher. Jan. 20, 2010
7. Riggio, Ronald E., Ph.D. ‘What Does the Shape of Your Face Say About You?’ in Cutting-Edge Leadership. June, 16, 2012
8. Weinschenk, Susan, Ph.D. ‘Your Hand Gestures are Speaking for You’ in Psychology Today (online). Sept. 26, 2012

Metamorphosis of the Mundane

The Art of Wifredo Díaz Valdéz, Cornelia Parker, and Robbie Rowlands

Desconstruyendo: Wifredo Díaz Valdéz

Wifredo Díaz Valdéz. Butaca. 1984.Wood (oak) and jute. 79.5 x 56.5 x 45.5 cm

The exhibition Construir Desconstruyendo (2013) offers an insight into the world of Wifredo Díaz Valdéz where the mundane is deconstructed and reconstructed into creative and unusual wooden dynamic forms. Valdéz, a trained carpenter born in the 1930s in Uruguay, constructs artworks with artisanal precision by taking apart tools, furniture, and daily objects in order to create something entirely new. By carefully studying materiality, forms, and space, the objects are uniquely dismantled. Each offering a particular condition for new life. Some objects maintain a hint of their original structure, others are given an entirely new identity.

The Valdéz metamorphosis is one of a conscientious study of a transformation of the archetypal into the original. The attentive separation reveals a respect for the initial identity that gives birth to a new form. The recycling of art is not a collage through a collection of found objects, but transformed objects of Uruguay craft in a ‘reverse cycle of growth and decay, as well as the course of time as such’(e-Flux). 

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An Exploded View: Cornelia Parker

‘My art is about destruction, resurrection and reconfiguration: an exploration of the secret lives of objects and materials, both strange.’
Parker, Cornelia.

Parker, Cornelia. Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View. 1991. Blown-up garden shed with its contents and light bulb. Dimensions variable.

In When Cold Dark Matter: An Exploded View (1991) Cornelia Parker used British army personnel in order to blow up a shed that she would then reconstruct in the moment of suspension. Famous for her novel and odd sculptures, An Exploded View is not meant to discuss the process of artistic production, but the unconscious association created by the action of interruption. The light fixture at the center of the suspended fragments creates shadows towards the exterior continuing the existence beyond it’s geometric and integrating the audience into the sculpture to create a type of dialogue and presence.

‘There are other things art can do. It can imagine the unimaginable.’

Parker, Cornelia. "Apocalypse Now." in: The Guardian. February 12, 2008.

Parker, Cornelia. Hanging Fire Suspected Arson, 1999. Charcoal, wire, pins, nails. 140 x 84 x 220 cm

Parker is famous for her site specific works and has exhibited all around Europe. She is considered to be a member of the successful women artists who adapted ‘male strategies for success’(70). With this stereotype condition, she is also considered to be a major player in the feminist art movement due to her recognized participation in the male dominant scene. Though the artist bluntly admits that she herself does not create with the conscious objective of feminization but with determination for creativity which happens to be produced by a woman (A Strange Alchemy: Cornelia Parker: Interviewed by Lisa Tickner). According to her interview with Lisa Tickner, Parker is not a personally identified as a feminist and has a tendency to dislike being placed under the umbrella (183). Though she admits that her work is obviously’made by a woman, when you look at the form and sensibility of it'(183) but the artists believes to be consciously and dominantly hers.

Parker, Cornelia. Breathless. 2001. Musical instruments acquired from old establishments, squashed by another age-old institution, Tower Bridge and now suspended on stainless steel wire

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Manipulating Urban objects: Robbie Rowlands

Robbie Rowlands, an Australian, is emerging as an artist of unusual talent that alters large scale works of the urban milieu with a twist of humor and creativity. Suddenly floor boards of interior spaces emerge from a flat surface into spirals that twist and turn from a random source into an arbitrary form. Wall surfaces begin to transform revealing their interior structure. The wall is no longer a surface but a layering of materials that are acknowledge through the splitting of the flush. Pianos emerge from musical structures into a series of buttons, panels, and keys. Art of materiality of the daily, the mundane, that blurs the lines between natural urban environments and the fabricated creations formed by them. Rowland art is creative because it reminds the viewer of the structures that make up the urban life and braking up the monotony of the normal, the habitually visual.

'Using repetitious and precise cuts, artist Robbie Rowlands manipulates objects and environments. They are monumental manipulations and demand your attention the moment you see them. He installs his work in abandoned homes, school yards, and gymnasiums,using elements from the space to create his sculptures. Doing so gives the place or object a mind of its own. The walls breathe and the floor is alive.' (Sara Barnes).

Bibliography:

1. ‘A Strange Alchemy: Cornelia Parker: Interviewed by Lisa Tickner’ in Difference and Excess in Contemporary Art: the Visibility of of Women’s Practice’ Ed. Gil Perry (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2004)
2. Barnes, Sara. ‘Robbie Rowlands’ Sculptures Cut Up Pianos, Walls, And More’ in Beautiful Decay (online). Nov. 12, 2013. http://beautifuldecay.com/2013/11/12/robbie-rowlands-sculptures-cut-pianos-walls/ [last visited: 24/12/2013, 11:36]
3. Cole, Ina. ‘Suspending Frictions: A Conversation with Cornelia Parker’ in Sculpture: June 2009, vol 28, no. 5 http://www.sculpture.org/documents/scmag09/june_09/parker/parker.shtml [last visited: 24/12/2013, 11:36]
4. ‘Daros Latinamerica Collection'  in e-Flux (online).
5. http://www.e-flux.com/announcements/wifredo-diaz-valdezs-construir-desconstruyendo/ [last visited: 24/12/2013, 11:36]
6. ‘New Feminist Art Criticism’ Ed. Katy Deepwell (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995). Pp. 1-74
7. Rowlands, Robbie. ‘Profile’ in Robbie Rowlands (online). http://www.robbierowlands.com.au/artist-profile.php [last visited: 24/12/2013, 11:36]
8. ‘Robbie Rowlands’ in Wikipedia (online). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robbie_Rowlands [last visited: 24/12/2013, 11:36]
9. Valentini, Marinel. ‘Sculpting the ‘Soul’ of Objects: Wifredo Díaz Valdéz at the Biennale’ in the Culture Trip (online).
10. http://theculturetrip.com/south-america/uruguay/articles/sculpting-the-soul-of-objects-wifredo-d-az-vald-z-at-the-venice-biennale/ [last visited: 24/12/2013, 11:36]
11. Voynovskaya, Nastia. ‘Robbie Rowlands Manipulates Space with Environmental Installations’ in Hi Fructose: The New Contemporary Art Magazine (online). Nov. 12, 2013
12. ‘http://hifructose.com/2013/11/12/robbie-rowlands-manipulates-space-with-environmental-installations/ [last visited: 24/12/2013, 11:36]