ANICONICS:

MNEMOSYNE

L’atlante delle immagini

a cura di Camilla Boemio

The Atlas of images

curator Camilla Boemio

CENTRO ARTI VISIVE PESCHERIA

ISTITUZIONE COMUNALE

13 – 28 June 2009

Press Release

The exhibition intends reinterpreting and representing in a contemporary view the cult text by art historian Aby Warburg: MNEMOCYNE – the Atlas of images. This piece which was never completed has always been surrounded by an aura of mystery and fascination.

Mnemocyne is a figurative atlas (Bilderatlas) composed of a series of tables assembled with photographic montages of different artworks: examples drawn mostly from the Renaissance period (art works, manuscript pages, playing cards, etc.); but also archaeological finds from Eastern, Greek and Roman antiquity; as well as testimonies of the 20^th-century culture (newspaper clips, labels, postage stamps).

In the Bilderatlas, with about thousand photographs artistically composed and assembled, images are the main focus of attention, as they are a direct way to  represent, to "say”, the world. The image is the place where the impression and memory of events precipitate and condense the most. As they are provided with a primal power of evocation, in their liveliness of expression, images are the main means and drives to convey cultural tradition and social memory, which in some circumstances may be “revived and uploaded”. In the Atlas, the overlapping of images, combined together to weave several thematic threads into relevant cores and details, creates fields of energy and triggers in viewers an open-ended process of interpretation: “images speak” (zum Bild das Wort).

Mnemocyne is therefore a machine, a sort of giant condenser collecting all the energy currents which have animated - and still do today - the memory of Europe. The purpose of the Atlas consists in illustrating the traditional mechanism of themes and figures from antiquity – Eastern and Greek-Roman – to the present day, with special attention paid to the presentation of motions, gestures and stances expressing the whole gamut of emotional excitement (aggression, defence, sacrifice, mourning, melancholy, bliss, triumph etc.). These are Pathosformeln – formula expressing feelings and emotions – directly derived into art forms from ancient models, or simply re-emerging without a direct connection with models, as engram, the spontaneous emerging of human gestural instinct.

Curator Camilla Boemio has chosen international (Steven Klein, Biorn Melhus, Candice Breitz, Christelle Lheureux, Klaus Thymann, Clemens von Wedemeyer, Gaston Ramirez Feltrin, Tony Oursler, Richard Kern, Guido van der Werve), national (Andrea Dojmi, Stefano Graziani, Nico Vascellari,and the group Alterazioni video) artists, together with video works (with photographic exceptions), who are the most interesting and - in connection with the concept being analysed here - most recent. There are also works which have never been exhibited, such as “Smother” by Luis Gispert and “Romantic delusions” by Jesper Just and, new for Italy, “The Soft Epic, or: Savages of the Pacific Wes”, by Nadia Hironaka and Matthew Suib and“Purified by fire” by Matthew Suib.

Camilla Boemio (www.camillaboemio.com) is a curator, contemporary art critic and blogger (http://aniconics.splinder.com).

GUIDO VAN DER WERVE

“Nummer drie .  Take Step Fall “.

2004

35mm on dvd, 10'38

''Courtesy the artist, MONITOR, Rome, Juliette Jongma, Amsterdam, Marc Foxx, Los Angeles

Candice Breitz

Soliloquy Trilogy

2000

Soliloquy (Jack) 1987- 2000

Soliloquy (Sharon) 1992 – 2000

Soliloquy (Clint) 1971 – 2000

Courtesy Francesca Kaufmann Gallery , Milan

GASTON RAMIREZ FELTRIN 

”On Debord“

2005

“Illumination Complete, Action #5”

Videostill da video 4’30”

fuji single 8mm su digibeta

Andrea Dojmi 2008