Page 56 - Studio International - January 1968
P. 56
in slow motion. The films are made by Bignardi
himself. These projected images combine with
abstract images that are drawn on the cylinder and
thus create complete interactions. Schifano uses
the cinematographic eye (modified) as a substitute
for his own. His most recent film, Anna, seen by the
butteifiies in summer, was shot entirely through a
lens faceted like a prismatic insect-eye.
The progression is from the image treated in
terms of what it is, lo the image treated in terms of
its way of behaviour, and finally to the image as a
relationship of image and funtion, originality and
information, action and communication. Pistol
etto, with the mirror paintings that he has
exhibited since 1962, was the first artist to work in
this direction. When they first appeared they
were compared lo the photographic images of
Andy vVarhol, but today one realizes that they use
the painting itself as a functional way of resolving
the problem of the relation between the image of
the painting and the image of life. They present
photographic images to be placed in relation to a
contingent and reflected image. They thus have
the qualities of immediacy and participation of
• r happenings, but, unlike happenings, they also
contain the element of duration. The painting
becomes an instrument whereby an apparently
unresolvable duality is resolved into momentary
unity. Like Pistoletto, many other young artists
who share this tendency, such as Niondino, Fabro,
Boetti, Piacentino, Nespolo and Simonetti-their
activities will be shown in Turin in a series of
exhibitions entitled 'For an hypothesis of CON.
TEMP(o). LACTION'-end up by using inter
media structures and multimedia techniques. But
they do so not by directly ignoring the cultural
context, but through reflection-through the need
to make up for certain lacunae, to cross the empty
blank spaces linguistic convention has never
allowed us to use. They neither present nor repre
sent- they become presences.
For Mondino, the painting is an expansion of
his consciousness, the projection of a contempla
tive attitude that needs a theme in order to manifest
itself. Various levels of water go up and down: the
monochrome surfaces incline; weights play in
equilibrium. The painting invents the limits of
perception and its variations. The originality
reinvents the information. Action structures
itself into communication. The transformation of
languages requires an artificial language that can
be neither the time-honoured naturalistic language
nor the abstractionist language of pure forms. l t
Top left Ugo Nespolo Aroa 1967 metrical 'primary' type structures (Pascali), or requires that the artifice be controlled-artifice
Mixed media 59 x 15¾ in. through metaphors on nature as in the work of in the sense of the construction of imaginary
Galleria II Punto, Turin Kounellis. It is the ancient tradition of craftsman materials. First, fake marble, then fake furs,
ship that thinks of itself as a means to correct finally new facts. Nespolo's telephones communicate
Top right Aldo Mondino 9/up 1966 nature and impress upon it the stamp of the elite the noise of electricity; his boxes are relays that
Oil on canvas and plexiglass, 47¼ x 47¾ in. in this case, the stamp of American art. carry air from one place to another. The act in
Galleria Christian Stein, Turin
Bignardi and Schifano, on the other hand, use the itself as a mechanism of transformation. The
cinema-Bignardi to combine different images and transformation of situations into functioning
Above Alighiero Boetti Senza tilolo 1967 languages, Schifano to reproduce the reality of outside of the normal information of the objects
Steel and glass, 70¾ x 70¾ in.
Galleria La Bertesca, Genoa custom in the least indirect way. Bignardi's ma employed. Artifice · is the construction of· new
chines are circular 'wells', in the centre of which languages. Boetti plays on the contradiction
are smaller cylinders that rotate round a pivot. between language (convention) and novelty
From one to four projectors are fixed on to the (originality), and thus creates alternatives com
edges of the 'well' and the cylinders are the screen prehensible in the unique artificial language of
upon which they project films of nudes and objects space-geometry. O
44
