Toni Toniato
Art for the Places - Places of Art
 
in “Fabbriche”
catalogue of the exhibition
Venice, 2000
 

How can art today represent its own essence by “creating space”, that is forcing space to shape in the form of art, thus becoming evidence of it ? This is a concept that has to be considered extremely important for the new artistic experiences, even though it creates new categories and meanings that are certainly more complex and articulated. The problem however is still the core of the specificity that has always characterized the concrete nature of art. Hence one can agree that art is, remembering the definition by Martin Heidegger, “turning into world”, that is making space to the image of space. This is even more apparent if one refers, as in this case, to an artistic installation, that can be described as an artistic process that materializes the space where it is developed and transforms this space to make it part of the work. In reality the artistic gesture, not only from the point of view of its history, is apparent in its own presence and in the presence of what accompanies the image and its origin. From this point of view the dichotomy between art of the past and contemporary art exclusively refers to the history of aesthetic categories in the theories of beauty and taste, as, despite the different languages and styles,
the very essence of art, that “turning into world”, will never change.
The same perspective applies to the complex and extraordinary installations that constitute the “corpus” of this book, that tries to bring together the experiences made with an approach aimed at involving the very places of art, the places that preserve different examples of the culture of the past like museums, archives, libraries. These places would seem to exclude any possibility of contamination with the most radical languages of contemporary art. In reality the disturbing intrusion of the installations does not undermine that superb specificity that has so far justified the separation, now considered irreconcilable, between art of the past and contemporary art. The new artistic expressions try to bring to unpredictable limits the possibility of creating synergies through references that culminate in an astonishing event, establishing new connections referring to the changed conceptual and perceptive situation of the place and of the artistic space.
These installations do not only imply a conceptual or perceptive approach,
but rather they favour the dissemination of exceptional imaginative and sensorial energies, that can upset the existing cultural and historic contexts, transforming them into elements of the networking process that continues to be revealed in the works of art, in the shift of space to the space of the image. These experiences reveal the expansion process that characterizes the most important and advanced contemporary artistic experiences. The main objective of these actions is operating on any aspect of reality. The prevailing aesthetic approach to life is opposed by the original position taken up by these artists, as they tend to bring back any artistic action to the sphere of its original context, to which all aspects of reality are inextricably connected. The interaction between the installation and the space where it is located creates a new space, transformed into a virtual “ready made” reality, with the function of connecting and amplifying, analyzing and transforming the symbolic and expressive possibilities of historically different correlates, thus recreating the most suited conditions for the experience of the very essence of art.
It is not by chance that these installations have attracted museums in the Veneto region, strengthening the relations between the authors and the historic culture that is supported by ideal affinities. The idea of installation that has guided these artists is extremely complex, as it appears like a surprising scenery for artistic thoughts, which tends to confront with places, personalities, works of the history of our past and, at the same time, to reinterpret the original values, making up for differences of time and style. The resulting “mix”, both from a diachronic and from a synchronic point of view, transforms all elements into a collage that is in itself a work of art. Finding the new reality that opens up with this new event is like finding Ariadne’s thread, that secretly links the art of the past and contemporary art, thinking of forms and places for the actions to come, that however originate here. Each performance, therefore, finds its realization in an original installation, in which the reality of the place is transformed into visibility of the “non-place”, something that is part of the dynamic energies of art, as an event that is at the same time imagination and concrete symbolic action. All this creates a network of semantic associations, the structural referents of which are to be found in the evolution of the image that becomes action . This evolution characterizes the works of the artists, that can be considered as indicators of the creative continuity that at the same time reinterprets the places of art and of the memory but also makes them free of their mummified sacredness and of their stereotyped desecration. Thus the location of a work becomes the very place of art, defining a time with no distinction between production and fruition, in a continuous evolution of the creative effort, and preserving the “aura” that characterizes precious works both of the past and of the present time. New energies are created that widen the borders of our thought and of our look, pervading new horizons with the aesthetic experience of the meaning of art and of the reasons for its relevance.