After a period of closure for renovation work, on December 17th the PAC of Milan reopened its doors with “Trasporto Eccezionale”, an exhibition that is part of the investigation into the generation of contemporary Italian artist born in the 1960s, carried out by the institution in Milan.
The project, curated by Diego Sileo, presents the work of the Bolognese artist Eva Marisaldi, offering an enormous corpus of works, ranging from historical works to the most recent ones, to new productions designed specifically for the occasion. However, the exhibition is not a retrospective, nor an anthological, but rather a simple opportunity for discovery and immersion in the poetics of the artist; as evoked by the title itself, it’s in fact an invitation to travel, to “be carried out” by the many works that, without responding to dictates of a chronological or thematic aspect, populate the exhibition space with great freedom. To this curatorial choice is added the heterogeneity of languages adopted by Marisaldi: photography, video, installations, actions, performances, more traditional techniques such as drawing and embroidery follow one another in a path that is very varied. The impact is therefore that of a pile of very different works, that inevitably generate an initial sense of disorientation in the viewer, thus requiring a more careful look at these works. We are welcomed by Welcome (2018), three small gymnastic tapes that, when activated by mechanical arms, produce a continuous but snappy motion, thus generating a sort of buffer but at the same time attractive action in the visitor, who is invited by the work itself to enter. This contradiction is revealed in many of Marisaldi’s work, a mechanism often triggered by the artist’s large use of Duchamp’s matrix; the object taken from everyday life, in fact, reveals itself in a new light, it loses its functions of use and it’s bent to the discovery of hidden aspects of that same reality from which it comes.
This is the case, for example, for the large yellow panel made with post-it, entitled Omissioni (1997): the yellow posts-it have been altered with coloured pencils, thus generating a picture of different tones of the same colour, with allusion to the different ways in which it’s possible to communicate the same thing and therefore to the omissions present in the reports.
Equally eloquent is Senza Titolo (2018), a small theatre where two spoons suspended on threads like marionettes, duel with each other. The duel between the spoons is intended to be a tribute to Antonio Gramsci, and more specifically to the episode told in Notebooks from the prison of the welcome show, organized by the prisoners, which consisted of a knightly duel made with knives. Marisaldi changes the knives with spoons, staging a hypnotic and attractive fight, also made so by the noise generated by these two spoons that move away and then bang each other, revealing the general attention of the artist to the sound element. In fact, the importance of the auditory component in Marisaldi’s work is interesting, an aspect also testifies by her successful collaboration with the musician and composer Enrico Serotti in some works such as Porto Fuori (2017) and Musica per Camaleonti (2003). Visiting the exhibition, the sensation is therefore that of being in a sort of “theatre of the absurd”, where what is familiar to us surprises and questions us.
Eva Marisaldi. Trasporto Eccezionale.
Period: 18 Dicember 2018 - 3 Febraury 2019
Opening hours: Mercoledì, venerdì, sabato e domenica 9.30- 19.30. Martedì e giovedì 9.30 - 22.30. Closed on Mondays
Dove: PAC - Padiglione d'Arte Contemporanea
Via Palestro, 14, Milano
Entry: regular € 8, reduced € 5, free for
children up to 6 years old.
- Giulia Zompa
Lovedd reading this thank you