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25 May - 15 July 2012
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Pavel S. Pys interview with Amalia Pica
Artist of the week 196
Summer 2012
Artinfo UK’s top 3 Exhibitions Opening This week
Skulptur “Orbit” im Olympischen Park erntet nur Spott
Press Reaction
Her interest in the visualization of interaction and exchange might seem to have pragmatic applications today,
although significantly it is the symbolism of “the social” (in the above case a field of color rather than a cloud or
network,) which is philosophically operative beyond the direct representation of raw data. In this sense, her body of
work forms a critique of the individual’s pure egoism as much as particular barriers to communication (chance,
timing, autocracy) – playing with language, symbol and signal to “talk about talking.
Rhizome
For the London-based Argentine, art and life are characterized by gaps and missed signals. What interests Pica is the distance
between sender and receiver, the ways we misunderstand or misremember. She addresses the problem of art speaking to people
– like the time she used Semaphore flag code to broadcast gobbledygook in the middle of nowhere.
Skye Sherwin, The Guardian
Spreading diagonally across the foyer from one wall to another, Inside, outside and across, 2006/2012, draws the viewer into the
exhibitions space, where the festoon is haphazardly attached to the wall and the bulbs are stripped of color, radiating a white
light. The chromatic shift that happens in the transition from one space to another speaks to a schism between celebratory lived
experience and the institutionalized sphere of art, a theme that is at the heart of Pica’s show.
Jenny Nachtigall, Artforum
Chisenhale Gallery
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Registered office 64 Chisenhale Road, London E3 5QZ
Amalia Pica presenta su primera exposición individual en el ...
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31 Mayo de 2012
Amalia Pica presenta su primera exposición individual en el Reino Unido
La artista argentina con base en Londres, Amalia
Pica (Neuquén Capital, 1978), presenta en la
Chisenhale Gallery de Londres hasta mediados del
próximo mes de julio la que es su primera exposición
individual en el Reino Unido. En ella se pueden ver
nuevos trabajos en escultura, fotografía, instalación y
performance que Pica ha realizado gracias al apoyo
de The Henry Moore Foundation, Catherine Petitgas
y Erica Roberts. Esta exposición, co-producida en
colaboración con la Modern Art Oxford, en donde
se desarrollará un segundo capítulo que se expondrá
el próximo mes de diciembre, también marca la
culminación del proyecto "I am Tower of Hamlets, as I
am in Tower of Hamlets, just like a lot of other people
are (2011/12)", que ha venido desarrollando Pica en
el último año.
Amalia Pica en la Chisenhale Gallery de Londres
Amalia Pica (Neuquén Capital, 1978) estudió en el Instituto Universitario Nacional del Arte, en la Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes
P.P. (I.U.N.A.) en Buenos Aires y realizó una residencia en la Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten en Amsterdam durante los
años 2004 y 2005. Entre las exposiciones individuales recientes de Pica en centros públicos se incluyen: "Chronic Listeners",
Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen (enero-abril de 2012), "Microphones - Red Carpet", SKOR (Foundation Art and Public Space),
Amsterdam (mayo-junio de 2011) y "babble, blabber, chatter, gibber, jabber, patter, prattle, rattle, yammer, yada yada yada", C-sale,
Malmo Konsthall, Suecia (septiembre-octubre de 2010). Además, Pica fue una de las artistas elegidas por Bice Curiger para
participar en la muestra "ILLUMInations" de la 54ª Bienal de Venecia de 2011 y también por Eungie Joo para "The Ungovernables"
en la II New Museum Triennial, de Nueva York, celebrada el pasado mes de febrero. El próximo 2013, Pica tendrá exposiciones
individuales en el MIT List Visual Arts Centre, de Massachusetts, y en el Museum of Contemporary Art, de Chicago. Pica fue,
también, una de las artistas premiadas en los últimos The Paul Hamlyn Foundation Award for Artists 2011.
Finalmente, en lo que respecta a sus galerías representantes, están la Marc Foxx Gallery de Los Angeles, donde tuvo su última
individual "Endymion's Journey" en el otoño de 2011; la Galerie Diana Stigter de Amsterdam, donde expuso por última vez en la
primavera de 2010 con su individual "babble, blabber, chatter, gibber, jabber, patter, prattle, rattle, yammer, yada yada yada"; y la
Herald St. de Londres, en donde hasta ahora tan sólo ha participado en la colectiva "Priority Moments", que tuvo lugar el pasado
año 2011. ARTEINFORMADO
© 2008 Arteinformado - Datos del Mercado del Arte: Artistas, Galeristas y Coleccionistas - [email protected] | Diseño Web: Buleboo
1 of 1
06/06/2012 17:15
ARTINFO, MAY 2012
ARTINFO UK's Top 3 Exhibitions Opening This Week: Yael...
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/805199/artinfo-uks-top-3-...
ARTINFO UK's Top 3 Exhibitions Opening This Week: Yael
Bartana, LUX/ICA Biennial of Moving Images, Amelia Pica
by
Photograph by Marcin Kalinski
Yael Bartana, Zamach (Assassination), 2011, Production still, RED transferred to HD
ARTINFO UK
Published: May 21, 2012
ARTINFO UK cherry-picks must-see art shows in London and beyond.
1. Yael Bartana
In her film trilogy "And Europe Will Be Stunned," Israeli artist Yael Bartana muses on the
gatherings and activities of the "Jewish Renaissance Movement in Poland" (JRMiP) — a fictional
political faction advocating the return of 3,300,000 Jews to Poland. Memories of the Holocaust, the
Zionist ideal, and the dangers of nationalism are tightly spliced in this body of work that reaches
beyond the specifics of its given framework. "I have treated Israel as a sort of a social laboratory,
always looking at it from the outside," said Bartana. "My recent works are not just stories about two
nations — Poles and Jews. This is a universal presentation of the impossibility of living together."
"Yael Bartana: And Europe Will be Stunned," May 22 – July 1, Artangel Project, Hornsey Town
Hall, Crouch End, London.
1 of 2
24/05/2012 12:42
ARTINFO, MAY 2012
ARTINFO UK's Top 3 Exhibitions Opening This Week: Yael...
http://www.artinfo.com/news/story/805199/artinfo-uks-top-3-...
2. LUX/ICA Biennial of Moving Images
The inaugural LUX/ICA Biennial of Moving Images is a four-day filmic extravaganza guestcurated by a stellar cast of artists and curators including Rosa Barba, Elena Filipovic, and Ben
Rivers. It'll be launched on Thursday evening with a revival of Mark Webber's legendary club
night "Little Stabs on Happiness," and continue with a stream of screenings, performances, and
artist talks until Sunday night — the whole analysed and commented live and direct by editor Isla
Leaver-Yap and her Live Journal team. The ICA is going back to its roots.
"LUX/ICA Biennial of Moving Images," May 24 – 27, Institute of Contemporary Arts, London.
3. Amelia Pica
Amelia Pica's exhibition at Chisenhale marks the end of a yearlong project "I am Tower of
Hamlets, as I am in Tower of Hamlets, just like a lot of other people are," a "nomadic sculpture" for
which local residents took turns to host and display in their house a sculpture by Pica. For the show,
the Argentina-born, London-based artist, who has made social interactions one of her primary
media, teases out the affinities between gallery space and public space, opening up areas of gallery
not usually used for exhibitions.
"Amelia Pica," May 25 – July 15, Chisenhale Gallery, London.
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24/05/2012 12:42
DER WESTEN, MAY 2012
Skulptur "Orbit" im Olympischen Park erntet nur Spott | WAZ.de
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01.06.2012
Start › Panorama › Olympia: Skulptur "Orbit" im Olympischen Park erntet nur Spott
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MEISTGELESEN
Höher als „Big Ben“ und St. Paul’s, aber viel weniger beliebt – Londons neuer Stahlriese „Orbit“.
Foto: ap
MEISTKOMMENTIERT
London. Seit dem Wochenende thront eine riesige Skulptur über dem Olympischen Park.
Londoner beschimpfen den Stahlriesen als „Schandfleck" und "Godzilla der Kunst". Die 115 Meter
hohe, loopingschlagende Doppelhelix soll eine Touristenattraktion während und nach Olympia
sein.
Eine Art "Eiffel Tower", einen Eiffelturm, hat Künstler Anish Kapoor den
Hauptstädtern versprochen - einen „Awful Tower“, einen "grässlichen Turm“,
haben sie bekommen: Seit dem Wochenende thront die größte Skulptur des
Königreiches über dem Olympischen Park . Doch statt Liebe auf den ersten
Blick hagelt es für die feuerrote, geschwungene Stahlleiter nur Kritik: Als
Mutanten-Posaune, Wahnsinniger Boris oder Schielender Holterdiepolter
verspotten die Briten ihr neues Wahrzeichen.
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THEMENSEITEN
Olympische Spiele
Aus zehn Kilometern
Entfernung ist die
kapriziöse Spirale aus
Stahl seit kurzem zu sehen,
und für die Londoner ist
genau das ein Problem: Sie
beschimpfen den
Neuzugang in der
städtischen Skyline als
Schandfleck, „Godzilla der
Kunst“ oder „prätentiösen
Schrott“. Dabei soll ihnen
„Orbit“ als
Touristenattraktion jede
Menge Einnahmen bescheren. Ende Juli öffnet die Aussichtsplattform der 115
Meter hohen, loopingschlagenden Doppelhelix fürs Olympia-Publikum. Nach
den Olympischen Spielen soll sie – für alle zugänglich – Mittelpunkt des
Sportlerparks werden.
Ob der Blick auf „Orbit“ bis dahin milder wird, bleibt abzuwarten. Künstler
Anish Kapoor und Ingenieur Cecil Balmond jedenfalls arbeiten daran, die
Sehgewohnheiten der Briten zu erweitern. Er habe bei der Konzeption des
Looping-Turms an den Turmbau zu Babel gedacht, erklärte ihnen TurnerPreisträger Kapoor jüngst - an den „Bau des Unmöglichen, an etwas von
mythischer Qualität“. Das Design musste er zwar von geplanten 180 Metern
nach unten korrigieren, doch Big Ben und die Freiheitsstatue überragt „Orbit“
auch so spielerisch.
1 of 3
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AKTUELLE FOTOS UND VIDEOS
01/06/2012 11:44
DER WESTEN, MAY 2012
Skulptur "Orbit" im Olympischen Park erntet nur Spott | WAZ.de
http://www.derwesten.de/panorama/skulptur-orbit-im-olympi...
Auf der Herrentoilette besiegelt
Für die ohnehin Olympia-kritischen Ostlondoner hat Orbit allerdings schon
einen Fehlstart hingelegt, als er noch pure Idee war: Der Legende nach will
Bürgermeister Boris Johnson dem Stahl-Milliardär Lakshmi Mittal das Projekt
2009 auf der Herrentoilette des Weltwirtschaftsforums in Davos
vorgeschlagen haben. Der soll gleich dort begeistert zugesagt haben. 20 der
23 Millionen Pfund Gesamtkosten hat Mittal seitdem finanziert; der
Imagegewinn für seinen Stahlkonzern dürfte im Gegenzug unbezahlbar sein.
Dass sich hier womöglich zwei Männer per Handschlag im sanitären
„Hinterzimmer“ selbst ein Denkmal setzen wollten, ist nur einer von vielen
Kritikpunkten. Dass die radikal anmutende Struktur „auf die Leute, die hier
leben, herunterschaut“ ein anderer.
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„Sie steht für nichts“, meckert ein Kritiker, „sie sagt nichts aus über dieses
Viertel.“ Ein Kleinkunstprojekt, bei dem zurzeit jeder Interessierte eine Woche
lang eine Granit-Skulptur der Künstlerin Amalia Pica bei sich zu Hause
ausstellen darf, bevor er sie dem nächsten Gastgeber überreicht, würde die
Menschen im Viertel mehr inspirieren. Nur wenige sehen in dem
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Auch St. Paul’s war umstritten
Kapoor und Balmond bleibt angesichts der Kritik nichts anderes übrig als
stoischer Optimismus: Auch die beliebte Kathedrale St. Paul’s sei am Anfang
verhasst gewesen, weil sie entgegen des Zeitgeistes keine Turmspitze hatte,
sagen sie, der Eiffel-Turm soll gar als extrem hässlich empfunden worden
sein. „Natürlich polarisiert auch diese Skulptur“, so Kapoor. Die Skulptur
verweigert sich, ein Emblem für irgendetwas sein zu müssen.“ Das müssen
jetzt nur noch die Londoner verstehen.
Jasmin Fischer
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KOMMENTARE
15.05.2012
16:23
Skulptur
von dummmberger | #4
In Paris erzählt man sich, dass nur deshalb soviele Menschen auf den Eiffelturm
klettern, weil das der einzige Ort ist, von dem aus man dieses hässliche Ding nicht
sehen kann.
melden |
antworten
15.05.2012
10:04
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Skulptur
von msdong71 | #3
01/06/2012 11:44
WWW.GUARDIAN.CO.UK, MAY 2012
London Olympics: Orbit towers over debate on purpose of pu...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/may/11/london...
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London Olympics: Orbit towers over
debate on purpose of public art
Anish Kapoor's sculpture divides those living in its shadow in east
London as well as those in the art world and beyond
Charlotte Higgins, chief arts writer
guardian.co.uk, Friday 11 May 2012 11.13 BST
The ArcelorMittal Orbit is a vanity project for Boris Johnson and its billionaire funder Lakshmi Mittal, says resident
Joe Alexander. Photograph: Julian Finney/Getty Images
The ArcelorMittal Orbit is visible for miles. But for the residents of Wilmer Lea Close,
clumped up against the boundaries of the Olympic park, it is a constant companion, the
first thing they see when they open their curtains each morning. A tangle of scarlet steel
1 of 17
01/06/2012 11:42
WWW.GUARDIAN.CO.UK, MAY 2012
London Olympics: Orbit towers over debate on purpose of pu...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/may/11/london...
115 metres tall, it looms down on the modest houses of the Carpenters Estate in
Stratford, east London. For Dolores John-Phillip, who lives on the estate, it is "just a
lump of nothing. It doesn't signify anything. What does it say about the area, the
community? It's just towering over us."
The Orbit, by artist Anish Kapoor and engineer Cecil Balmond, will officially open
during the Olympic Games, when a trip to the viewing platform for visitors to the park
will cost £15. And, long after the Games are over, it is hoped that the tower will continue
to bring in visitors, providing a landmark for east London and a boost for the local
economy.
But for Carpenters resident Joe Alexander, the Orbit is a "vanity project" orchestrated
by the London mayor and its funder. In a story that already has the ring of folklore,
Boris Johnson, persuaded steel billionaire Lakshmi Mittal to provide £19.6m of the
£22.7m cost during a chance encounter in the lavatories at the 2009 World Economic
Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Art is a nice thing. But in this area, there is a lot of room
for improvement before you get to art," says Alexander.
Keith Green, who has lived in the London borough of Newham for 70 years, is more
positive. The tower could become a valuable tourist attraction, he argues. "I wrote to the
people who made it and said how pleased I was we had it: it's something nobody else has
got. Any bonus like that – the Olympics, [the new shopping mall] Westfield – is a
blessing. I am not overawed by the design. Maybe it will grow on me." It is, he believes, a
powerful landmark comparable with the Monument, he says, referring to Wren's
column commemorating the Great Fire of London. For resident Hiren Patel the Orbit is
"perfectly fine", but he has other things on his mind: the fact that his house in Wilmer
Lea Close is due for demolition, another legacy of the Games.
Within the art world, similar questions are being raised to those asked by the residents
of Wilmer Lea Close. Does the design of the tower have any merit? As a piece of public
sculpture: what, precisely, does it contribute to the public realm? Will time soften the
response to the Orbit into affection, just as it did with the Eiffel Tower, loathed when it
was built? What does its commissioning say about the politics of art in Britain today?
And why has Britain become so obsessed with gargantuan sculpture?
The Orbit has a powerful supporter in the form of the Tate director, Sir Nicholas Serota,
who sits on the board of the Olympic Delivery Authority. The tower's creators, he says,
have conjured "a beautiful and arresting sculpture" that will "provide points of memory
and incident in the landscape". Artist Bob and Roberta Smith, who can see the sculpture
from his home, is also a fan: for him, its very disconnectedness from the landscape is
part of its appeal. "I love the fact that this is just a huge piece of art that's not contextual,
2 of 17
01/06/2012 11:42
WWW.GUARDIAN.CO.UK, MAY 2012
London Olympics: Orbit towers over debate on purpose of pu...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/may/11/london...
is just a visual exploration of space and fantasy." He is convinced it will become a
landmark and a symbol for London. "When you think about red buses, black cabs,
Tower Bridge – I think it's much superior, actually, to all those things." As for its
vaunting ambition, he says: "If artists can't be hubristic, then who can? You don't want
artists to be meek. It would be rubbish if Michelangelo's David were a figurine."
Not everyone is convinced by this argument: should not public sculpture be more
communitarian, and less vainglorious? Artist Jeremy Deller – whose own joky sculpture
for the Cultural Olympiad, Sacrilege, is a bouncy-castle version of Stonehenge – calls the
escalating size of public sculpture in Britain an "arms race". First came Antony
Gormley's 20-metre tall Angel of the North in Gateshead in 1998. Then, in 2009, the
design for Kent's "angel of the south" – a 50-metre sculpture of a horse by Mark
Wallinger – was unveiled. In 2010 came Temenos, Kapoor and Balmond's series of five
sculptures on Teesside, claimed as the "biggest public sculpture in the world". Later this
month, the designs for Richard Wilson's Slipstream will be revealed. Described as "the
longest sculpture in Europe", it is destined for Heathrow's new Terminal 2 in 2014. But
the Orbit towers over them all: "the tallest sculpture in the world", say its creators. Artist
Richard Wentworth, head of sculpture at the Royal College of Art, detects a "comical and
awful rivalry" between Gormley and Kapoor as each outsculpts the other. Gormley was,
along with Kapoor, shortlisted for the ArcelorMittal project.
"It is," says Deller, "all about people wanting to brand places and regions." Everyone has
wanted to repeat the success of the Angel of the North, which has become a symbol of
the region and a beloved landmark. But for the "wow" factor to succeed time and again,
the only way is up. By coincidence, or not, the designers of these vast works are all men.
Polly Staple, director of the Chisenhale Gallery in nearby Mile End, remarks drily: "I
work with a lot of women artists who aren't interested in working vertically."
Like Stratford's Joe Alexander, many question the manner of the tower's commission
and the haste with which it has been realised. Douglas Murphy, an architecture critic
who has written about the Orbit for art magazine Frieze, says the design "has a back-ofa-napkin feel to it. I think it's easy to see it was a really quick idea". For Staple, "it's not
even a good Anish Kapoor. At his best his works can be magical. But this is utterly
lacking magic. It's a barely disguised theme-park ride." For Murphy, the commission
stands as a metonym for the political atmosphere of the day: the billionaire and the
politician doing deals behind closed doors. "It is capricious and whimsical and not very
pleasant… it's quite shocking the way that something so old-fashioned and imperial
should be built – a monument to the two people who put it there."
What, then, should public sculpture actually do? Different answers, are, in fact, being
adumbrated in east London this summer. Sarah McCrory, the director of Frieze East, is
3 of 17
01/06/2012 11:42
WWW.GUARDIAN.CO.UK, MAY 2012
London Olympics: Orbit towers over debate on purpose of pu...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/may/11/london...
running a series of public art projects for the Cultural Olympiad. "For every large
spectacular project like the ArcelorMittal Orbit there are 50 small projects engaged
deeply in their communities," she says. One of her projects is by Turkish artist Can
Altay, who will install door handles in public buildings around Walthamstow – a nod to
local boy William Morris, looking at the value of public art and exploring Morris's ideas
about the functionality of objects. "It's never going to get the headlines of the Orbit," she
says. Staple talks of a year-long Chisenhale Gallery project with Argentinian artist
Amalia Pica. Called I am Tower of Hamlets, as I am in Tower of Hamlets, Just Like a Lot
of People are, it is a granite sculpture that the public are invited to display in their
homes for a week, before meeting, and passing it on to, the next hosts. Small, intimate,
unspectacular, but bedded in ideas of exchange and community, it is perhaps the
opposite of the ArcelorMittal Orbit's scarlet heights.
Back at the Carpenters Estate, John-Phillip glances up at the cats-cradle of steel at her
back, and sees a metaphor in its lofty presence. "It's looking down on the little people,"
she says. "And we're nothing."
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4 of 17
01/06/2012 11:42
www.we-find-wildness.com, MAY 2012
This will be your favorite blog. / We find wildness
Amalia Pica
Catégorie: art, exhibition, installation - Pas de commentaires
31 May 2012
Sorry for the metaphor #2, 2010
photo: Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, GUNNAR MEIER
-
www.we-find-wildness.com, MAY 2012
exhibition view at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, 2012
Tribuna Transitable, Stabile (with Confetti), 2012, Sorry for the metaphor # 2, 2010
photo: Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, GUNNAR MEIER
-
Stabile (with confetti), 2012
photo: Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, GUNNAR MEIER
-
www.we-find-wildness.com, MAY 2012
Some of that Colour 2009
Dimensions Variable
Image courtesy the artist and Galerie Diana Stigter, Amsterdam
Venn Diagrams (Under the Spotlight), 2011
installation with spotlights, motion sensors, and text
.
www.we-find-wildness.com, MAY 2012
Palliative for Chronic Listeners #1, 2012
photo: Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, GUNNAR MEIER
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Palliative for Chronic Listeners #1, 2012
Bronze, silver, copper, gold
Dimension variable
-
www.we-find-wildness.com, MAY 2012
Instructions to make Catachresis #13 (elbow of the pipe, eye of the
potato, eye of the needle), 2012
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www.we-find-wildness.com, MAY 2012
exhibition view at Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, 2012
If these walls could talk, 2010
photo: Kunst Halle Sankt Gallen, GUNNAR MEIER Meier
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www.we-find-wildness.com, MAY 2012
Spinning Trajectories, 2009
felt pen spinning top on graph paper, individual works, various sizes
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www.we-find-wildness.com, MAY 2012
Dialogue (paper and mountain),2010
black and white photocopies, dimensions variables
Courtesy Diane Stigter Gallery, Amsterdam
all images courtesy of the artist
Through her playful work, her loose approach of the relation between the signified and the signifier, of
matter and the story attached to that matter, the work by Argentinean artist AMALIA PICA – a
combination of different approaches including performative, sculptural, filmic and photographic
objects, as well as texts and ready-mades – engages in a play of storytelling.
The ultimate question is for me whether art can be a form of communication. Obviously the issue of the
viewer completing the meanings of an artwork complicates how art might communicate. The question I
am interested in about art is how images can act as language. I do include myself in a tradition of
artists that have thought about language but not necessarily through text. I think that issue is always
present in my work and the self-reflective side of my work addresses that question of whether I am
saying something particular or not. It’s a failure from the very beginning because we know that
interpretation is going to get in the way, it can’t be a straight-forward message.
Site specificity was the most important question to me as a young artist. I was making work in
Argentina and it wasn’t about being Argentinian but when I moved to Europe I somehow had to excuse
myself in a way that wasn’t demanded of European students. I was asked to account for the
Argentinian-ness of my practice so site specificity became a burden. It became a fight to either recontextualise my practice or to not contextualise it at all. So now an exhibition can only make sense in
the relations between the works, they are autonomous pieces but they need the other works in order to
gain that autonomy. – AMALIA PICA in conversation with JAMIE STEVENS, May 2012.
And good news: Chisenhale Gallery in London presents a solo exhibition by AMALIA PICA,
featuring newly commissioned works across sculpture, photography, installation and performance. This
exhibition (on view through July 15, 2012) is her first solo exhibition in the UK and is co-produced in
partnership with Modern Art Oxford where a second chapter will be developed for exhibition in
December 2012. Stay tuned!
ART IN AMERICA, JUNE/JULY 2012
ART IN AMERICA, JUNE/JULY 2012
ART IN AMERICA, JUNE/JULY 2012
ART IN AMERICA, JUNE/JULY 2012
ART IN AMERICA, JUNE/JULY 2012
ART IN AMERICA, JUNE/JULY 2012
ART IN AMERICA, JUNE/JULY 2012
ART IN AMERICA, JUNE/JULY 2012
ARTFORUM, JUNE 2012
Rhizome, june 2012
Rhizome | Amalia Pica at Chisenhale Gallery
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Amalia Pica, 2012. Chisenhale Gallery, London. Photo: Mark Blower.
There is a particular romance in miscommunication, wrought by difference and distance. The undelivered letter, the
intercepted telegram, the voicemail message never played back are the chance minutiae which drive the action of
the plot forward, or cause it to veer dramatically off-course. Mislaid memoranda and transposed missives are Greek
Fates for the modern era, where rupture is a stronger organizing force than the continuity of a single thread. Still, it is
strange to contemplate crossed-wires in a contemporary context, where a missed cue – the probable end-result of
too many functional, thus distractible, multiple-channel communication devices – still engenders the ultimate social
faux pas: You didn’t get the message?
Managers and technocrats determined to allay postmodern anxiety seek to reduce error in manifestations of human
passion, from theaters of war to those of love, both on- and off-line. To a certain extent clinical psychology, too,
helps condition us to distinguish signal from noise. Alain Badiou’s In Praise of Love laments the disappearance of
social discomfiture via the easy connectivity peddled by Internet dating sites:
After all, it’s not so very different to an arranged marriage. Not done in the name of family order and hierarchy by
despotic parents, but in the name of safety for the individuals involved, through advance agreements that avoid
randomness, chance encounters and in the end any existential poetry, due to the categorical absence of risks.
Where are exhilaration and ecstasy without some amount of personal risk? This conundrum resonates throughout
2 of 10
28/06/2012 11:41
Rhizome, june 2012
Rhizome | Amalia Pica at Chisenhale Gallery
http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/jun/27/chisenhale-gallery/
London-based artist Amalia Pica’s sculpture, installation, and performance works, which consider moments of
potential for point-to-point communication – and by extension, human connection; togetherness. Using not
especially technological materials, the invariable “failure” of Pica’s work to draw disparate subjectivities into dialogue
is most always a result of the aesthetic formalism of mediation, a quality borne out in the quiet beauty of her
installations. Exhibited in the New Museum’s second triennial this year, Pica’s pleasing post-Minimal projection Venn
Diagram (Under the Spotlight) (http://artobserved.com/2012/03/ao-on-site-new-york-new-museum-triennialexhibition-the-ungovernables-through-april-22-2012/amalia-pica-venn-diagrams-under-the-spotlight-2011/) (2011)
expanded upon an earlier preoccupation with the diagrams from the ink-on-paper series Untitled (2006). The
mathematical illustrations were banned in 1970s Argentina, where Pica grew up, for the perceived danger in clear
expressions of collectivity.
Her interest in the visualization of interaction and exchange might seem to have pragmatic applications today,
although significantly it is the symbolism of “the social” (in the above case a field of color rather than a cloud or
network,) which is philosophically operative beyond the direct representation of raw data. In this sense, her body of
work forms a critique of the individual’s pure egoism as much as particular barriers to communication (chance,
timing, autocracy) – playing with language, symbol and signal to “talk about talking.” Barring an algorithm to
calculate the compatibility of notional personality tics, favorite 90s slasher flicks or other equally ambiguous criteria,
Pica’s most reliable device describing the relationship between two is a single line: forming a bond or being
deflected.
Pica’s current solo exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery (http://www.chisenhale.org.uk/) coincides with the culmination of
a yearlong project undertaken in the East London borough local to the art space. For I am Tower of Hamlets, as I am
in Tower of Hamlets, just like a lot of other people are (2011/12), the artist loaned out a pink granite Echeveria plant,
modeled after a variety of the Mexican succulent growing in Kew Gardens, to neighborhood families for a one-week
period each. Generally cutting the figure of a too-large artichoke, Pica’s roaming sculpture packs into a hard rolling
case that might otherwise accommodate an alto saxophone. By redefining the notion of public sculpture as
something shareable rather than fixed or ideologically domineering, Pica provided a rare opportunity for participants
to experience an artwork in the intimacy of the home; notwithstanding any out-of-the-ordinary activity required to
facilitate its borrow and return. Through handling Pica’s sculpture, the tangible and intangible traces of a community
might be sensed from its condition, as one notes dog-eared pages and expiration dates stamped into the public
library book.
3 of 10
28/06/2012 11:41
Rhizome, june 2012
Rhizome | Amalia Pica at Chisenhale Gallery
http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/jun/27/chisenhale-gallery/
If Pica’s artwork gestures towards an ideal form of communication, structures and motifs including signal flags,
strings of electric lights and colorful bunting reemerge in various constellations, flickering at varying stages of
remove. Such is the case for her well-known Untitled (fiesta lights) (2006), a festoon of bulbs which draws the viewer
into the gallery from the street and spans the foyer colorfully until it is anaesthetized (filter-less) upon entering the
white cube; the single zagging strand droops gracefully until dropping repeated loose loops onto a hook against the
far wall. The center of the gymnasium-like space is dominated by Switchboard (2012), a lengthy double partition
pock-marked along its surface as neatly as a wedge of Emmenthaler. The work’s narrow cross-section reveals these
standardized “holes” to be a dense network of outward-facing tin-can telephones; emptied of coconut milk, sweet
corn, baked beans and stretched tightly together with string in configurations too complex to aurally trace. While not
especially functional, Switchboard plays into childhood notions of telecommunications: the direct line traveling
window to window, held taught enough across the block to carry urgent vibrations of the voice. Switchboard here
contains echoes of If These Walls Could Talk (2010): tin cans and string stretched between the perimeter walls (with
no access for an interested listener), as well as Eavesdropping (2011): found drinking glasses stuck to the wall with
glue which invite opportunity to overhear activity on the unseen side opposite. In each case the viewer’s sensitivity to
sonic space is heightened, although only in Switchboard is there a chance for “social listening” – to the sighs and
movements of another body – within the confines of the exhibition itself.
The scale of the hearing device explodes for Acoustic Radar in Cardboard (2012), a crude gramophone-like form with
a bell wide enough to catch conversations floating nearby. At the exhibition’s private viewing, one becomes paranoid
that the occasional performer’s riveted listening technique might also be an act of critical surveillance, until a
personal trial of the receiver assures that the instrument’s recycled material absorbs mostly atmospheric buzz. The
sound piece Overhearing Fiesta by Raffaelle Carrà (2012), a lively recording of an Italian singer in Spanish intended
for commercial distribution in Latin America, is activated by motion sensors in the mostly vacant far corner of the
gallery – a casual expression of jubilation periodically emanating from behind the wall. While this particular seepage
seems compatible with city environs, where calm is ever a luxury, the dying refrain soon attunes the listener also to
the muffled external sounds of rubber tires rolling across rain-soaked pavement and the clamor of children in the
schoolyard next door.
4 of 10
28/06/2012 11:41
Rhizome, june 2012
Rhizome | Amalia Pica at Chisenhale Gallery
http://rhizome.org/editorial/2012/jun/27/chisenhale-gallery/
Within the controlled volume of the art gallery, Pica’s pieces resonate softly together, without jostling; the room is
studiously arranged, confidently spare. In the overhead space and in between the works, circulating air seems alert
to the crackle of potential transmission. Still, the spatial emptiness of the gallery describes a lack unfulfilled by the
waylaid, fitful longing of these various attempts to communicate, no matter how indirectly.
Perhaps the greatest risk identifiable in Pica’s practice, then, is the imperfectly incessant desire to both hear and
speak – without any guarantee of a sympathetic address, reply, or other meaningful exchange. Pica’s patient waiting
game seeks neither validation nor instant gratification, informed by the wisdom of living and the loneliness which
imbues contemporary means of (im)personal communication, despite surface connectivity. That Pica’s performances
and sculptures never fully achieve the poetry of perfect mediation is yet another clear signal; that human relations
might find their best collective expression outside the realm of the visual, even outside art.
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5 of 10
28/06/2012 11:41
MOUSSE, JULY 2012
Amalia Pica at Chisenhale, London
July 2~2012
MOUSSE, JULY 2012
On the occasion of her exhibition at Chisenhale Gallery, Pavel S. Pyś met Amalia Pica to ask her a few
questions about the show.
PP: In past works you have dramatized the distinction between the public and gallery spaces by means
of display and the use of lights. How did you arrive at the display for the Chisenhale?
AP: Chisenhale is a space I’m familiar with, and when I was invited to do a show it was easier to
imagine it than if I had been looking at a floor plan of an unfamiliar space. I wanted to use a piece that
would address the space, which is why I brought in a work first made in 2010, which here is
reconsidered. This piece divides the space in half, and is a sculpture that plays with the idea of
temporary architecture. When working, I usually choose one work that I start with to address the space,
and from then on I put other works in conversation with that first piece, pulling it in different
directions. The second piece is a large wall piece depicting two “characters” holding a string of
bunting, just as in my previous performance Strangers (2008). This work, Strangers on common land,
is a photographic image, using photocopies to achieve a rather large scale (800 x 274 cm).
PP: Is the image displayed on the face of the sculpture?
AP: When entering the space, the dividing sculpture blocks off your view of the second work with the
two characters, so you only see one. I took the image for Strangers on common land on a bit of
common farmland in Kent, a sort of bucolic set-up. The image is pasted to the back wall of the gallery.
The sculpture is itself a Bermuda triangle for stories, a dysfunctional switchboard which you could
actually use to talk to people. Titled Switchboard, it is based on the tin-can telephone that you may
have used as a kid. There are two walls creating a corridor with holes, and behind these are tin cans.
All are connected to the adjacent sides with string and operate like telephones. The piece is very large
and all the connections between the cans are random, making it hard to find your friends and talk or
listen to them, so in a sense it looks like an invitation to use the piece, but this is hard to achieve.
-Switchboard was the first piece that I started thinking of in relation to the space, but is not actually the
first piece you encounter. That is Inside, outside and across, a string of festoon lighting, a
reconsideration of Untitled (fiesta lights) (2006), which considers the movement from the outside to the
inside of the gallery space. The colorful lights move from the outside of the building to the inside–
through the foyer and into the exhibition space, where they become clear. The piece is a parable on that
loss of color or vitality that happens when you try to make work about something compelling in the
world. In the realm of art it then becomes an idea of the thing, rather than the thing itself. And in this
case the lights also take on a more sculptural form as they loop lower and end in a bundle which hangs
off the back wall of the gallery. Upon entering the gallery, the work starts to address the great history
of artists who have made work with this type of lights.
PP: Felix Gonzalez-Torres comes to mind immediately.
AP: He would be the first and dearest example.
PP: There is also a work on view in the office?
AP: That will be I am Tower of Hamlets, as I am in Tower of Hamlets, just like a lot of people are
(2011/12), an off-site project I did with Chisenhale consisting of a nomadic sculpture, of an Echevaria
succulent, that has been hosted by residents of Tower Hamlets on a weekly basis for a year. The last
week of the show coincides with the last week of the project. It will come back and Chisenhale will
host it for a week. Not in the public realm of the gallery, but rather in the office space, an intimate
space. People can go and knock on the door and see the sculpture.
There are two more sculptural components in the exhibition which also rely on a certain performativity.
One is Acoustic radar in cardboard, based on an acoustic radar, a type of analogue listening device
used during the First World War to predict air bombings. It looks like a hearing trumpet and sits on
the floor. It’s made of cardboard, which renders it completely useless and ephemeral. At certain times
there will be a performer listening through the trumpet, creating an image of listening. For the viewer,
listening becomes visual and for the performer, it becomes an activity. I like this idea of listening as
something you actively do or the performer actually does.
There is also an edition, which I consider as equally important as the other work on view. This is a
photograph of a very small sculpture, called Catachresis number 13 (the eye of the potato, the eye of
the needle, the elbow of a pipe). Catachresis is a term used to designate a misapplication of a word
when there isn’t another word to describe a phenomenon. The sculpture is composed of objects named
after catachresical metaphors, such as “the eye of a needle” (needles don’t have eyes, but we don’t
have a better word for the hole in the needle). When you purchase the edition you receive the
photograph, needle, and pipe, which you have to combine with a potato to make the sculpture. The
MOUSSE, JULY 2012
photograph functions as the instructions for the owner to follow, to tend to the sculpture. Very much
like in the case of the nomadic sculpture.
PP: The exhibition will travel to Modern Art Oxford in December. How do you conceive of the
exhibition’s two-part structure?
AP: The exhibition in Oxford was scheduled too soon for it to be a new show and too late for it to be a
travelling show. It was agreed with the curators of both institutions that there would be one work that
will feature in both exhibitions–Strangers on common land. In Oxford, it will most likely be in the
foyer, the first element to open up the show. The rest of the exhibition is still being discusse–it will
either look back or forward.
(Amalia Pica in conversation with Pavel S. Pyś)
at Chisenhale Gallery, London
until 15 July, 2012
Above – Acoustic Radar in cardboard, 2010-12; and Inside, outside and across, 2006-12. Photos by
Mark Blower
-
Strangers on common land, 2012. Photo: Andy Keate
MOUSSE, JULY 2012
Acoustic Radar in cardboard, 2010-12. Photo: Andy Keate
Amalia Pica, 2012. Chisenhale Gallery, London. Photo: Andy Keate
MOUSSE, JULY 2012
Switchboard, 2010-12. Photo: Mark Blower
Switchboard, 2010-12. Photo: Mark Blower
MOUSSE, JULY 2012
Amalia Pica, 2012. Chisenhale Gallery, London. Photo: Andy Keate
Switchboard, 2010-12. Photo: Andy Keate
MOUSSE, JULY 2012
Amalia Pica, 2012. Chisenhale Gallery, London. Photo: Andy Keate
Amalia Pica, 2012. Chisenhale Gallery, London. Photo: Mark Blower
MOUSSE, JULY 2012
Amalia Pica, 2012. Chisenhale Gallery, London. Photo: Andy Keate
Inside, outside and across, 2006-12. Photo: Andy Keate
The Guardian, july 2012
Artist of the week 196: Amalia Pica | Art and design | guardian....
http://www.guardian.co.uk/artanddesign/2012/jun/28/artist-of-...
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Artist of the week 196: Amalia Pica
This London-based Argentine's work speaks to us of the missed
chances and misunderstandings in both art and life
Skye Sherwin
guardian.co.uk, Thursday 28 June 2012 12.21 BST
Is the party over? ... Amalia Pica, 2012, at the Chisenhale Gallery, London. Photograph: Andy Keate
There may be strings of lights, bunting and music in Amalia Pica's first UK show, but the
festive mood comes with a pang. The bright garlands of rainbow bulbs that illuminate
the front door and lobby turn plain inside the gallery. In a gigantic poster made from
collaged Xeroxes of a blown-up photo, bunting stretched between two people in a lonely
field is the only hit of colour in an otherwise black and white landscape. Somewhere out
back, the 1990s tune Fiesta is playing. Perhaps you arrived too late, or maybe the party
always seems to be happening elsewhere.
For the London-based Argentine, art and life are characterised by gaps and missed
signals. What interests Pica is the distance between sender and receiver, the ways we
misunderstand or misremember. She addresses the problem of art speaking to people –
like the time she used Semaphore flag code to broadcast gobbledygook in the middle of
nowhere. And she questions whether art can possibly measure up to what's already out
there in the world – as when she faced-off a mountain, holding up a white sheet of paper
to its craggy mass. Was she attempting to channel the landscape's power, or offering a
white flag of artistic surrender?
Switchboard, a screen-like wall in the middle of her current show that's studded with
tin-can telephones, turns a children's game into an allegory of our attempts to
communicate. The cans are randomly connected by a cat's cradle of strings hidden
inside the wall, so finding the corresponding mouth and earpiece is a halting
hit-and-miss process, with most messages going nowhere.
Pica frequently alludes to communal experience, be that a schoolroom or a party. In her
recent twist on public art, I am Tower of Hamlets …, a pink marble sculpture of the
popular South American Echevaria houseplant has spent the last year travelling through
the homes of East End locals. When it returns to the gallery in July, the hardy little
statue will conjure fantasies of unknown encounters. Like the lights outside the show,
what we remember or imagine is always more colourful than the here and now.
Why we like her: Childhood is important for Pica. In a key early work, Hora Catedra
(School Period) from 2002, she drew attention to a cultural confusion rooted in infancy.
Most Argentinians believe The House of Tucuman, the site of the declaration of the
country's independence, to be yellow, as it's depicted in children's books, when it's
actually white. Making the most of this, she flooded the real house with yellow light, for
40 minutes, the duration of a lesson.
School's out: Teaching art classes at primary school sparked Pica's interest in what
shapes our preconceptions and limits our imagination. Why, she wondered, did children
always draw a house the same way?
Where can I see her? At Chisenhale Gallery, London to 15 July.
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Frieze, Summer 2012