The tragedy is in some ways more authentic myth, because it does not seek for an harmonious ending, an ethically peaceful closed circle, but shows off its own self-destruction, emphasizing the
world’s problematic and negative essence.
The art of Jannis Kounellis is the rupture, Kounellis himself is the unexpected. Together they play a game that generates the kind of sense of wonder and alienation usually experienced with powerful and unexpected things. The drama is a theme which has always imbued the work of Kounellis, developed with lacerating expressive power and great rhetoric ability. In the last solo exhibition at Galleria Giacomo Guidi in Rome, curated by Bruno Corà, recurrent elements of the Master artistic heritage are combined together into a single space dense of lyrical suspense, in which the viewer is completely absorbed, leaving his mortal spoils to enter the cathartic process of detachment and re-identification in which the true sense of the tragic is revealed. The soul crushes against the large steel panels that cover the walls of the gallery creating a sort of menacing and insurmountable amphitheater, where sacks of mineral coal, 12 as the chorus’ members of the ancient Greek theater, are arranged in a circle, involved in a silent dialogue. An iron lamp that looks like gallows symbolizes the memory of the human horror, perhaps of Nazi’s genocide, while the sharpness of drama is reflected in the sinister flashes of light projected by the long knives chandelier. The yellow canvas, in the same sizes of Demoiselles d’Avignon, is the prologue and the exodus of this artistic representation that goes beyond the boundaries of exhibition itself, resulting in a reflection that opens up to real life.
Making a statement on the pain of creative effort, Kounellis gives voice to the overwhelming drama of the history, which stood unsolved in the past but claims itself in the present. With a mature and complex language, the Master let the reality explode from its inner side, giving vent to a complaint that denounce the lacks of men and mundanity, in a process of redemption which is accomplished through public self-torture.
