An objective approach to art’s flairs is always controversial.
The visual impact of one of Augé’s non-places filled up with different artworks provokes an undeniable initial state of confusion. After the first moments in which the eyes jump madly from one artist to another almost drowning into the huge amount of material that catches their attention, the observer becomes selective and breaks the surface of appearance, beginning to question on a conceptual meaning. The bare magnificence of Ai Weiwei welcomed us to last FIAC edition in Paris. The Iron Tree strained roughly towards the high ceilings of the Grand Palais, pierced by spikes that kept together the complex unity of the 99 wooden independent segments. A raw and material power spread from the works of Jimmie Duhram, Adrian Villar Rojas and the other artists of gallery Kurimanzutto, illustrating the inexorable transformation of objects through time and their provocative anti-functionality towards a supposed utilitarian and ergonomics society. The distorted flow of movements suspended into the plastic volumes of Contradiction by Tony Cragg, forms a spiral of doubt and knowledge crystallized in the bronze sculpture. With Basquiat as a background, Giuseppe Penone‘s Space of Light occupied the spaces of Gagosian Gallery, triggering a striking contrast between its subtle nobility and the shouting naïveté of the New York’s artist. Marian Goodman‘s organic poetry helped connect Propagazione by Penone with the primitive monumentality of Adrian Villar Rojas. The fingerprint of Turin-born artist extended its ridges and grooves as the years on a tree stump creating an hypnotizing circular motion imbued into Rojas‘ sculpture, which is part of the series La inocencia de los animales, both suggesting blank scenarios of wood and stone, where the presence of mankind appears to be nothing but a fleeting memory.
Beyond the wonder and the excitement a feeling of alienation always remains. In art’s flairs the artwork stands in front of our eyes, it speaks, but thousands of other whispering voices cover its own, obstructing its silent dialogue and leaving us with absence of sense.
