Mythical Beasts / Soft Spots Arena

21.09.2017 - 11.10.2017

foundation, Wien / Österreich

Beautification is a form of trivialisation
Poeticization is a form of banalisation
A pedestal is the institution’s altar
Institutionalisation normalises a language of violence

A formal discussion on representational aesthetics, sensualization of violence, post renaissance sculpture, vaporwave, hypebeasts, desire and dispersion.

In their long lasting collaboration Mattia Macchieraldo’s and Flavio Palasciano’s focus on mechanisms societies generate realities from fiction. By doing so they perpetuate a playful approach within their intimate world of images and signs, in a process of breaking, shifting and reassembling them.... Topics for their works derive from mythologies and escapism within existent cultural patterns.

Operations on social texts move along contemporary medial patterns, which they rewrite. Basic elements are based in branding processes as a mode of streamlining information, as well as functions derived from encyclopedic online search engines. The transformations move along the coping mechanisms of translation, extension, formatting, fragmentation or a simple copy. Usual readings could be broke and put in place in relation to contemporary struggle for meaning.

The reconfigured text and image patterns transform open up to unexpected readings. Transformations do not refer to their original meaning any more, but to the inexistence hold and structure. Following Mark Wigley’s reading of Gottfried Semper’s theory of cladding, the social text derives through the covering of the load bearing structures with an ornamental fabric. In this approach the representational function of an ornament gains more importance than the simulated transparency of “real” materiality.

In their show “Mythical Beasts: Soft Spots Arena” the artists follow questions of gender and heteronormativity. Through performing shifts the codependency of institutional space and sexuality gains visibility. The inscription of their work within the exhibition space of foundation also a rewriting of these relations sets in. Their work unfolds on two different places, which articulate in the form of layers. By doing so they overlay, cross and collapse.

The fist layer opens the show towards a critical debate on the poeticization of violence in western art history. Through appropriation and idealization the artists walk at the edge between violence in western sculptural history and contemporary formations of violence as articulated in branding mechanisms or toxic masculinity. In referring to Gian Lorenzo Bernini and Giambologna an anachronistic opposition is installed, which diffuses the sight, leading away from preconfigured framing conditions.

The second layer of the work operates around staging and elaborates on the idea of facilitation sculptures, as objects which guarantee the smooth functioning of the exhibition space. As part of this layer different dimensions of institutional space are exemplified, which usually tend to disappear: Spotlights, pedestals and benches as elements, which construct a consistent economy of sight. In the shape of a hook, it collides with the cultural codification of the silk prints, as they start to merge in ornamentation, in an open process that models and streamlines certain visions within idealization.


[Quelle: www.foundationvienna.com]