The exhibition Weightlessness of sculptor Angel Orensanz is a retrospective of his work that is presently showing at the Museum of Modern Art, Moscow (MMOMA). The exhibition is jointly organized by the Russian Museum and the Angel Orensanz Foundation in New York.
The show consists of four sections: drawings, interventions, installations and video and presents four different layers of the commitment and creativity of this Spanish American artist, based in New York but with an intensive practice in several other countries. The drawings are a key segment of his work. MMOMA presents four large format narratives, part of a series done in New York in the 1990’s; another four were done in Regensburg (Germany) en the early 2000’s. The video section shows three pieces: “Hovs/Hallar-Wales (The final Score)” an homage to Igmar Bergman, shot in the coast of Wales in 2007; “Poetics of the Speed”, with a cue to Marinetti (1901), and “River Flow”, a scenic intervention at the River Douro, near Coimbra (Portugal), edited to the rhythm of the poem by Bob Dylan. The section of sculpture and installations is made of site specific works created for this very exhibition. One of them consists of a sculpture tree of large dimensions from which drip shards of textiles in various directions. They carry a concept developed in Palermo (Sicily) curated by Achille Bonito Oliva.
The exhibition is gathered under the concept of Wightlessness and builds an dream-like universe in which all the elements of the show bring in a subconscious suspension, between imaginative and challenging subconscious. The entire exhibit space is charged of an intense energy both trans-real and transgressive.
The goal of the sculptor is to create, by the juxtaposition of different or even conflicting fields of meaning, a space of expanding fields that on a close up contact explode in dissonance and corrosion. This immersive method is an intricate part of the linguistic strategy of Orensanz that opens up through successive layers of his sculpture, painting and film narratives.
The exhibition has been brought about through an intense cooperation of the director of the Museum of Modern Art Moscow, Vasili Theretelli, curators Alexey Novosolov and Arsenia Mukhina, in Moscow, and Juanli Carrion and Jaume Marco at the Angel Orensanz Foundation in New York.
Vasili Tseretelli writes in the catalogue that accompanies the exhibition: “The Museum of Modern Art Moscow is pleased to present Weightlessness, an exclusive exhibition of the work of Angel Orensanz, a dreamer, a world resident and a pioneer in numerous artistic practices. It is an honor for this Museum to present an artist of this international stature, with interventions and exhibitions in so many parts of the world. This exhibition at the MMOMA is a very synthetic installation that at the same time carries a huge richness and diversity. Works on paper, installations with amazing colorand video works that carry a visual perception of unique strength and in amazing synchrony with the current cultural evolution in Russia now. I am sure that this show will expand the mind and the heart of public in Moscow.”
The contributing writers to the catalogue that accompanies this exhibition are: Dr. Alexander Borowski, Head of the Department of Contemporary Art at the State Russian Museum in St. Petersburg, an expert in the work of Angel Orensanz. In his essay he establishes structural homologiers between the Russian avant-garde of the Revolution and the sculpture of Orensanz, particularly “the revolutionary festivals of Marc Chagall”, and what he calls the aleatoric coordinates The essay by Nikolai Blogodatov, an art critic of the Academy of Contemporary Arts of St. Petersburg, gathers the basic elements of a generative grammar of the discourse of Orensanz with transparent and methodological precision. Achille Bonito Oliva, professor at La Sapienza University in Rome contributes an essay that positions Angel Orensanz among the artists of the Transavangurda movement an establishes Weightlessness (inestabilita) as the basi concept of the work of Orensanz and of contemporary art. The essays of the catalogue close with a text by Margarida Ruas, Director of the Water Museum in Lisbon, thatestablishes the bases for a semiotic reading of the work of Angel Orensanz.
Weightlessness opens this January 12 and closes February 8. The opening will be January 12 at 7 pm, with a reception in which Angel Orensanz will be inducted into the Russian Academy of Arts.
www.mmoma.ru/en/exhibitions/petrovka/angel_orensanz/
www.tvkultura.ru/news.html?id=292812
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