CONTINUUM: Multisensory installation | 23.6.─18.8.2022 | Herman Pečarič Gallery in Piran |
Opening: Thursday, 23 June 2022, 7 pm |
Sandi Renko: conceptual design and installation, Aleš Brce: graphical interventions, Marko Jugovic: music and sound interventions, Nicoletta Zar: proposal preparation
Installation shot at HPG. Foto: Jadran Rusjan
The exhibition, selected through the first OPEN DOORS tender, is a new initiative of the Piran Coastal Galleries.
Art does not have the right to digress from the reality of its time, especially not in critical moments such as we are experiencing today. In its core, the Continuum project emphasises the social dimension of art since it invites us to think about the present period. An artist as an attentive observer of contemporary society should feel obliged to contribute to a better understanding of what is happening in modern society and to predict grave consequences in the future and should lift his or her voice with the means of expression their artistic language offers.
Sandi Renko founded his research in the direction of geometric abstraction and optical art. His artworks are intended for subjective perception, but are neutral in relation to objective reality. Renko remains faithful to his work method, the creative procedure he used as a designer: idea-development-plan-manufacturing, while in this project he felt the urge to dive deep into the reality of contemporary society, encourages pondering, and suggests a few possible starting points. To add greater power and resonance to his idea, he included other artists in his project. He sought associates among the young, because it is the young who are today at the forefront and the present events endanger their future.
Renko connected with two artists: one expresses himself through the graphical language of visual communication (Aleš Brce), and the other one through sound (Marko Jugovic), and invited them to collaborate. The artist decided on a hanging three-dimensional object, customised with paintings, light, and sound, around which we can move or have to move. The installation stimulates our emotional experiencing and offers an immersive experience in order to carry us into the true reality of our existence. The essential, abstract, and timeless form is juxtaposed with a provocation with contemporary graphic and sound interventions typical for present-day communication.
The three artists, who did not know each other before, thus enjoyed a precious experience of confrontation. Based on the meeting and dialogue between these three artists, so different in age, education, and means of expression, the Continuum project was created.
On the one hand, Continuum pertains to a space-time continuity, on which the basic story of the installation is founded, that is the modular structure with simple and arranged forms; while on the other, it brings attention to the everlasting repetition of crises that every time bring us back to the beginning, as if it were a continuous déjà-vu. This regularly makes the saying historia magistra vitae a lie. The expression Continuum is also used in the fields of linguistics, physics, mathematics, and music, and since it is a Latin word used in living languages, in the international and multilingual environment the translation is not needed.
Composition
It is composed of six elements made of semi-transparent alveolar polycarbonate, in which two-dimensional surfaces interchange with cubes. The hanging composition is hung centrally on the ceiling with the help of a frame with just 5 mounting points (the total weight is 7kg). The form resembles something primal, some kind of cellular tissue, a subatomic particle, an image under the microscope, a sequence of fractals. The form is pure, simple, and repeatable, it multiplies in space as if it were a self-genesis, it is imminent and unchanging.
Graphic intervention
Aleš Brce with his graphic intervention assumed the role of a narrator. The structure is wounded because it was tarnished by man. Graphic signs cover its surface and muddy its purity. These graphic symbols represent ideologies, religions, movements, group doings, and the like. These are numerous layers of culture, knowledge, and experience, which are our inevitable legacy and which direct and condition us. The symbols are disorderly, half hidden between stains, yet still recognisable in the midst of this graphic mixture. Aleš Brce takes inspiration from urban art, linked to graffiti and street art, but does not use written characters.
Sound
The sound of Marko Jugovic, who for this purpose wrote a composition, additionally intervenes into the silent stillness of the structure and gives it voice and light vibrations. Electronic devices are located on the structure itself and thus transform it into a resonant hull. The musical intervention creates a play of interferences and adds a temporal dimension to the installation. The musical composition emphasises the excitement caused by the music in Continuum, and blurs the sense of beginning and end with its circular construction.
The structure is untroubled, its form is essential, universal, it exists between us and past us. Marks and traces we all leave behind us do not touch it at all: it persists indifferently and renews itself day after day.
SANDI RENKO (Trieste, 1949) is of Italian-Slovenian birth. He graduated from the d’Arte Umberto Nordio in Trieste. While a student there, he started attending Centro Arte Viva, where he was attracted by the experiential space of kinetic and programmed art. His first work made of corrugated cardboard, the foundation that determined the development of his artistic expression, directed into geometry and three-dimensionality as well as the interaction between the observer and the work, was created in 1969.
At the beginning of the 1970s, Renko moved to Padova where he opened an atelier for design, visual communication, and art direction. He worked for leading companies and designed furniture, furnishings, and lighting. In Padova, he was stimulated by the artistic and intellectual environment of the place, where the experience of the Gruppo N group still echoed. He started participating in group exhibitions, happenings, and improvised events. In visual art he also used the planning rigidity of design and thus embarked on a rectilinear and consistent path conceived on a personal technique.
Since 2000, he has been strengthening his artistic activity by experimenting with new materials and colours. He has tried his hand in synaesthetic projects and created multisensory works, equipped with music. He has exhibited at personal and group exhibitions in Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, France, Switzerland, Croatia, and in New York. His works are presented at the greatest Italian fairs of contemporary art. The first comprehensive overview of his production since 1966 was put on display in 2015 in the Padiglione delle Arti Gallery in Marcon near Venice.
Together with iconic representatives of programmed art and kinetics, such as Cruz-Diez, Le Parc, and Tornquist, Renko participated at the Veridical Sharper Perception exhibition, which was unveiled in 2016 in New York, while a year later he was present at the Biasi, Campesan, Munari e altri amici di Verifica 8+1 exhibition, which was part of the 57th Venice Biennale. In 2021, his work STRIPED 321 was selected for and exhibited at the Origins in Geometry biennale by the Museum of Geometric and MADI Art in Dallas (USA). Since 2019 he has been living and creating in Trieste. He is represented by various galleries in Italy and abroad.
ALEŠ BRCE (Trieste, 1981) is a self-taught graphic designer. In 2009, following a several-year-long position in the sector of precise mechanical engineering, he decided to focus on graphic design. After completing a technical course, he started collaborating in Trieste with different designers and institutions, and later landed a job at an advertising agency. Since 2016 he has been working as an independent designer. He is a recipient of many international professional awards, such as the Brumen Award 2017 (winner), Brumen Recognition for Excellent Slovenian Design 2017 and 2022, Joseph Binde Award 2018 (jury distinction), European Design Award 2018 (finalist), and Tokyo Type Directors Club 2019 (annual book feature). His works have been published in distinguished international print and online publications. He has exhibited his posters in Ljubljana, Paris, Munich, Kharkiv, Moscow, and Vienna.
MARKO JUGOVIC (Trieste, 1992), a recipient of the Hartman Award 2017 for research in the field of audio-visual composition, graduated in percussion at the Giuseppe Tartini Conservatory in Trieste. He studied further with Prof Fabián Pérez Tedesco at the same academy and achieved the highest grade and recommendation (2014). He received the title Master of Music in 2017 in Rotterdam, at the Codarts Academy, where he developed his skills in the fields of music, composition, and drawing/animation. Since 2017, he has been collaborating with the OSN RAI orchestra. He also collaborated with the Teatro Lirico Giuseppe Verdi orchestra from Trieste, the FVG Mitteleuropa orchestra, the Camerata Rotterdam chamber ensemble and others. He has performed at various festivals, such as the International Film Festival Rotterdam, Milano Musica, Sinestesie Sonore, Echos: čezmejni odmevi, Trieste Estate, Trieste Loves Jazz, North Sea Jazz Round Town, Otis Park Festival and many more. Together with Gabriele Petracco (Popocatepetl Percussion Duo), he is the founder and artistic leader of the International Percussion Premiere Night international competition.
NICOLETTA ZAR (Trieste, 1959) graduated in art history from the University of Trieste. In 1985, she participated in the preparation of the catalogue and exhibition Frontiere d’avanguardia. Gli anni del futurismo nella Venezia Giulia, Musei Provinciali Gorizia, one of the first exhibits in the 1980s that extensively discussed local groups of the so-called Second Futurism. Later, she worked at the Edizioni Studio Tesi publishing house in Pordenone. In the library of the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste (UNESCO-ICTP), where she worked for more than thirty years, she was first head of the periodicals department and then head of library services. She has continued to nurture her art history interests, with an emphasis on historic avantgarde movements of the 20th century, contemporary art, and languages of visual communication.
