Lygia Pape at Fondazione Carriero, Milan
For the occasion of the first Italian show of Brazilian artist Lygia Pape (Rio de Janeiro, 1927-2004) in the spaces of Casa Parravicini in Milan – the location of Fondazione Carriero – curator Francesco Stocchi discusses the inspirations and ideas behind this crucial exhibition.
L’OFFICIEL ART: “Lygia Pape” is the first solo show ever held in an Italian institution of the work of the Brazilian artist, who died 15 years ago. How did you develop the exhibition concept, and how is it structured?
FRANCESCO STOCCHI: The essence of the ritual, the pure gesture, their origin, their purposes – these aspects form a whole that contains the poetics of Lygia Pape. But this whole is divisible. The exhibition sets out to explore the independence of these factors and their mutual connections that vary in keeping with the media utilized. Given the artist’s eclecticism, her ability to move freely from one technique to another, one ritual to the next, the show should not be taken as a retrospective. There are various aspects we have decided to put aside, like the performance, the poetry, the theater, the very first works steeped in constructivism, the use of organic elements... I’d say that this exhibition takes on a fractal dimension, not entire but nevertheless not partial. What interests me is to show how Pape was a forerunner of the evolution of a certain modernism we can observe today – just consider how contemporary music has broken free of a preordained process, for example. Pape replaces method with ritual, and considering her range of action I think this is extraordinary.
Pape’s combines the rigor of European modernism with the sensuality of her culture of origin, giving rise to an original practice capable of blending sensoriality and sensitivity regarding the organic, natural world. What is the relationship between her work and Brazilian Concretism, and how does her practice fit into the Brazilian art scene after World War II?
Pape’s relationship with Concretism becomes a rejection, early on; already at the end of the 1950s she feels the need to take a distance from this “dangerous rational extremism.” Concretism represents the shadow of the great tree from which she feels the need to break free, since she is certain not interested in replicating Mondrian, Malevich, Volpi… Pape forcefully rebels, together with kindred artists, giving rise to Neo-Concretism. These are the years in which she makes her experimental books, and I think it is precisely the exploration of the space of the book, associated with that of the space-time of the films (in the collaborations with Cinéma Nôvo), that gives form and impulse to this transformation. Towards the middle of the 1950s the Brazilian art scene, as in other parts of South America like Argentina and Venezuela, opened up to a new perception, derived from a “crisis of the media and of representation.” This crisis triggered both formal innovations and new conceptions of the artistic object, its observer and their relationship. The awareness of being in a subaltern geographical context suggested solutions never seen before.
Besides the books, etchings, sculptures, drawings and paintings, the exhibition features one of the artist’s most famous installations, Ttéia 1, C (2000) an immersive setting formed by geometric arrays of gold and silver threads. How and why do the works of this series seem to so aptly sum up Pape’s artistic process?
There is a work by Pape titled O Ovo (1967). A short, silent film that shows a white cube placed on a beach. The artist begins to emerge from the cube, breaking its shell. The depiction of birth in a nonrepresentative way, below reality, and away from any naturalistic translation. Pape expresses herself through a symbolic gesture, emerging from a closed space, the concrete space we spoke of previously, to enter a perceptible space. So, if the cube is the origin, for me Ttéia represents the aim, the place towards which Pape moves. Faced by a Ttéia you find yourself suspended between sign and space, in a struggle between the imaginative and the rational.
How does this exhibition fit into the programming of the Foundation?
The degree of general awareness regarding a particular artist is not necessarily a sign of the level of interest among sector professionals, or at least that should not be the case. In this sense Lygia Pape represents an excellent example. Though unfamiliar to most people, her work is respected and admired by many artists. The aim of the exhibition is to offer a dual perspective, which reflects the condition in which Pape’s work exists today. On the one hand, an introduction for the general public that knows little about her work and is accustomed to appreciating a certain modernism, a given use of basic geometry; on the other, a unique opportunity to delve deeper, for people who already admire her work but have not had a chance to see an extensive solo exhibition. So we have the intention to make a breakthrough (in the first case), alongside a sign of continuity. Personally, I think of this exhibition as the second part of “Between the Lines,” curated in 2017 together with Rem Koolhaas, where an attempt was made to show the more sensitive, less rational side of Sol LeWitt. I have thought about Casa Parravicini as a medium, responding to its characteristics and its whims in relation to the work of the artist. In this way, the audience should feel it is part of an organic whole. As Pape said: “As you can see, all is connected. The artwork does not exist as a finished and resolved object, but as something that is always present, permanent within people.”
“Lygia Pape.” Fondazione Carriero, Milan. March 28 – July 21.