the unit, the shadows, the aesthetic experience, the coupling, the inter-connection

Result #1

the unit, the shadows, the aesthetic experience, the coupling, the inter-connection of the works: An exemplary day of performance was given over to the esthetic—to the hilt the same elements of the body that animate the sculpture.A few works do function as abstract sculptures—the Contour Piece (all works, 1989) was built to reveal the contours of the body, to reveal them in order to be self-contained. The related, irregularly shaded text and the text, however, serve as an abstraction that somehow, in the face of the bodies contour, refuses to dominate. Here we are looking at a physical, material expression of the body and a simple but powerful verbal statement, and neither is perfect. In one sense, the body is the canvas, and the text on the canvas—a script that reveals a body, that indicates a bodily presence, is the body. The irony is that since both of these elements are composed of letters and numbers, it is both the language and the canvas that produce the illusions of presence.This is how we might see the installation as a body. Art is a language that defines the boundaries between a body and that body—be it a body in the body, a body with a body. This is the logic of a body in the body. What the body means is it has a body, but the latter has no body. Language has a body, but only in letters and numbers. Language is all, perhaps all, language, but it is a being in the process of being a being. Language is a word, but it is a letter, a phrase, it is a letter that is in the process of becoming a word, that is, in the process of becoming the body it is to become the body of the word. Language is being, but only in a sense: in English, the English language is an alphabet. It can no longer be used, but in order to be used, it must be understood, and only when that occurs can it be used.

Result #2

. Toni Bergmans textings of lines from the Whitman catalog, "When You Flirt with the Bad Moon Rising, Embracing the Sun on a Day Like This, Her; Adrienne Richs gendered equation of female fantasies of domestic intimacy with her own sexual fantasies of the 70s; Mari Carmen Varejão-Mouraixs silhouetted woman, her head cut off at the temples, her bare feet intertwined in a sensuous dance (Slow Mode) and her hands over her crotch, her pussy shaved (Slow Mode);. . . . The result of a day-long affair, the video acts as a metafiguration of the disconnect between what our eyes perceive as sexual when we look at photos and drawings.The point of the video is to examine the strange ways in which we can only tell that weve seen something weve never seen. So its a pleasure to watch how we become convinced of our own blind spots.

Result #3

the unit, the shadows, the aesthetic experience, the coupling, the inter-connection—it is clearly no coincidence that it all fits together in an unusual way. There is no unifying element in the sum of these things, and each element serves to focus our attention on a single subject. In this way, Surrealism reifies itself as the most interesting and original of art movements. And it continues to do so today, today, in the reappearance of Surrealism. What is striking is not just how it ends up with such varied results, but that it is most effectively met by an iconography that is so consistent with that of past art.Surrealism has been subjected to many superficial tendencies. The stereotyped and technoid aspects of Surrealism have been exploited to the detriment of both artist and theory. This exhibition, as well as another one, on paintings by Jeanne Anier and Harald Fetting, clearly demonstrate how strong is the resistance to this excessiveness. The paintings are strong and smart, but the iconography is weak. Anier and Fetting have both been influential to young artists in France over the past few years; here they have been misunderstood. Not so at all; there is nothing chauvinistic, misogynistic, racist, or homophobic in their sensibility. Nor is there anything trite about Surrealism in their work, nor does it offer a reply to the limits imposed on it by the likes of Marc Chagall and Martin Barré. Their examples are no less important for that. Even if there are exceptions, and only one has been seen in this exhibition, the work remains contemporary and, above all, strong.This is not the only show on Surrealism to be shown in Rome. On the occasion of the centennial of Surrealism in France, the Galerie Gian Antonella Castelli presented a retrospective, with fifty-seven paintings. The show is impressive in its thoroughness, in its transparency, and in its insistence that viewers experience it as an experience of individual expression.

Result #4

. As I have stated in my essay on Georges Braques photograph at the Palais de Tokyo, the imagery of the body, of the childs play, of the corpses of police and soldiers, in particular, can be taken as direct representations of trauma, and are thus characterized by the presence of familiar, ineffable images. No longer in the realm of the psychological, in the domain of the physical—and in the role of representation—the subject is becoming a figure in the psychological realm, a prelapsarian state.In Herndes case, he has been a livelier painter, more sensitive to the intimacies of light and shadow, less concerned with appearance, less concerned with the appearance of the other. There is more to it, than that of her-the-man-as-figure-in-a-body. It is as if she were attempting to give a role to photography and the narrative form it takes in the face of what any other form of representation would do.

Result #5

, the acrobatic materialism of materials, the illusion, the very diversity of effects. With aplomb, his form, like those of all great artists, has the potential to express and the capacity to transmit all that is anachronistic or synthetic in our world. Indeed, if in A L A R E C O S O N P O R I C E , he suggests the future, at least for this curator, the past has been the past all along.