Journal 11 - Progetto Arte

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Journal 11 - Progetto Arte
Fondazione Pistoletto Onlus Editore, Torino
Cittadellarte
2007

Michele Drascek participation in
Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto -
Love Difference's workshop
Da cosa nasce cosa / One thing leads to another
published in Journal 11 - Progetto Arte

Journal 11 documents the projects, events and exhibitions that involved Cittadellarte Fondazione Pistoletto in 2006.
Da cosa nasce cosa / One thing leads to another is a workshop on inter-disciplinary planning - on creative processes for responsible social transformation - held in Gorizia – Nova Gorica in April and May 2006.
Curated by Love Difference - Artistic Movement for an InterMediterranean politic, promoted by Modidi with the support of the Friuli Venezia Giulia Region.


more:
eng: http://www.lovedifference.org/eng/network/workshop/gorizia.htm
ita: http://www.lovedifference.org/it/network/workshop/gorizia.htm

314/317/318

New paintings for the solo exhibition that takes place in Università Popolare degli Studi di Trieste in November 2007.

I am discussing an exhibition with an apparently enigmatic title: 314/317/318. These three numbers representing the title, are written on the same number of inventory plates applied on three pieces of the building property of the Trieste University, to be exact, on three doors, that open into three cosy, minute rooms of small dimensions where the exhibition was held. These rooms were renamed the "bright rooms", and are the venue of the project "Tracce fresche" (Fresh traces) that Michele Drascek had the courtesy to inaugurate. With this spatial metonymy that refuses to announce the content to indicate an anonymous container, to express more with this refusal, the exhibition satisfies its visitors. And with regards to this space (inventory, numbered), and as I said, cosy and minute, Drascek thought out and realized his intervention, which models on the course state of one road; from one room to another, from one door to another. This road passes through open landscapes where a sort of story evolves: the occupation of natural spaces by man and his final disappearance, due to a clear incapability to inhabit these places without destroying them or destroying oneself. The last image is one ironic identification profile that brings to mind the revealing and accusing guilty a natural but deformed creature, some kind of a dwarf with bloodshot eyes. He is accompanied by the legend Physica curiosa, because the tone is not apocalyptic but ironic and aloof, like the one of an entomologist and naturalist used to the freaks of nature [refer to post Physica curiosa]. The most astonishing among these seems to be the man himself. There are three time periods in the story, like there are three rooms that host them; Drascek adapts himself with flexibility in the spaces where he works and it is not a coincidence that his discussion seems to be eminently on the space, which appears to be more natural than architectonic. The first stop is the sky, or better, the tongues of brown, overcast sky, dominated by skies full of initial obscurity or already drowned in the darkness of the night, which is always dark bluish. Greyish diurnal sky, dark bluish nocturnal sky; It is never completely light or dark, nor ever the light falls from the heights to excavate the landscape. The earth’s profile is a silhouette, a strip of hills and apical shapes that appear to be more like turrets and bell towers in the distance rather than lampposts, as they turn out to be at a closer look. Drascek’s ability was to capture the vastness of natural landscapes on rather small size canvasses, 15 x 20 cm.: all is big and distant. The oil technique with the addition of plaster gives opacity to the atmosphere, and the use of a roller to trace lines in the sky, gives a sense of squall and precipitation still dense in the air. Even the elimination of colour, more than the drafting itself, gives a sense of origin and an echo in the distance. The lampposts: a sign of technology which does not appear as invasive as it perhaps should. Not even lattices or other much more monstrous symbols. Or perhaps the glance is already ironic till the charge for an environmental aggression like saying that the man’s work, despite being so pompous, is actually a banal scratch on the nature’s body and the only one to pay for his or hers arrogance is the man alone and not the world. The second stop, summarized in a Posthuman landscape, in fact announces itself as gaseous, mephitic scenery dense with vapours of the day after, but the only living form is a tender roe deer, a delicate form of life, and perhaps because of this, appears to be tougher. Here the irony is apparent. It was said for the idea of the fatal development, which structures the three moments of the exhibition: the spelling is scarcely allusive, recalled by lexical spies in the legends but could have easily been ignored, and Drascek does not do much to impose it. He wants to point it out with a programmatic sheet on the side with a declaration of purposes, but in the end his theme seems to be the indestructibility of the cosmos, its vastness, that does not care about the willingness of the freak of nature’s power, a dwarf of the third station, who is laughed at instead of handed over to our contempt. A poem about the intolerable silence of the horizon that closes in upon us, a glance from the blue heights that make the earth look small.
Marcello Monaldi


Human landscape dyptich 1
Acrylic, oil, plaster and graver on canvas
30 x 20 cm.
[© private collection]


Human landscape dyptich 2
Acrylic, oil, plaster and graver on canvas
30 x 20 cm.
[© private collection]


Human landscape 3_4
Acrylic and oil on canvas
15 x 20 cm. each


Human landscape. Night view dyptich (detail)
Acrylic, oil and graver on canvas
30 x 30 cm.


Posthuman landscape dyptich (detail)
Acrylic, watercolor and plaster on canvas
50 x 40 cm.
[© private collection]

Physica curiosa

Physica curiosa
acrylic, oil and watercolor on canvas
15 x 20 cm
25 x 30 cm. with frame

Physica curiosa reminds a piece of the compendiums of pictures and stories regarding monsters, physical abnormalities, and bizarre animals produced during 17th Century.*
Presented with a showy golden frame in its own exhibition room, like in a Wunderkammer (Cabinet of Wonder), the painting is the last work of 314/317/318 exhibition and the first of a series dedicated to the topic:

The last image is one ironic identification profile that brings to mind the revealing and accusing guilty a natural but deformed creature, some kind of a dwarf with bloodshot eyes. He is accompanied by the legend Physica curiosa, because the tone is not apocalyptic but ironic and aloof, like the one of an entomologist and naturalist used to the freaks of nature. The most astonishing among these seems to be the man himself. [refer to post 314/317/318]
Marcello Monaldi

[ * The authors of these studies were respected and experienced physicians and natural philosophers, such as Gaspar Schott, who published Physica Curiosa in 1662]

Hypnos. The personification of the Sleep

The triptych was produced for The Eagle and the Swan. The Mith of Night in the contemporary art, that took place in Primo Piano Livingallery, Lecce (Italia) in October 2007.

The refined triptych Hypnos. The personification of the Sleep takes us back to the myth: into the oneiric blue, like a shadow, Hypnos, son of Night and Thanatos’s twin brother, gives the refreshing sleep. The atmosphere is in suspense of the transition zone where the conscience becomes an easy prey of the innermost unconscious.

Hypnos. The personification of the Sleep tryptich
acrylic, oil, plaster and graver on canvas
15 x 20 cm. each

Against the motorized regime of speed

Against the motorized regime of speed
installation view
variable dimensions

Site specific light and sound source installation in Galleria Regionale d’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Spazzapan for the Omissis 07 Festival of Performing Art, September 2007, Gradisca d'Isonzo, Gorizia (Italia).

Concept and development: Michele Drascek
Technical support and Sound designing: Andrea Chinese
Production: mattatoioscenico
http://www.mattatoioscenico.com/

To surprise!
Amaze at all costs!
Magnificent terror!
Impact-making artists!
Shockvertising art!
You have to be fast in order to see something!
versus
The impact of silence.
The silence of painting.
The silence: one voice.
A language without words:
The language of creation.

Remaining silent, now there's a lesson for you! What more immediate notion of duration?

Against the motorized regime of speed
The silent performance_1


Against the motorized regime of speed
The silent performance_2


Against the motorized regime of speed.
A language without words:
The language of creation.
detail


Against the motorized regime of speed.
A language without words:
The language of creation.
detail

Interval

Paintings on canvas for the solo exhibition that taked places in Italijanski inštitut za kulturo v Sloveniji, Ljubljana (Slovenia) in September 2007.

The human figure has dissolved, what remains is a shadow, a light and blurry engraved trace. In his paintings, Michele Drascek interprets the constant flow of life and time, liquefaction of materials up to a point, where only the residues are exposed: numb and silent landscapes, aware of their past and present. His landscapes are a reflection of the inner world, where the use of coloured backgrounds and graver become objects and predicates of memories and actions, states of mind that reached a solid and definite balance. There is no contrast or excess, only soft lines, travelling across the canvas, engraved in a layer of plaster, only movements registered with small, bright points. Pastel, oil, acrylic, aquarelle; the author’s choice of techniques appears to be destined for the final representation, the right transfer of a mental image without any conditioning. The author’s work describes a man in his complete absence, reveals the loss of references, of will or better, the need for silence and immobility. It seems as his paintings are trying to achieve the vastness, like the images captured with an electronic microscope or the immense distance of the satellite. Light and dark blue come to life, spilling over the edges of the chosen background, mixing with the surrounding to convey the sense of unity, in order to leave the observer to meditation, a moment of silence and new thoughts. His paintings speak to us about love and distance, passion, strength and calm resignation.
Giulia Pezzoli


Untitled dyptich 1 (detail)
acrylic, plaster and graver on canvas
20 x 20 cm.
© private collection


Lightning dyptich
acrylic, oil, plaster and graver on canvas
30 x 20 cm. each


Above
acrylic, plaster and graver on canvas
12,5 x 17,5 cm.

An infinite emptiness, says Qohélet, an infinite nothing

Production for 55th Ljubljana Summer Festival (Slovenia) during the X. International Fine Artis Colony Krizanke; exhibited in Ljubljanski Grad in July 2007.

A series of paintings on canvas, a tribute to the sentence of Qohélet, the book of the Ancient Testament present both in the Christian and in the Hebrew Bible, but also the pen name of the author. The paintings became, in a performance, a kind of Libro d'Ore (Book of Hours) during the celebration of the Mass in the churchs...reading between the infinite nothing.


An infinite emptiness, says Qohélet, an infinite nothing dyptich
acrylic and enamel on canvas
30 x 40 cm. each
[© private collection]


An infinite emptiness, says Qohélet, an infinite nothing
acrylic and enamel on canvas
40 x 30 cm.
[© private collection]


An infinite emptiness, says Qohélet, an infinite nothing
acrylic on canvas
30 x 40 cm. each
[© private collection]


An infinite emptiness, says Qohélet, an infinite nothing
Mass performance

Fade out drawings

Old master paintings details reversed in a fade out procedure. In the drawings the contradiction cause a new tale, the subject change and is inclined to vanish. Produced in 2007, work in progress.

There's something I can't quite make out...Margarita fades away!

[from Velàzquez Las Meninas]

acrylic, watercolour, enamel and burin on wrapping paper

17 x 10 cm