An old trick that never fails: space production from Raphael to Gober

 

At the moment there is no definition for that kind of three-dimension artworks conceived to directly involve architecture or, better, to be completed by architecture itself. Nevertheless it is quite easy to ascribe to this peculiar type of sculptural art certain pieces by artists like Erwin Wurm, Elmgreen&Dragset or Robert Gober, just to name a few. Very often merely pleasant for the eye, but sometimes also pregnant of meanings, these kind of pieces are generally conceived to make the beholder feel positively surprised, amused, displaced.

 

In the case of Robert Gober’s sinks and legs, for example, the ready-made artwork is attached to the wall in order to create an imaginary space that obviously begins to exist only when the artwork is properly installed in the room. Nothing is explicitly said about this hypothetical space – and time -, but we are driven to believe that an intangible and unpredictable second side of the mysterious object is waiting to be discovered by our creative sight beyond the threshold that the artist is giving us.

 

Similarly, the car and caravan by Elmgreen&Dragset placed in 2003 at the centre of Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan – it may be helpful to know that this is a public area daily visited by thousands of tourists – looked like as if they were coming into the real world directly from the underground, likely for a mistake the driver committed. He, and who was with him, were like phantoms restlessly dancing under the mystic gallery dome probably along with the phantom of Giuseppe Mengoni, the building designer, who died on 30 December 1977 falling from the top of the dome soon after the gallery had been completed.

 

For Erwin Wurm, on the contrary, architecture and environment are instruments to enhance the altered reality his sculpture re-enacts. In occasion of “Truck” (first presented in 2005), the wall and floor were both supporting the impossible curved truck, that certainly wouldn’t have been so visually effective if presented self standing in the middle of the room, or in a public space. Similarly, the house placed on the top of the façade of the MUMOK in Wien (House attack, 2006) wouldn’t have been so impressive without using the building as an monumental plinth at the service of the work.

 

These are just a few examples. Who is confident with contemporary three-dimension art production will certainly be able to pinpoint many other artworks and artists adopting this same approach to architecture. And perhaps he will consider it nothing more than a creative resource where surprise, amusement, and displace are required.

 

However, also who is not too familiar with Renaissance art may notice that in a similar way during the XIV and the XV century, many artists let their artworks engaging with architecture; and some influential examples of such effective combination between fiction and reality include Raphael’s “The school of Athens” or the frescoes decorating the Sistine Chapel’s vault. In both cases the painted scene is connected with real architecture by a frame of painted architectonic elements, which in turn dialogue with the characters on the scene making them terribly realistic and dynamic. Look at the group of philosophers half-hidden behind the right side of the fictional decorated arch painted by Raphael, or at the constant interaction between the complex architecture structure of the Sistine cycle and the human bodies attending the Biblical scenes.

 

From a certain point of view, the detailed vision masterly painted by Raphael and Michelangelo seems to belong to the same hypothetical dimension Gober, Elmgreen&Dragset, Ewrin Wurm and many contemporary artists postulate with their enigmatic visual tricks. Now the distance between the art scene ruled by Popes Julius II and that set by private capitals during the Museum of Modern Art era doesn’t appear that long anymore, with the Baroque style – both in painting and sculpture – as a huge and comfortable bridge between them.

November 25, 2020