Strati. Eco-fobia Poetica
curated by Valeria Schäfer and Matteo Scabeni
Galleria Gaburro, Milan
09.04. - 19.05.2024
Exhibition view: Strati. eco-fobia Poetica, 2024
Photo: Galleria Gaburro
Strati. Eco-fobia Poetica
with works from Dingyue (Luna) Fan, Macoto Murayama, Sophia Pauley, Fabio Rocato and Katharina Veerkamp
The inevitable and the perverse
In a complex, fragmented reality where velocity overrides reflection, we see the emergence of stratification. This process, though impermanent, reveals multiple layers of meaning. A layer represents the modulation of perception, demanding various levels of interpretation, perspectives, and connections. Our contemporaneity is defined by hyper-connection, resulting from an extensive layering. Be it political, economic, aesthetic, cultural, formal, informal, natural, artificial, organic, inorganic, diachronic, or syncretic, layering forms the conceptual foundation of our reality's organization.
The exhibition Layers. Poetic Eco-phobia aims to analyse the structure of this paradigm and its implications, bringing together artists from diverse cultural matrices. It presents a meta-cultural, meta-temporal, and, additionally, meta-historical journey where atavistic references and contrasting poetics converge on the common goal of revealing the depth of meaning within the artworks. It exposes the mechanism underlying the deep perversion of artistic practice: unveiling hidden perspectives, profaning theabused, and creating rather than producing. The politics of form yield to the critique of control and power in a reality increasingly infiltrated by hybrid and heterogeneous beings, constructed across different realities. Its essence is inherently temporary, fleeting, concerning the order of belonging. Art transcends; it does not elevate. It performs the secular, profane act of tearing away the veil over our volatile beliefs. Each artist in this project explores the concept of the layer not just within their medium of expression but also in the conception of their own poetics. (...)
Katharina Veerkamp, in her series Invasive Aliens, portrays the condition of plants that occupy, dominate, shape, and transform the landscapes they are introduced to. An alien species that, rather than violating, seeks to inhabit spaces previously occupied by others. Utilizing iridescent paint and translucent panels, these works appear monochrome from the front, while from the side, the textures and shapes of this bold nature emerge. However, the sculptures delve into the concept of gesture as a pervasive practice, where different levels of reading are transparent, flattening distinctions and their boundaries. Mimicry and semblance serve as metaphors for the narcissism of the individual, who seeks only himself outside the self.
In Building, Dwelling, Thinking Martin Heidegger in 1951 introduces us to a radically different conception of space. Dwelling gives meaning to building, and within their tension, thinking emerges: an existential place, a metaphor of being-in-space. This consequential sequence posits that building presupposes dwelling, which in turn presupposes thinking, viewing the individual as an agent within the space they occupy. Heidegger's reflection extends beyond a new perspective on space, contributing to a precise vision of time: building requires something to build on, with, and for; dwelling implies inhabiting new or previously occupied spaces;
thinking is rooted in a long and substantial ancestral heritage, the foundation of thought structures.
Here, the paradigm is established as a space for endless exploration of the profound origins of the Anthropocene's reality of thought: a necessary re-conception and modulation of the human role, no longer as a vertical hierarchy but as a horizontal coexistence. The ecological dimension is merely one fragment of this complex system of theories. In our contemporaneity, we express a structured sensitivity for the future, appearing as an infinite constellation, composing, in Vilém Flusser's reflection, a "universe of dots" in which it hovers, imperceptible. Ecology, following Flusser and interpreted by Byung - Chul Han, aims to restore the individual's space and role in the future.
The risk lies in the utopianization of this perspective. Eco does not necessarily imply a scientifically based approach to changing a given environment but rather deepens the cultural matrix mutation over time. The utopia of eco-philia and ecology seems to yield to the atopy of eco-phobia: the tremendous, solipsistic terror born of our inadequacy, fearing our efforts are in vain. Eco-phobic atopy manifests in the individual's inability to recognize themselves within their living space, alien to the world they actively partake in. The political and poetic regime of eco-philia transitions into an eco-phobic layering in artistic practice, expressed through the conception of immediate images that allownature and itsmutability.
This exhibition, where the inevitable change in human, too human, perspective converges with the perversion typical of artistic representation to reveal other worlds, deepens the structure of existence, to think. Eco-philia and eco-phobia are two intimately complementary dimensions, where transience, a product of radical presentism, clashes with the permanence of the reflective gesture's very nature. Athought, neglected and degraded into speculation and idealism.
Valeria Schäfer and Matteo Scabeni