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MR. PIPPIN
COSMOLOGICAL CONVOLUTIONS
Curated by Alessandra Pace
Presentation of “Omega=1”: one evening only on Thursday 27 April, at 5 pm, Sala Morone, in the Renaissance convent of San Bernardino, Stradone Provolo 28, downtown Verona.
Opening: Cosmological Convolutions, Thursday 27 April at 7 pm.
The exhibition runs until 30 June 2006, at Galleria Arte e Ricambi, Via A.Cesari 10, Verona.
Many of us will recall the compositions of office appliances that virtually copulate with each other, or the sculptures made of metal mechanisms inspired by planetary convolutions, and the photographs, often obtained by transforming objects like toilets and washing machines and even spaces such as rooms and corridors into a camera obscura. Steven Pippin, British artist who participated in Aperto (Venice Biennale, 1993), in Campo (curated by Francesco Bonami at the GAM, Turin, 1996), and who was candidate for the Turner Prize in 1999, now presents his first one-person exhibition in Italy entitled “Cosmological Convolutions”. For the occasion a preview of “Omega=1”, a new machine capable of balancing a pencil on its point, will be displayed for one afternoon only, on the day of the opening, in the Renaissance setting of the San Bernardino convent.
Some claim that the real works of art of our time are represented by jets, speed trains, Ferraris, mobile phones and some industrial plants. Never have machines been as beautiful as today, so much so that they compete with art. Undoubtedly, the last two centuries have witnessed an increased importance of technique, and if we think that for over a million years, i.e. two hundred times the history of civilization, man used simple stone tools, then we realize to what extent the industrial revolution has had no precedents. Steven Pippin seems aware of this. Engineer by background, not only is he fascinated by the cognitive process of cause and effect, but he also is susceptible to a purely aesthetic attraction for machines, against which he measures himself.
However, his machines are mostly paradoxes or aberrations in which elements taken from dominant technocratic culture are used in free compositions and pushed to absurdity. Some of them click like a clockwork but absolve abstruse functions. Others, like “Omega=1”, are built with the purpose of preventing things from happening. In this case, that a pencil erect on its point and placed on a surface will not tilt over under the force of gravity. With a reaction speed of 20 milliseconds, the mechanism keeps correcting the position of the pencil as it is about to loose balance. The result is a piece of Zen engineering that hypnotises like a mantra. In another work, two open photocopying machines, the exposure glass adhering on top of one another, photocopy each other and by so doing deliver grey sheets of paper that testify both to the impure act and to the excess of information, which at times locks into the self-reference of a close circuit. With this work the artist (whose signature is Mr. Pippin, Optical Disillusions) sheds an irreverent aura on the pristine and serious image of the office space. A deadpan humour borne out of dialectic between extremes is the thread between Mr. Pippin’s works.
Steven Pippin (GB – 1960). One-person exhibitions (selection): Venice Biennale (1993) in the “Aperto” section MOMA, New York and Portikus, Frankfurt (1993); “Campo 6”, GAM, Turin (1996); MOMA, San Francisco (1998); P.S.1, New York and ICA, Philadelfia (1999). Group exhibitions abroad include: Musèe d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris (1995 and 1996), Guggenheim, New York (1999), MOMA, New York (2000), Centre George Pompidou, Paris (2000 and 2001), Tate Gallery, London (2002), touring exhibition organized by the Hayward Gallery London (2006). In 1997 he has obtained a DAAD residency in Berlin and in 1999 he was a candidate for the Turner Prize. Works in public collections (selection): Tate Gallery London; MOMA, New York; Guggenheim Museum, NY; SF MoMA San Francisco; Walker Art Centre, Minneapolis; FNAC Paris.
