Giuliana Cunéaz
Terrains Vagues
01/03/2003 - 22/03/2003
PLAY gallery for still and motion pic
hannoversche strasse 1
d-10115 berlin
T +49-30-2758 2111
T +49-30-2345 5753
www.pushthebuttonplay.com
Opening: February 28, 2003, 7 pm
Mon – Sat 2-8 pm
In collaboration with B&D Studio Contemporanea, Milan. www.bnd.it
The PLAY gallery for still and motion pictures in Berlin is the site of
Germany’s first solo show of the work of Giuliana Cunéaz. For
several years this Italian video artist‘s work has looked at the
unexplored parts of the mind. Her past efforts include a cycle on shamans who enter the
perceptive world of vision and clairvoyance, revealing to others the internal vortex of revelation that remains beyond the physical.
For this occasion, Giuliana Cunéaz has created a project called “Terrains Vagues“ on the city of Berlin, where real and imaginary elements converge,giving rise to an intriguing and complex journey during which the German capital reflects the contradictions of modern society. The show includes three video installations on daily life—social aspects such as holidays and costumes—interpreted from an anthropological point-of-view. What interests this artist is leaving behind the conscious mind and transitioning to the infinite internal world.
In addition to ancient Dionysian themes, Giuliana Cunéaz reflects on the theme of memory and disorientation through a video installation created in collaboration with some residents of Berlin, who were asked to rake soil for an ideal natural space located in the center of the city, as if that simple request could unearth a desire to find their own roots. In the words of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, these are Notes from Underground brought to light through exhaustive self-analysis.
“Raking soil was a way of digging through the incomprehensible, unknown and enigmatic world in order to concentrate on a primary element, a place of death and birth, in order to momentarily escape from the sharply drawn rhythms of society in an attempt to listen to the most hidden parts of ourselves through the underground of the soul. I also wanted to emphasize the relationship between identity and formative processes, beginning with awareness that the individual is a crowd,” the artist explains.
The title, Terrains Vagues, refers to the undefined areas that so aptly link the end of one world with the beginning of another. In short, this is a universe of abandoned spaces and free spaces—including mental spaces. As is
often the case in Giuliana Cunéaz’s work, border areas are explored using a mental map that allows her to point out that which defies rationality.
The “Terrains Vagues” project also reflects on one of the great issues in contemporary art: the vacuum, both physical and existential, set forth as an ideal in work by artists such as Lucio Fontana and Yves Klein, who have gone beyond the physical dimension to the psychological.
Giuliana Cunéaz was born in Aosta in 1959 and lives and works in Milan. Her first solo show was held in 1984 at the Teatro Romano in Aosta. Since then she has exhibited work in well-known public and private spaces in Italy and throughout the world. She participated in the Festival di Videoformes in 1991, 1993 and 1996. In 1994 she took part in the São Paulo Biennial in Brazil, and in 1996 she exhibited work at the Obalne Galerie in Pirano, Slovenia. In 2002, her works were exhibited at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Bucharest.
In Italy, in 1995 her work appeared at the Revoltella Museum in Trieste, in 2000 at the Pecci Museum in Prato and also in 2000 at the Torre del Lebbroso in Aosta. In 2001 she had solo shows at Castello Ursino in Catania and at the Museum Laboratory of Contemporary Art at La Sapienza University in Rome. In 2002 she participated in Exit at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo space in Turin, and in January 2003 her solo show Turbe celesti [Heavenly Crowds] opened at the B & D gallery in Milan. In October she is slated to have a show at the Annecy Castle in France.
