by BILL VIOLA
MANIFESTO
Art takes its origins from a more or less stressed distance between its manifestations and reality, through the assumption of artificial shapesthat transcend the natural ones:a picture, a poetry or a musical piece are alwaysan added construction that can overcomethe borderlines of contingent reality.
In the conception of the work of art, modern age creates a gap with the natural events.If we look at the young “prostitute” Olympia of Manet, we notice that the author, by setting aside every emotional involvment, paints her in the way painters of the previous century would have painted a nude of noblewoman.The work of art carries on the process of outdistancing which will become one ofthe characteristics of contemporary art,and which is regulated from what we can definethe “principle of indifference”.In the same way, the “Bottle Dryer” of Duchamp undertakes a revolutionary and epochal role.How is it possibile that a normal tool ofeveryday life can become a work of art?Duchamp simply asks himself: “What is a work of art? If I took a bottle dryer from a wine merchant and put it in a gallery, would it be a work of art?”Yes because the above mentioned bottle dryer would undergo what the surrealist movementcalls a “shock”, a translation of reality:that object is not used anymore to dry bottlesbut it becomes a group of shapes that takesa function alternative to the original one.The anthropologist Lévi-Strauss, basing himselfon the assumption that usually someone visitsan art gallery to see works of art and not to drain bottles of wines for free, states that the fact of finding himself face to face to an object like this – dark and bristling with arms –may let him be in awe of it.This object, in fact, is not anymore what he has been built for, but becomes a kind of ghost,an element that suggests something else,and for this reason, gives rise to different feelings.
This suggestion, together with a more complex reflexion that detaches itself from the classical interpretation of the work of art, shows thatthe decontestualization of an object may createa work of art.
We may ask ourselves: what has all of this to dowith the materiality of the work of art? But most of all: can we interpret history of art usingas main criteria the vision of something that doesn‘t exist, that cannot be seen, something that the work of art just evokes, recognizing in it the opponent function of the author in relation to the dominant values of every age?Though been dominated by materialism,nowadays we live in an immaterial world:we buy symbols, not products, and we consume virtual entertainement.Also history of art of last decades,with the exponential development of digital, highlights the passage to more and more dematerialized shapes.The same idea of aesthetich event theorizedby H.G. Gadamer mainteins that the work ofart doesnt’s exist thank to its 'materialità',but thanks to the immaterial processes of information and interpretation whichthe dialectics between the finite shapeand what it trascends involves. We can add to this considerations also the current developments of applied sciences,in which the democristian assumption of a "full void" is substituted by a "tingling void"filled with annihilation and creations of "virtual" particles.The physical reality in which we liveis not “complete”, or in a better way,is filled with elements which are difficult to entrust with a status of existence, unless we prepare ourselves – which we are willing to do – to another idea of reality and materialità.
Immaterialism aims to be exactely this:a kind of new Fibonnacci’s Code whichinterprets history of art in a new way,revealing the contradictions and the different interpretation, taking on the research,and so the doubt, as guide, and immaterial valuesas main factors setting up an orderboth ancient and contemporary.Promoting the awareness of infinite potentialsof the immaterial and showing the ability of artof filling up the gap between reality and idealis the historical task of our generation,and the NY BIENNALE ART means to bethe Manifesto of this philosophy.
Pietro Franesi
Director
NY BIENNALE ART 2009/2010
