Savona
Cappella di San Michele,
via San Michele angolo via G. Servettaz
22th February - 30 March 2019
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EARTH TO EARTH, ASHES TO ASHES, DUST TO DUST
“Lionardo da Vinci [...], dando principio a quella terza maniera che noi vogliamo chiamare la moderna, oltra la gagliardezza e bravezza del disegno, et oltra il contraffare sottilissimamente tutte le minuzie della natura, [...] dette veramente alle sue figure il moto et il fiato”.
In the beginning of the 20th century, Walter Friedländer, a German art historian, defined Mannerism as an extension of the High Renaissance style. Before him, Vasari, one of the first critic who wrote le Vite, stated that “Maniera Moderna” is the period which goes from the death of Raffaello (1520) to the Baroque. The style began to take hold with the works of Rosso Fiorentino, Perin del Vaga and Bronzino,
who was a student painter of Pontormo (1494-1557). The lattest was an orphaned schizophrenic, hypochondriac, who suffered from Asperger Syndrome. He is attributed with creating this new eccentric style, as his personality would dictate! His works: elegant, sophisticated and powerful revealed the first hints of courage and originality, distant from ancient classicism.
An anti-classicism spirit emerged in the 16th century. It was full of affectation, exaggeration and distortion, exploring either unnatural, extreme poses and movements, or disappearance of symmetry. In short, paintings become emotions-based. Art witnesses an evolution, far from its grace and balance of the past. All new.
SINTA TAMSJADI and THOMAS SCHMIDT, are two German artists. They act in front of a camera in a truly inquisitive way: completely naked. What do they ask of themselves and of the viewer? First of all, their two bodies, those of a man and a woman totally naked, as the day one was born, are a symbol.
Since the beginning of art history, artists over the centuries have been dealing with the Expulsion from Paradise.
Most notably, this theme is revealed in the works of Jacopo della Quercia, Masolino and the famous masterpiece of Masaccio: Exiles from Eden in the Brancacci Chapel, Florence. Here, for the first time, we see shades of bodies, within a real organic revolution, showing corpulent and earthly bodies, enacting the power of what is Real.
Then onwards appeared Michelangelo with The Fall and Expulsion from Garden of Heaven in Sistine Chapel in Rome. Finally the works of Alexandre Cabanel in the 19th century.
Many others, such as Van Eyck and his Politptychs, confronted that theme and nudity. And artists still do, nowadays.
Nudity is first of all a metaphor for being defenseless, helpless, insecure, unarmed, unprotected, vulnerable. This is how artists can target themselves in order to convey beauty and deeper thoughts. In so doing TAMSJADISCHMIDT have realigned the gender-balance of conceptual and performing art in a contemporary manner.
They perform. They talk a lot about their inner state and posit questions; they dance, they move, they strive, they touch and they crawl in order to recall their ancestral reptilian brain. What follows is a process of distillery.
When they feel ready, they use a cable-release to immortalize the right moment and they photograph themselves, after getting near to their truth. At the end of this long and infinite attemptive process, they come out with an image.
“When we die” - they said – “our bodies will be buried in Earth or burned to Ashes. Both substances are connected to the transformation from life to death. “Our art work has always been about the process of dying. When I was eight - I painted my new toy train to make it look old and realistic”. Transformation is the key word.
In the contemporary world these themes are real and exist more than ever. Wars and bombs, cataclysm, earth distruction, tsunami, dryness, desertification, global warming, powerful storms and flooding make mankind tiny, vulnerable and more lonely every day. It’s a matter of fact.
Two series of works are presented here: Ashes and Earth.Burning of the eyes without being able to see anymore, a sense of chocking and perennial coughing, dry throat, dust everywhere. Are these the symptoms of a chemical attack in Syria or elsewhere in the world?
When TAMSJADISCHMIDT enact Ashes, they really go through a similiar process and a near-to-death experience; indeed, it was very close to those images of war and bombing one sees everyday on TV. Perhaps, that is why they are so captivating in their beauty; they seem so real, they cause true emotions, both physical and mental, as if they are on-stage.
In this body of works, which is simultaneously performance and photography, they examine the essence of human origins. The performance follows no choreography, instead, it carries the artists off into a trance-like state: to the archaic self.
TAMSJADISCHMIDT paint themselves with sand, color, soil. Earth, water and light create a space in which they trace downwards the shadowy themes of origins, existence and death. In doing so they explore contemporary reality, pain, innocence, joy. A cable release brings the “decisive moment,” in which they are both subject matter and photographers at the same time. A long thread, a cable, similiar to the ombelical cord, is left visible on purpose to remind us of the bond to mother-earth and life itself.
Where do we all come from, and where do we go, are the big questions that they ask themselves and the viewers. The first series Earth, reminds of the darkness of Goya and Rembrandt with widespread chiaroscuro and dark tones of colors. Covered with earth, the body images provoke a shocking effect, where only eyes and their white pupils are visible. This allows to focus on the soul.
In the second series Ashes instead, one sees bones and flesh, light, twisted movements, levitations as in the tunic and dresses of Giambattista Tiepolo’s paired Apostles. He accomplished this with his characters in The Triumph of Virtue and Nobility Over Ignorance (1744ca, Ca’ Rezzonico, Venice). Those images of light and movement, were influenced by Tintoretto’s taste for theatrical performance and magnificent splendor.
One can discover a juxtaposition, a counterbalance between the two series; light and darkness, movement or stillness, positive and negative coming out from TAMSJADISCHMIDT’s bodies in twist, embrace, movements. With their strong mingling of body transformation they achieve transcendence. And with this, they pass over to another state, to another dimension: Aethereal. That of the Infinitive. As Carolee Schneemann, Bill Viola and Bruce Nauman understood in their first videos, and perfomances in the 70’s, the body is central to all. It is seen as a source, as a territory to either explore or colonise. The body is also an instrument of seduction, sensual with all his white flesh and velvet skin: tempting and arrogant in pleasing, as Titian perfectly accomplished in Danae.
Furthermore TAMSJADISCHMIDT represent, inact both life and death; some of the dark images can be seen as a state of war; people flooded by tragedies, such as tsunami, earthquakes, explosions. Newspapers are full of these images everyday and they serve as a warning, an admonishment in art as well. They can make people think and spread awareness about how fragile the planet and human beings really are.
This is the strenght and beauty of the work of these corageous artists: admit and accept how vulnerable, fragile we all really are. Both in war and in an infinite peace.
