Spazialismo November 19 - December 30, 2009

bitforms gallery

529 West 20th St New York NY 10011 http://www.bitforms.com

via Art Agenda

Spazialismo is a group exhibition that explores the visionary concepts of Lucio Fontana's in the 1940's and 1950's about how people consider structures of space in the modern, yet still very natural world. The exhibit organizers say that it is also intended to serve as a vehicle for a contemporary review of the Spatialist texts, including 'Manifesto tecnico della Spazialismo," and "Television Manifesto." Fontana founded the Academia Altamira in Buenos Aries. The avant-garde school was founded to promote the idea that a new kind of art was needed to reflect the modern world as revealed by science.

Gathering the voices of five contemporary artists - Mel Bochner, R. Luke DuBois, Michael Joaquin Grey, Yael Kanarek and Matthew Ritchie - the exhibition focuses on expanded representations of space and dynamic movement. Also included will be photographic documentation of Fontana's 1951 illuminated arabesque for La Triennale di Milano - an early use of neon installation in an arts context.

Film, in the years to follow according to Fontana's manifestos, is evidence of the direction that the spirit has taken toward the dynamic. His principles chose to abandon the use of known forms of art and were a move toward development of art based upon the unity of space and time. According to Fontana, "The development of of the phenomena of color and sound are what integrates the new art. The subconscious - which houses all of the images perceived by intelligence - adopts the form of these images and accepts notions that give form to the nature of man, and transforms the individual."

While concepts such as Fontana's were the precursor for principles of postmodernism, a profound philosophy of our times,  most theorists and art lovers alike do not abandon earlier forms of art, choosing one form over another. In the current period of post-post-modernism one immediately grasps what Fontana theorized 40 years earlier. But this era also precludes a complete binary transformation from one to the other, rather this seems to be a time when art and imagery are created one way and interpreted another, in a remix culture unbound by scientific principles alone.