Haim Steinbach, ‘Ultra-lite #2’ (1988)
Tag Archives: shine
Anne Speier
Anne Speier, ‘Spice Shrine Giotto Blue’ (2014)
Wood, paint, fabric, spices.
“Inside the Scrovegni Chapel of Padua, there is a fresco by Giotto di Bondione depicting the founder of the church, Enrico Scrovegni, a rich banker, merchant and nobleman.
In the fresco Scrovegni hands over a miniature version of that same chapel to Virgin Mary, hoping that she will forgive his and his families usury misdeeds and hoping they will not send him to purgatory, but take him into heaven. Enrico Scrovegni did not feel ashamed to make his purposes very clear: To get what he wanted he even had his tricky act illustrated on the chapel’s wall.
I have copied some houses in the backgrounds of further frescoes in the chapel as models, but gave them a new function as spice shelves. They do not only contain spices but filling elements of fancy fabrics, meandering and pleated around the spices, embedding them softly into the shell of the shelf, making their patient wait for the moment of employ enjoyable like a long day in bed. “
Jean-Baptiste Ganne
Jean-Baptiste Ganne, Untitled (All that Glitters is Gold) (2007)
Installation in the water tank of the roman Villa Medici, 2007.
TAILS (Effet placebo). Between radical criticism of government organisations and simple prostitution the gap can appear extremely small. Pouring the budget that is supposedly attributed to the production of an artwork out onto the ground, would be a way of lowering the legal tender (the sign of value), of spreading it about, immobilising it. Then making it both the subject and the object of the piece(s).
HEADS (Et fait place au beau). Everything will be read as a “fountain-making”. And the multiplication of figures. Of those born from the waters and money of antiquity. Make a hundred thousand Boticellian Venuses glitter under the flow of raindrops from the natural fountain that the water tank at the Villa Medici is, like a hundred thousand wishes impossible to formulate.