L’AUR’AMARA

> Samedi 23 avril 2011 à 18h

L’AUR’AMARA

The title of this exhibition echoes that of the magazine L’AUR’AMARA, that Pietro Finelli

directed and published in Milan between 1994 and 1995. The four of these that

transpired predominantly consisted of literary arguments. The last of these published

five drawings of artists along with their choice of a literary or philosophical excerpt

that related to that work ( the artists were Maurizio Cattelan, Nada Cingolani, Pietro

Finelli, Fabrizio Passarella, Franco Silvestro, and this magazine will be on display).

Today, as an extension of that experience, artists were invited to exhibit a work,

possibly on paper, that has a connection with a text. This text is not necessarily

included as an addition to the work, but may be interjected into the its interior.

L’AUR’AMARA is drawn from the first line of a celebrated song by the Occitan poet

Arnaut Daniel, which reads:

L’aur’amara

fa.ls broils brancuz

clausir

que.l dos’espeis’a foils,

e.ls les

becs

dels aucels ramens

te balbs e muz

pars

e no-pars;

per qu’eu m’esfors

de far e dir

placers

a manz per lei

qui m’a virat bas d’aut,

don tem morir

si l’afanz no m’adoma.

The bitter aura / makes those bough-laden woods / barren, / which the sweet one

thickens with leaves, / and the gleeful / beaks / of the wandering birds / it keeps

stammering and dumb, / couples / and single ones, / therefore I endeavour / to act

and speak / pleasantly / to many for the sake of her / who has cast me low from high,

/ for whom I dread to die / if my grievance isn't eased.

The Arnaldian text represents one of the highest developments of his poetry on a

lingustic-ontological level. This is especially noted in the verses that allude to a bitter

aura that bares while the sweet aura covers; a taking off and putting on of being that

in the metaphorical language of the poet indirectly intends the existential condition of

the artist that he or she subdues, in order to bring or receive a message of love.

The relationship between art and literature is ancient as the disciplines themselves.

The passages between one and the other has consisted of and has created a

fundamental intellectual connection in the biographies of artists and writers. We vitally

believe in advancing a choice, through the work of some of the artists participating in

the project, of this symbiosis and intervention that seals traces and paths in the

individual biographies of the artists, which reveal untold aspects and choices made by

each of them. The exhibition is designed to present primarily works on paper, a

medium that is surprisingly ductile. Paper lends itself to infinite manipulations,

transcriptions, depositions, and representations. Recently, paper’s function seems to

be put in discussion with digital media as it is possible to transfer this “function” of

paper to various and proper means that transmit immaterial images (though cinema

has already given the first sense of the immaterial image). In any case, this

interaction between paper and the “thing” – that is composed of graphic marks,

writings, photographs, or also those that have to do with paper that undergoes a

process of anamorphosis or of that which reproduces an idea in itself, always reveals a

lightness and a malleability, united with a texture that touches the mind and body.

This show does not intend to absolutely provide a set of samples of what paper

represents in the artistic field, but it seeks to indicate a sensibility which different

contemporary artists have in common: the capability to recall those qualities which

are less apparent and less spectacular, which, in fact, are the distinguishing factors in

so much present-day art. The aura (intense as an aura, as air, as a season, as a

predisposition of the self) which the poet alludes to, allows one free to choose, to give

or not to give, and overall, across the gift of art, of contributing to the

intercommunication between beings that remains as one of the fundamental

assumptions of our existential condition.

Artists participating in the exhibition:

Jannis Kounellis

Giacinto Cerone

Alberto Finelli

Peter Gallo

Maurizio Mochetti

Barbara Crimella

Joe Eulia

Saul Chernick

Pietro Finelli

David Godbold

Gaia Fugazza

Renata Boero

Alessandra Svatek & Artur Magrot

Rosilene Luduvico

Gabriela Jolowicz

Carlo Ferraris

Alasdair Gray

Francesco Correggia

Martin Mlecko

Jackie Saccoccio

Franklin Evans

Bill O'Brien

Michele Chiossi

Norbert Witzgall

Bernardino Luino

Liz Neal

Lauren Beck

Hannelore Van Dijck

Christina Maria Pfeifer

Curated by Bustos Domenech

23 through 27 April 2011

Opening Reception: Saturday, 23 April 6:00 pm

La Générale en Manufacture 6, Grande Rue, 92310, Sèvres, Paris

www.la-g.org 06 24983051, 06 13076084