curated by Daniela Bigi
19th March- 15th April 2016
Facing an abstract work of art today, oblige us to talk about the ‘gaze’. Far from the “-isms” and the reasons that generated them and far from the theories on praxis, instances and ideologies of abstract painting, if a young painter choose to go abstract it means that he warns us about the renewed centrality of the ‘gaze’ matter, with all its implications.
The Genuardi/Ruta duo decided two years ago to mix the color sensitivity of the one with the geometrical vision of the other. They belong to a generation that can be defined Meridian, identified with a radical point of view that is a Mediterranean angle. I’m referring to Camus idea of meridianity, and to all the thinkers that brought forward his insights.
Here the light of Camus, mostly in his solar writings, are an important reference point.
Thinking about the light means looking at the world by moving the observation point, raising it.
One of the central point of the big squared canvases of Genuardi/Ruta is the window. Window as a guideline between the physical involvement to get to a shape and the thought of projection bases to remeasure the gaze. It’s a very common theme, both in painting and conceptual world. Necessary if you are questioning yourself on the when and how to look and where, both in a pictorial and human way. In their meridian way of seeing the square/window is the space where the city and the light meets. It is also the diaphragm where the western gaze meets the eastern gaze. The Alberti window that faces the world becomes the masrabiyya, like Hans Belting reminds us; it filters the light and project it in the internal space, changing it.
Coordinates of knowledge, both for centuries. These squares are built on the value of a wandering, all mediterranean. They are also landscapes. The cuts, geometric gaits, are those of the South when light intercepts the architecture.
I can think of Derrida when he speaks of blindness as a condition of painting.
Those tensional fields bears in them the memory of the great tradition of the nineteenth century that involves the walls, occupies the concrete space and translate it into the artwork while deceiving you to the contrary. The memory goes through the Balla project for Düsseldorf to Le Corbusier’s Esprit Nouveau and Sol LeWitt’s wallpaintings. It’s a question of gazes and geometries that has to do with the space and that question its own life, and more over its own intentions.
There is a tradition of abstract painting that is connect with the Mediterranean – particularly to Sicily – and it has already been recognised.
Genuardi/Ruta are specifically looking at Forma 1 group, whose many of their components are from the island. And it is by studying their way to conceive form, the relationship between sign and colour, that they first reflections are born.
In this exhibition three squares generates a succession of projections that involves the space, enlightening the critical points and absorbing them, moving the visual weights, building a rhythm. Meanwhile the painting becomes tridimensional, it becomes one with the architecture, shows tensions, the warm and cold colours and the angles. Then it comes back to the squares/windows and start again to talk about the gaze and the light. Scopic questions that can stop representing, singularly and collectively, the way of thinking about themselves in the world.
