Pablo Accinelli
30 Jan - 21 Apr 2016
© Pablo Accinelli,
Técnicas Pasivas, exhibition view, Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin, 2016. Photo: Marcus Schneider
Técnicas Pasivas, exhibition view, Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin, 2016. Photo: Marcus Schneider
PABLO ACCINELLI
Técnicas Pasivas
30 January – 21 April 2016
Certain events, which have actually happened, are horrible, but what is more horrible still is what hasn’t happened, what has never existed.
Solaris, Stanisław Lem
Galerija Gregor Podnar is pleased to announce Técnicas Pasivas, Pablo Accinelli’s first solo exhibition in Berlin.
A nail screwed on the back of a playing card, shards of glass in a glass, the image of a cutting mat projected 1:1, and a wooden rod going through a series of screw eyes, abbreviate sculptural and painterly forces without accelerating the pace of these processes. Near the paradoxical edge of the obvious in all its complexity, Técnicas Pasivas refers to the functional and morphological sincerity in which the combustion of Accinelli’s works occurs. Their literalness embodies the plasticity of the Barthesian neutral – which does not allow just one unique sense of things, but several, none of which are correct. The neutral is exacerbated here by the discrete economy and the detailed position of the works in space. Each of them retains its autonomy, shaping at the same time an elliptical system of relations experienced during the course of the exhibition, raising awareness of a virtual world in which nothing is separated from the other.
Furthermore, a typeface developed in 2013 by Accinelli transcribes every sentence of Solaris by Stanisław Lem into ideograms. This work transforms a science fiction novel into an eight hours long concrete poem, in which each phrase returns to the synthetic world of geometry. One might recall Solaris is a philosophical fiction about the anthropomorphic limitations of human beings; in which the leading characters attempt to communicate with an ocean endowed with psychic intelligence. A fluid plasma able to read their minds and express their secrets and guilt.
This duel between subjects and object, spectators and work, in which the object is no longer passively waiting to be discovered, but is in fact the discoverer itself, infiltrates Técnicas Pasivas. This argument adds to the resources derived from hard-boiled fiction often used by Accinelli to arouse in the viewers the rational distance of a detective; whilst at the same time giving a twist to this idea, present in many of his works, of the artwork as a tool of knowledge, a way of relating to the world, and its capabilities to give shape.
If in previous displays the tools served to develop utopian systems outside of the exhibition space, in this new context they seem to point – as the fluid colossus in Solaris – towards the personal space of the viewer. So, what or who is being measured by the four levels suspended at 70 cm from the floor and structuring the show as ribs? Are they evocations to linear time or links to critical thinking on the eve of its disappearance? What or who is being examined by the sheets of paper on aluminium structures called Higrómetros?
Técnicas Pasivas exhibits a number of instruments with negative capacities (the ability of looking at the world without wanting to reconcile opposites in a system of rational units, as the Romantic poet John Keats suggests). The only thing we have to do is let the sensitivity of these works, designed to produce paradoxical thinking, and poetic, intangible, enigmatic, and therefore accurate knowledge, act upon us.
Text by Valentina Liernur
Técnicas Pasivas
30 January – 21 April 2016
Certain events, which have actually happened, are horrible, but what is more horrible still is what hasn’t happened, what has never existed.
Solaris, Stanisław Lem
Galerija Gregor Podnar is pleased to announce Técnicas Pasivas, Pablo Accinelli’s first solo exhibition in Berlin.
A nail screwed on the back of a playing card, shards of glass in a glass, the image of a cutting mat projected 1:1, and a wooden rod going through a series of screw eyes, abbreviate sculptural and painterly forces without accelerating the pace of these processes. Near the paradoxical edge of the obvious in all its complexity, Técnicas Pasivas refers to the functional and morphological sincerity in which the combustion of Accinelli’s works occurs. Their literalness embodies the plasticity of the Barthesian neutral – which does not allow just one unique sense of things, but several, none of which are correct. The neutral is exacerbated here by the discrete economy and the detailed position of the works in space. Each of them retains its autonomy, shaping at the same time an elliptical system of relations experienced during the course of the exhibition, raising awareness of a virtual world in which nothing is separated from the other.
Furthermore, a typeface developed in 2013 by Accinelli transcribes every sentence of Solaris by Stanisław Lem into ideograms. This work transforms a science fiction novel into an eight hours long concrete poem, in which each phrase returns to the synthetic world of geometry. One might recall Solaris is a philosophical fiction about the anthropomorphic limitations of human beings; in which the leading characters attempt to communicate with an ocean endowed with psychic intelligence. A fluid plasma able to read their minds and express their secrets and guilt.
This duel between subjects and object, spectators and work, in which the object is no longer passively waiting to be discovered, but is in fact the discoverer itself, infiltrates Técnicas Pasivas. This argument adds to the resources derived from hard-boiled fiction often used by Accinelli to arouse in the viewers the rational distance of a detective; whilst at the same time giving a twist to this idea, present in many of his works, of the artwork as a tool of knowledge, a way of relating to the world, and its capabilities to give shape.
If in previous displays the tools served to develop utopian systems outside of the exhibition space, in this new context they seem to point – as the fluid colossus in Solaris – towards the personal space of the viewer. So, what or who is being measured by the four levels suspended at 70 cm from the floor and structuring the show as ribs? Are they evocations to linear time or links to critical thinking on the eve of its disappearance? What or who is being examined by the sheets of paper on aluminium structures called Higrómetros?
Técnicas Pasivas exhibits a number of instruments with negative capacities (the ability of looking at the world without wanting to reconcile opposites in a system of rational units, as the Romantic poet John Keats suggests). The only thing we have to do is let the sensitivity of these works, designed to produce paradoxical thinking, and poetic, intangible, enigmatic, and therefore accurate knowledge, act upon us.
Text by Valentina Liernur