Painting as Space

After FILM#, Roberto Coda Zabetta’s practice has moved from the series of canvases hanging on the wall to actual space. The spaces in which his actions have developed are far from minimal white cubes, inhabiting instead complex environments loaded with history and natural elements. His practice that is both macho and poetic tries to find an original way of occupying and transforming space by both neutralizing its presence and at the same time completely transforming its perception. 
To take the cinematic metaphor further Coda Zabetta has used monumental environmental paintings to create ‘sets’ in which visitors, art lovers as well as passers-by are turned into actors who have to interact or better act out themselves. Related to land-art more than to action painting, these works continue to develop the idea of transparency linked to Coda Zabetta’s practice, as well as the desire to talk to non art experts as well as to passionate curators, critics or artists.
In the last year his practice has undergone a radical shift occupying public space, or better has invented a participatory form of pictorial practice as a way of reclaiming spaces either forgotten or devoid of contemporary creativity.
This experimental endevour started at Cantiere 1- Terrazzo Terrace developed in Naples on the panoramic roof of the abandoned complex of SS. Trinità delle Monache, (converted in a Military Hospital in the 19th century) for MADRE Museum in the fall of 2017, where the artist copmpletely painted the gigantic flat surface of the building’s roof; has recently seen it’s second episode (May 2018) in France where Cantiere 2  Harbour/Porto was activated on the waterfront of Portivy, St. Pierre Quiberon in Bretagne. In this second experiment the natural landscape has called for a more subtle yet transformative intervention with natural pigments on the actual walls and rocks of the bay transforming the landscape in a canvas that will slowly but surely by erased by the sea tides as well as the coastal violent storms. 
 
 

Here for the opening of Cura’s new space in Milano KURA Coda Zabetta has created another phantasmagoria of light and color that will occupy the space of the courtyard transforming the viewers way of moving through it.  Coda Zabetta has given life to a new landscape/space in this post-industrial turned-artistic environment, again the power of air (through a specific technique born by using pigments that are mixed and removed by an air-compressor) seems to have pushed matter to create vectorial as well as concentric movements of colour and light. What I find fascinating is how the element of chance is balanced by an artistic premeditation of composition and form, where enamels, pigments and different types of natural and industrial paints merge in a space of pure energy. Similarly western and eastern traditions and techniques seem to merge in a space of pure abstraction that is both a tent, a roof and the sky of an oneiric space of creativity.

 

By Ilaria Bonacossa

CANTIERE 1/TERRAZZO

08.2017 — 01.2018

 

Ex Ospedale Militare – SS. Trinità delle Monache, Napoli

 

Uno studio artistico a cielo aperto in un luogo pubblico, ma accessibile solo da alcuni punti della città. Cantiere 1 / Terrazzo è il nuovo progetto di Roberto Coda Zabetta per il complesso della SS. Trinità delle Monache, poi ex Ospedale Militare di Napoli, promosso dal Comune di Napoli-Assessorato alla Cultura e Turismo, in collaborazione con l’ Assessorato all’Urbanistica e ai Beni Comuni e con l’ Unità di progetto interdirezionale “Coordinamento progetti URBACT e Reti per lo Sviluppo di Politiche Urbane Integrate” nell’ambito della rete europea 2nd Chance del programma URBACT III, di cui il Comune di Napoli è capofila.
Cantiere 1 / Terrazzo ha ricevuto il Matronato della Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee.

 

Prima tappa di un lavoro che toccherà altre città in Italia e nel mondo, alla cui base vi è un rapporto di reciproca implicazione tra pittura, architettura e territorio, il progetto – a cura di Maria Savarese – inteso come un percorso itinerante, si svolgerà dal 28 agosto al 14 ottobre 2017 in uno dei luoghi più suggestivi del centro storico di Napoli il Complesso della SS. Trinità delle Monache, attualmente oggetto di un processo di progettazione partecipata che coinvolge cittadini e amministrazione comunale con l’impegno di realizzare un piano di azione per il recupero, la rifunzionalizzazione e la gestione del complesso.

 

Roberto Coda Zabetta lavorerà alla realizzazione di un grande intervento pittorico sul terrazzo di copertura dell’ex ospedale militare, esperienza inedita che viene realizzata per la prima volta.
I giorni in cui l’azione e lo svolgimento dell’opera, a campiture di colore concentriche, saranno seguiti e documentati dal fotografo e filmaker Henrik Blomqvist, con contributi video, oltre che della curatrice, di Ilaria Bonacossa (già direttrice del Museo di Villa Croce, Genova, e attuale direttrice di ARTISSIMA, Torino) e Andrea Viliani (direttore del museo Madre di Napoli).

 

L’opera sarà visibile, per il periodo di esposizione, da tutta la zona collinare di Napoli retrostante il complesso architettonico, interagendo quindi con la città stessa di cui diviene elemento tissutale. Un intervento di arte pubblica per la città, che vede coinvolto un intero edificio del suo patrimonio architettonico.

 

L’intera struttura e la cifra astrattiva con cui l’artista ha scelto di esprimersi, fornendo un luogo d’incontro tra sensi e intelletto, mira a produrre un rimando senza soluzioni di continuità tra percezione e pensiero consentendo così l’accesso a una dimensione altra da quella governata dalla semplice prospettiva con cui solitamente s’identifica il nostro rapporto con la realtà esterna.

 

Il video del progetto sarà poi presentato in anteprima nazionale a Napoli e a seguire nelle principali sedi museali e istituzionali internazionali.

 

Interventi di:
Ilaria Bonacossa, Nino Daniele, Maria Savarese, Andrea Viliani

 

Video: regia di Henrik Blomqvist
Produzione: Black Mamba, Milan
Project team: Ciro Delfino, Paolo Gambardella, Edoardo Mirabella Roberti, Carla Savarese
Fotografia: Fabio Donato, Henrik Blomqvist
Grafica: Matteo Blandford

 

Ufficio Stampa Italia:
PCM Studio, Milan
Marina Brancato, Naples
Press Office Madre Museo d’arte contemporanea Donnaregina:
Luisa Maradei

 

Partner:
Comune di Napoli Assessorato alla Cultura e Turismo, in collaborazione con l’Assessorato all’Urbanistica e ai Beni Comuni, e con l’ Unità di progetto interdirezionale “Coordinamento progetti URBACT e Reti per lo Sviluppo di Politiche Urbane Integrate” – Progetto 2nd Chance Programma URBACT III.
Il progetto ha ricevuto il Matronato della Fondazione Donnaregina per le arti contemporanee

 

In collaborazione con:
Annet Gelink Gallery

KURA.

05.07.2018

 

Fonderia Artistica Battaglia, Milano

 

With grand opening (summer rhapsody) kura. Opens in milan on 5 july and launches the exhibition program directed by cura. In the historic premises of fonderia artistica battaglia.

 

Kura. Is born from a misspelling of our magazine’s name. The pronunciation is the same, but the k represents the glitch, the element of novelty that bases its roots in the very idea of “spazio okkupato” (occupied space), that is also associated with the k in kunsthalle, without necessarily being one. It is the physical space and extension of cura. Which joins the programming of exhibitions already curated by andrea baccin and ilaria marotta, founding directors of the magazine, held in the premises of basement roma.

 

Movement, the alternation of empty and full, but also role improvisations aim at creating the rhythm of the exhibition experience of this new space. An experience that, although protracted in its assumptions, will be called to define itself over time.

 

“We are not interested in getting to a point, but in identifying a path. Investigate the cracks more than the finite form, the process more than the final destination.”

 

According to david reinfurt, the eclectic co-founder (together with stuart bailey) of dexter sinister and creator of the visual identity of the project, the “scheme for a future program” is summarized “in that small alteration, involving a few strokes, between a c and a k” which defines the open nature of the logo, still far from a finished form.

 

With kura. In milan, the cura. Team, together with a board of artists and curators which include the aforementioned david reinfurt, lorenzo benedetti (kunstmuseum st. Gallen), luís silva and joão mourão (kunsthalle lissabon), samuel leuenberger (salts birsfelden), anthony huberman (cca wattis institute), aims at alternating solo and group exhibitions of artists mostly belonging to the generation born in the early ’80s, who came to the fore on the international scene and had a leading role in a new layout of the contemporary scene.

 

“The relationship with the foundry and its premises will be significant but not decisive in defining the works or use of the materials. It will be a fluid collaboration, involving roles and spaces, in which everyone will be able to draw the best from the experience and skills of the other.”
Swaying between reality and fiction, between social ritual and mise en scène, grand opening (summer rhapsody) embodies, and at the same time activates, the celebrations of the opening of the place, serving as a prelude to something new, a free and varied orchestration of actions, bodies, shapes and sounds, which take on the popular traits of a great street party.

 

Works by mitchell anderson, davide balula, anna-sophie berger, louis fratino, nancy lupo, mélanie matranga, caroline mesquita, adrien missika, martin soto climent and a site-specific intervention by roberto coda zabetta, will implement the celebrating context of the exhibition.

 

“The party is a gnoseological model that implies the collectivity and self-affirmation in the celebrating experience,” according to walter benjamin (1)

 

Hence, the party and its potential annual recurrence define the forming of a new collective body articulated over time and in the materialization of a ritual and changeable experience, which has always represented the moment of disruption of the imposed social order. The artists’ work, which for the occasion will be placed in many of the fonderia’s areas, eradicates roles, functions and uses, in an allegorical meta-narration.

 

“The party is a hortus conclusus, a space/time, a place for the soul, a magical environment, where one participates in a collective preparation work.”(2)

 

Grand opening (summer rhapsody) thus defines a collective and choral entity, a multifaceted big bang in which individuality and community come together, “an interlude of universal confusion” in which everything is destroyed and from which at the same time everything is born: a moment of disruption, of waiting and beginning, which starts the next kura. Exhibition program in milan.

 

1 W. Benjamin w., Theses on the philosophy of history (also on the concept of history, from german: über den begriff der geschichte), 1940.
2 L. Tussi, la festa popolare: un’interpretazione pedagogica [the popular feast: a pedagogical interpretation], in “il calendario del popolo”, n. 637, December 1999.

 

GRAND OPENING (SUMMER RHAPSODY)
WWW.K-U-R-A.COM

CANTIERE 2/HARBOUR

02.06.2018

 

Port of Portivy, St. Pierre Quiberon

 

Cantiere 2 / Harbour, the second appointment of the project Cantieri by Roberto Coda Zabetta, will be presented in Portivy, in the Quiberon peninsula, on the 2nd of June 2018.

 

Cantiere 2 / Harbour will see Roberto Coda Zabetta move his studio in Bretagne to realise the massive public artwork on Portivy’s pier. This project is founded on the reciprocal relationship between painting, architecture, the natural environment and the landscape.

 

For millennia the force of the winds, of the tides, the erosion of the sea, the sun, the rain, the saltiness hit the coasts of the Quiberon peninsula that stretches in the Atlantic Ocean. Kilometres of coastline called Côte Sauvage are preserved under the Conservatoire du Littoral institution.
The strength, the intensity and the purity of this nature are the primordial elements that have inspired the artist; they are the themes on which his research has been focused on, for the last year.
Roberto Coda Zabetta is profoundly aware of the impossibility to stem these incontrollable elements and, for this, his work will only be created by relating its linguistic degree to the unpredictability of natural forces.

 

The material elements has always been at the center of the artist’s work, for over two years he has experimented with natural materials in his work. Over and above natural pigments, he has confronted with organic materials such as ‘shit’ in collaboration with Museo della Merda (The Shit Museum, Castelbosco, PC) and with the use of oyster powder from Brittany in collaboration with Dennery Cyril.

 

The project in Portivy concerns the realisation of a great intervention in the port of the small town. The entirety of the area will be prepared with a detailed cleaning using a hydro-cleaner, afterwards, on the dam, on the wall and on the port drops, layers of ‘matter’ using natural pigments, oyster dust, fish glue and Airlite paint, the leading company in the production of paints and pigments at zero environmental impact.

 

On the first layer of white matter, additional pictorial layers will be applied with the use of an air compressor.
The sea and the time will dissolve this big ephemeral artwork, animated by the energy of nature and respectfully realised for its surrounding environment.

 

The entire structure and the degree abstraction which the artist has chosen to express himself with, creating a collision of feelings and intellect, aiming to produce a connection without continuity solutions between perception and thought, allowing the viewer to access a different dimension not governed by simple perspective in which we usually identify our relationship with the outside world.

 

The process of the work, like with Cantiere 1 / Terrazzo, will be documented by photographer and filmmaker Henrik Blomqvist, the production of the film is in collaboration with Black Mamba, the graphic design by Matteo Blandford. The film will have contributions by Patrizia Torricelli (DAIS – Environmental Science Department Ca’Foscari University, Venice), Martina Sabbadini (independent curator and researcher; collection and communication manager at Kadist), Massimo Torrigiani (Boiler Studio and Fantom Editions), Hervé Bourdon (Founder, owner and chef at Petit Hotel du Grand Large, Portivy) and Tiziano Vudafieri (Vudafieri Saverino Partners).

 

Cantiere 1 / Terrazzo in Naples saw the realisation of a large painting on the entirety of the roof surface of the SS. Trinità delle Monache complex, then Military Hospital of Naples. The project was promoted by the Council of Naples – Department of Culture and Tourism, in collaboration with the Department of Urban Studies and Cultural Heritage, URBACT and the Matronato of the Fondazione Donnaregina – MADRE, Naples.

 

Interventions by:
Patrizia Torricelli, Martina Sabbadini, Massimo Torrigiani, Hervé Bourdon,
Tiziano Vudafieri

 

Project coordinator: Francesca Maltese
Video: Henrik Blomqvist and Leo Bourdon
Production: Black Mamba, Milan
Project team: Edoardo Mirabella Roberti, Leo Bourdon, Rose Bourdon, Fanny Broyelle, Giulio di Gropello, Alessandra Marcora, Clara Pacifico Natoli, Franco Brenna, Marco and Letizia Mirabella Roberti, Florian Siegel, Kris Grove, Catherine Vautrin
Photography: Henrik Blomqvist, Matthieu Milliot
Graphic design: Matteo Blandford

 

Press Office Italy:
PCM Studio, Milan
Project contact, France:
Fanny Broyelle

 

Main Sponsor:
Airlite – London
Vudafieri Saverino Partners – Milan
Le Petit Hotel du Grand Large – Portivy
Alessandra Marcora
Giulio di Gropello
M. et Mme Dorso
Le Bateau Ivre
L’annexe
Boulangerie Bihan

 

Patronage:
Council of Saint-Pierre Quiberon

 

In collaboration with:
Annet Gelink Gallery

SOSTANZA

24.06.2017 – 29.07.2017

 

Annet Gelink Gallery is delighted to present Sostanza, the first solo exhibition of Italian painter Roberto Coda Zabetta (1975, Biella, IT) with the gallery. Coda Zabetta believes in structuring emotions on the painterly surface. For him, painting is a state of mind and, at the same time, a physical necessity.

 

Since 2014, Coda Zabetta has been working with pure abstraction, inspired by the physicality of materials. The move from figurative to abstract is not necessarily an irreversible choice, but it allows the painter to take a step back and observe from a distance his work. Instead of concentrating on subjects, the artist focuses on pigments, colours and substances.

Usually large-scaled, Coda Zabetta’s striking works play with different kinds of textures. Experimenting with painting processes, Coda Zabetta not only uses traditional materials and techniques, but also different natural elements such as pigments or sand, organic materials, oyster shell dust, tar, and chemical materials.

 

The Italian word Sostanza, that gives the title to the show, has different meanings. In current use, it can be translated into being the essence of something. It is also a term that, from the origins of philosophical thought, designates what remains below the changing appearances. And the word can also be used for a substance of a chemical composition that gives it particular characteristics.

 

In this exhibition, works from two series have been brought together. In his ‘films’ series, Coda Zabetta experiments with layers of wafer-thin pigments, creating fluid coloured paintings that seem to radiate light. The transparency of the works calls to mind traditional Chinese and Japanese watercolour landscapes actually obtained by painting with air-pressure capturing on the surfaces energy and movement.

 

The paintings in his ‘more materical’ series look much more dense and materialistic, with the paint thickly applied in a single gesture. What looks like the expressive brush stroke is in fact created by working paint with a spatula, evoking the idea of laying stucco on a wall more than painting.

Backstage Conversation from FILM#00 to FILM #056

Ilaria Bonacossa: This exhibition presents a selection of works realized in the last year and a half. They are titled FILM# and are numbered as a sequence from 00 to 056. What is the origin of these abstract paintings? They are quite different from what you have been making over the last ten years.

 

Roberto Coda Zabetta: The exhibition is a sequence of frames. For me, every painting is a still frame, by which I mean a frozen image taken from a non-narrative film made of light and color. This film reflects some considerations on the meaning of painting that I have developed in the last two years. In fact, all the fifty-six paintings that compose this series could be considered as a whole, an uninterrupted flux of
painterly matter extending from one canvas to the next.

 

IB: How did you come up with such a structurally rigorous sequence where every painting seems to grow from the the previous one in a natural, almost organic, manner?

 

RCZ: My work has always been premised upon thematic clusters, or projects. Yet, my previous series were composed of twenty pieces, twenty-five at the most, after which I felt that the subject was exhausted. In this case, the fifty-six paintings relate to one another in a much stronger way. From my point of view, the series is ideally made of five “episodes”, each one comprising seven or eight paintings each with its own autonomous place but, taken as a whole, they form a polyptych and each painting is “activated” by the reflection, repetition, and contrast with the others.

 

IB: Film has a double meaning: on the one hand, it turns the paintings into mental frames that convey several sensations, much in the same way as a proper film captures what happens in reality. On the other hand, it evokes a sense of transparency and overlapping layers… I am fascinated by the fact that the series begins with a black, blind canvas and ends with a painting that is completely different but, once again, toned down with dark pigments. FILM # both starts and ends on black. It is as if the shutter of the movie camera had blacked out the image upon closing.

 

RCZ: It is often the case that the interpretation of a series is grounded on the first paintings that compose it. Although these works might appear gestural and impulsive, they were made with clear intentions regarding the final result. Then, the work can be seen as a journey toward its final version. For instance, in the first painting, FILM #00, I experimented with the physical substance of paint: after pouring melted plastic on a tempera-coated canvas, I covered the entire surface with oil painting and made the rubber translucent.

 

IB: FILM#56 has an opposite history. As you were telling me, it took you longer than four months and quite a dose of obsession to painstakingly reproduce an antique Chinese fabric on a linen canvas with acrylic paint. After which, you covered it completely with a coat of black acrylic enamel paint so that a just a few, obscure motifs can be perceived against a light background. It looks as if you have an urgency to reject sight, as if this phantasmagoria of light and color could not but settle down in
darkness.

 

RCZ: Indeed I have always worked with layers, with coats of color paint that both conceal and reveal forms and images. To conceal in such a way that it is possible to catch a glimpse of what happened before the work was finished… The painting is like a secret made of lines and light, a saturated light that ends up disappearing.

 

IB: In this series, all the canvases appear to have been made by the water or the wind. They possess a wavelike nature, concentric or vectorial, while the artist's hand has completely vanished. It is as if you were a 'director' who orchestrated the chemical reactions and captured their process of becoming. This may be the reason why they remind me of batik tissues, dyed fabrics that have a serial quality but at the same time are unique and elicit an intimate relationship with the viewer.

 

RCZ: I have always painted light adding white to the impasto. In this case, however, I removed the excess paint.

 

IB: Then your works always result from a subtracting process. The shadows and transparencies in the background almost turn them in Japanese gouache paintings. In FILM#, the artist's hand that used to dominate your previous works, recedes in favor of the technical properties of the materials and the mechanical action of compressed air which activates the different features of each material. How important is chance in the structure of your work?

 

RCZ: Chance affects the details, but before starting a work, I already know how it will look like. I choose the ground surfaces and the paint materials depending upon the effect I intend to achieve. After ten years of practice, it feels as if the knowledge of the materials turned my freedom of action into a freedom of representation…

 

IB: So we might say that FILM# is like a story about two years of thoughts and ideas, and about how the paintings were originated.

 

RCZ: These paintings result from a sculptural research. They are three-dimensional versions marking the conceptual boundaries of the painterly gesture and its structure… They are indebted to Aldo Mondino's theory of paint materials and his experimental research on sculptures assembled with domestic items (I am thinking to his late 1960s sculptures made of caramel and chocolate that looked like bronze, or his plaster pieces that looked as if they were made of gianduiotti chocolates…). Much in the same way, by using an air compressor both paint and enamel becomes undistinguishable, and the paintings look like silkscreens prints….

 

IB: The idea that these works originate from the chaos experienced by a painter facing a blank canvas as well as by the mind-blowing perception of countless possibilities fascinates me. In fact, what strikes me the most is that this series is a “movie” on today's painting for the sake of which you gave up the subject matter and focused instead on pigments, colors and materials. This feature film is about your drive to paint and your decision to withdraw from the stage. Your own signature style and all narrative elements vanish as your energy is transposed onto the canvas by means of different devices.

 

RCZ: FILM# is about the line, the wish to find a escape route from color…

 

IB: In order to grasp the origin of this work, I would like to step back and talk in general about your practice. You did not go to art school nor studied painting and art theory. You learnt the ropes by working as an assistant in the studio of Aldo Mondino.

 

RCZ: I came across Mondino by chance. As a student I was neither good nor bad. The distance between theory and practice has always put me off. When I was eighteen-year- old and did not know “what to become” as a grown-up, I was drafted into the military service and sent to Vercelli where I met the art collector Gigi Chiese who, hearing about my plans to enroll at the Brera Fine Arts Accademy the following year, introduced me to a painter friend of his who lived in the Piedmontose countryside: Aldo Mondino.
On the 6 th of September of 1995, I went to visit Mondino and did not leave his house for the following four months: Brera had just slipped out of my mind. Back then, Mondino was sixty-year- old, stern and generous. As he took me as his assistant, I realized that my job had be hands-on and to entail some degree of practical making. I did all sort of things but I never approached his paintings: his studio was a sacred place. At the time I used to draw, or rather scribble, so you can easily understand what it meant to find myself at eighteen-year- old in close contact with the Italian art world. I was inebriated with discourse, ideas, and thoughts. Curators such as Achille Bonito Oliva and Alain Jouffroy, artists such as Luigi Ontani, Ignazio Moncada, Antonio Recalcati and the young Maurizio Cattelan, outstanding collectors and art lovers such as the bullfighter Antonio Ordònez, Umberto Cacciatore or publishers such Giancarlo Politi and Renzo Parini, all came to Mondino's studio where fiery and impassioned conversations took place at night. All the while, I strived to figure out the meaning of art…

 

IB: In 1993, Bonito Oliva curated the Venice Biennale and the “Mondino frenzy” begun. The international crowd and the collectors became conscious of his talent. How did this affect your job?

 

RCZ: Well, people were queuing at the studio… There was a tremendous boost in the production: works to be finished, created, and delivered. We were up all night working… Mondino's death in 2005 came after ten successful years. Aldo became a master. Certain things never change and Mondino could never
amp;#39;accept' the Transavanguardia. As for me, I did not like the idea of a powerful group lobbying to pack up five names for export, like brands… their painting was not truthful. However, it was greatly instructive for me to see how shortcuts may lead… nowhere.

 

IB: Besides working as Mondino's assistant, I assume that in the dead times at the studio you created your first minimal, abstract works and although Mondino was an eclectic artist, he never made abstract painting. I gather that your research developed independently from the start. How long did you work for Mondino? When did you move to New York? If memory serves me right, we met in New York in 2000. Two Italians taking their first steps in the art world…

 

RCZ: In 1998, I lost my older brother in a motorcycle accident and the pain overwhelmed me. When I went home to see my brother, I was crushed with despair and did not go back to Mondino's. Nineteen days later, Aldo came to visit and took me out for a walk, he was truly serious… He said to me: “takethis pain and use it in your painting, figure out a system…”. Twenty days later, I was back. He was working on Morocco and Turkey and gave me a plane ticket to Essaouira. There, I got excited… I had always envied how Mondino could paint a face with four brushstrokes and I became impressed by the people's faces in Morocco. They seemed carved out of wood and inspired me to paint faces…

 

IB: And so this is how Faces, the series you worked on from 2001 to 2007, came about: like a scream of sorrow. Those paintings are large, the faces oversized and fraught with paint. But they are also monochromes, as if they were ghosts. There is something too straightforward about them, almost naif in respect of what was going on in the contemporary art scene at the time. This may be why they worked right away…

 

RCZ: To paint faces was a compromise to do something that was aesthetically comprehensible… Thanks to the faces, I learnt how to paint with matter, how to use brushes and the painterly material. I learned about oil and acrylic paint, and their different properties. I have always loved the canvas, and the stretcher. Later on, I started to use more technological, industrial pigments. First, I begun with enamel paint you can find in any hardware store and, then, I moved to sophisticated industrial paints
that form a different structure on the canvas and are very reliable when you handle them as well as in the drying process. For a painter, it is very important to experiment with pigments and to test out their stability. I can paint because I know the materials and I can handle the brush and the palette knife…

 

IB: Matter as the matrix of painting. This passion of yours comes up in your latest works as well. Which art were you looking at in those years? Who did you like? My first guess would be Francis Bacon for the screaming sorrow and Julian Schnabel for the matter.

 

RCZ: Of course. I also found that the works of Hermann Nitsch were extremely powerful. In those years, I met Willie Valentine, a gallerist from Singapore, who worked with Yan Pei-Ming and decided to show our paintings together. I have often be accused of copying Yan Pei-Ming but showing our works together allowed to catch all the differences beyond the fact that our paintings do indeed represent large-scale faces and feature a dense materiality. Yan Pei-Ming makes black-and- white oil
portraits whereas my faces are monochromatic archetypes painted with acrylic enamel… This said, I was struck by the power of Yan Pei-Ming's work and his take on Western painting.

 

IB: With the faces you found a way to achieve something absolute…

 

RCZ: Yes, they express my being pissed off at the world, my impotence in the face of life tragedies. I made other series like Street Accidents, Dead Children in Rwanda, and Embryons in which the painterly matter is closer to Emilio Vedova… their purpose is to show how a person's emotions can be seized by the violence of the matter… When those works were made I was unaware of what was around me.

 

IB:At twenty-five and as a self-taught artist, you moved to Milan. Things were changing: Cannaviello's roaster featured artists like Pusole e Pizzi Cannella, and there were also the play doughs of Stefano Arienti, and Corrado Levi and Amedeo Martegani. Who did you look at?

 

RCZ: Thinking about artists of my same age, I was fascinated by the work of Luigi Presicce, Nicus Lucà, Davide Nido, and others as well as by the music scene. But beside Mondino, my teachers were artists like Michelangelo Pistoletto or Antonio Recalcati who taught me how to look at the world, and the photographers Carlo Valsecchi and Filippo Sciascia with whom I have night-long discussions about art. A special guidance came from Roberto Barni, a pre-Transvanguardia painter whose work have been unfairly underrated, a sublime figurative painter who precedes Mimmo Paladino and Sandro Chia.
Then, another stroke of luck: the beginning of “real” art making, and idea that becomes concrete. Italo Crevola, Emilio Mazzoli together with Paolo Majorana and Alessandro Poggiali came to my studio and bought my works. In fact, they even commissioned new works which kept me busy for the following four years. And I do still work with Alessandro Poggiali.

 

IB: In 2006, you stop making faces but carry on with the monochrome and the painterly density. Slowly, you work begins to change. How did The Explosions come about?

 

RCZ: In 2009, I went to Japan for two months (I am used to spend long periods abroad, and the Orient has always fascinated me). There, I could feel the weight of History, the atrocity of the Atomic Bomb obsessed me and for this series of great explosions I resumed abstract painting. Upon seeing my work in the studio, critic and journalist Marina Mojana and gallerist Claudio Composti came up with the idea of an exhibition with catalogue to be held at Palazzo Reale on occasion of the anniversary of the
Hiroshima bombing on the 6th of August. The copyright on the photographs of the atomic bomb had just expired and these images were everywhere. So, I sat down to study the explosion, its movements and destructive energy.

 

IB: From the formal point of view, The Vulcanoes and The Explosions strike me as quite similar and might date from the same period. You showed them together in an exhibition at the Ronchini Gallery, in London. These works seem to set natural violence in dialogue with human violence and its insanity. At the same time, as the figurative representation begins to subside and the painterly substance gains weight, the palette is still monochromatic. How did you come up with these new works?

 

RCZ: After the exhibition, I decided to take a break from work and stayed in London. I felt I had come to a standstill and began looking for a theoretical ground to start afresh. I forced myself to pause for two years during which I read a lot, went to as many exhibition as possible, and studied the artists I loved the most. This break issued from the need to clean up my mind. I strived to take in as much as I could without restricting my creativity, I was looking for emptiness and silence. I left my studio on purpose so that I did not have a physical space to work in and I committed to looking and walking.

IB: What brought you back to work? And why such a different style?

 

RCZ: At some point, I felt I had to have a studio again and the studio is the fundamental condition for me to work. Back in Milan, I found a industrial loft that I transformed into a house/studio, a place to settle down and do research. I went back to work, and it was happy and hectic.

 

IB: You are loosely inspired by the Japanese conception of time, extended and anonymous. The techniques of enamel and oil painting on canvas but with industrial materials…

 

RCZ: I am looking for a way to break the dichotomy between the East and the West, tradition and modernity. My research is grounded in a post-industrial present, as if our expressive means would become something else in the Orient…

 

IB: This series turns a sequence of paintings into a motion picture. Like celluloid film, it is light-sensitive. Also, it is made of thin overlapping layers that affect the color and create an instinctive, material texture although your work is far from being instinctual and possesses a infinite number of layers. Like gouache painting… The idea of capturing the flux of pigments and turn it into a representation seems quite conceptual and abstract.

 

RCZ: That's right. In these works, I leave it to the viewer to figure out some kind of figuration. Everyone is free to read the painting in her own way… What I make is like a code, and the vision of the public is an open and undetermined. I enjoy looking at the painting as a whole. My favorite ones change every day depending on my thoughts and state of mind…

 

Ilaria Bonacossa and Roberto Coda Zabetta

PAINTING ENERGY

I believe in technique, in the capacity to structure emotions on the painterly surface…
Roberto Coda Zabetta

For Roberto Coda Zabetta, painting is a state of mind and, at the same time, a physical necessity, a personal method to give form to the magmatic chaos of matter. Usually large-scaled, his works show how to seize and ‘force’ pigments into a a transparent, doughy impasto that violates the two-dimensionality of the canvas. Following the teachings of Emilio Vedova (1919-2006), the Italian master of abstraction who used to define his own works as ‘quakes’ and ‘whiffs’, Roberto Coda Zabetta’s research is structured in thematic clusters while hypnotic emotions explode from his layers of painterly substance.
In developing his practice, Roberto Coda Zabetta has never abided by the strict rules of the contemporary art world, reclaiming the freedom to choose his own style with the same eclecticism of his mentor and teacher Aldo Mondino (1938-2005). Indeed, after a years-long period of figurative post-expressionist monochromes, in 2014 he dived headlong in pure abstraction. Once again, Mondino set example opening Coda Zabetta’s eyes on the importance of the materials, of the knowledge of one’s own creative tools and, furthermore, onto the importance to establish a truthful relation between one’s work and the world.

Yet, the diffusion of abstract experiments in the international art scene proves that the return to abstraction as a space of freedom and emotion can be understood as the artists’ muted answer to the exaggerated consumption of the image brought about by global capitalism and the virtualization of the real. The work of great contemporary painters such as Sigmar Polke, Gerhard Richter, Amy Sillman, and Liz Deschenes shows that the shift from abstraction to figuration is not conceptually definitive. Indeed, contemporary abstract painting is nothing but dogmatic: it results from the balance between total freedom and the compositional restrictions the artist imposes upon himself.

Titling an exhibition of two-dimensional works FILM# 00-56 entails a semantic shift and elicits a smooth reading of the works that appear connected to one another through a ‘narrative’ structure. In addition, this title turns the artist from demiurge to director since he seizes and captures on film actions performed by others than himself. The choice to paint ‘as a director’ developed after a two-years long pause during which the artist underwent a crises about his capacity to represent the world through images. This crises resulted into a open work, autonomous and independent from the artist himself, to a certain extent, FILM# 00-56 is a sequence of fifty-six frames that tell about a linguistic change in which the expressionist gesture is replaced by the desire to freeze the energy of pigments on the canvas.
However, there is nothing casual about Coda Zabetta’s new artistic practice, his paintings are made of thin layers, impalpable ‘films’ of color and air. No longer thick nor brightened by heavy brushstrokes of white, the painterly substance becomes fluid and transparent thanks to the use of air as a painterly tool. The serial structure of this project derives from the idea to create a sequence of film-stills in which mechanical execution and the energy of compressed air are combined with manual precision, the rhythm of the brush, and the force of color. These canvases of different sizes seem to play with the limits of contemporary abstraction by establishing a tactile and visceral relation with the classic materials of painting which are ‘forcefully’ turned into transparent wefts through the use of spatulas and compressed air.

FILM# features a material metamorphosis where the gestural energy crystallizes a mind state influenced by oriental art. The narrative structure recedes in favor of matter. Technique and manual skill are decisive in governing the flow of pigments, while the formal accuracy of the gesture is quite lyrical and distanced from any form of psychic automatism. The works on view can be divided in subgroups, like the episodes of a film, where the energy of the pigments crystallizes several structures. The material, almost sculptural, weight of certain canvases, where numbers of layers are blended to darken the image, nearly turns them into transparent screen-prints that seem to be painted in watercolor.

Thus, cut across by a vector of color, some paintings appear to be lit by falling stars exploded millions light years away while others seem to capture the reflections of wave motion through the water. Their transparencies as well as their extended temporality recall the thousand-year-old tradition of Japanese ink wash painting and watercolor on paper. Similarly, the concentric force of some works seem to figure forth the slow death of a star and its implosion in a space different from the Cartesian three-dimensionality we are used to inhabit. At last, the small-size square paintings look like microscopic scans of colorful coral fragments. These fifty-six works are about the energy of the world, they turn painting into a film about waves, reflections, particle movements, centripetal and centrifugal forces. It is a moving, stunning film.

Arranged in groups like medieval polyptychs, these paintings remind of nanotechnology digital images as well as sidereal spaces millions light years away from us. They show how the contemporary gaze can now move from microcosm to macrocosm, from the core of a cell to the explosion of a galaxy. In FILM#, then, abstraction probes the heart of matter, contemporary physics is turned into purified painting, suspended in between the continuous flow of time and the urgency of the moment, to grasp the essence of things. This series descends from the urge to represent that which we have never seen nor, possibly, even imagined.

FILM# is informed by Coda Zabetta’s dismissal of the compositional tenets accrued in his figurative works. Here, constitutional and technical features are radicalized and painting becomes an existential exercise. The force of these works resides in their power to condense information and seize the gaze of viewer to lead it, through wave motions and light reflection, in a journey made of emptiness and substance, light and shade, thoughts and contemplation.
It is worthless wondering about the origin of these paintings, they stand as a collection of matter, of its movement and energy. It can take just an hour to make a painting but, for an artist, it can take many years before that hour comes.

Ilaria Bonacossa 2015

IL VASO DI PANDORA

1- Ieri

Il Vaso di Pandora si narra contenesse tutte le forze del male, furie, istinti selvaggi, cataclismi, malvagità. Scoperchiato infettava il mondo, trasformando le città in luoghi di tragedia e distruzione. Neppure la speranza (oggi si direbbe speranza di un senso, di una giustizia, di un disegno), venne concessa in salvo alla genia degli uomini. Il mondo, la realtà, sembra dirci il mitologema, non è solo un insieme di forze positve, di bei ideali e di valori sacrosanti, ma anche il suo contrario. Regno di forze oscure e minacciose, imperfezione, entropia. A molti la storia dell’arte dopo le gloriose epoche classiche potrebbe apparire tale e quale. Parafrasando Bataille, potremmo dire che, mentre l’universo è proprio un ragno spiaccicato, la forma può essere uno sputo. Altri sono andati ben oltre, non vergognandosi di paragonare la forma pittorica ad esempio ad un vomito ed ad una carogna di animale in putrefazione. Da un certo momento in poi, più o meno dalla fine del Settecento in avanti, pur avendone avuti già chiari indizi nel Manierismo, la dissoluzione della griglia prospettica o della superficie pittorica, il collasso del segno, la confusione dei toni cromatici, ha generato mostruosità, deformazioni mai viste nell’ordine universale della figuratività. Ovvero aberrazioni informi e mostruose visioni. Come se il quadro dismettendo la sua funzione mimetica, di specchio rivolto sulla bella natura, sul vero ideale, fosse stato voltato veramente da un’altra parte: da quella trattenuta da Pandora nel suo mitico vaso. Una diversa, altra realtà, che albergava nell’essere umano non come una cosa sconosciuta, ma come un’esperienza tenuta a distanza e a parte. La forma difforme fin da quelle prime epoche, pur affermandosi all’interno di una lingua accademica classica, e pur rispettando il testo iconografico, ha stabilito in più modi e in diverse zone del quadro, un nuovo ordine formale, quello incontrollabile della irrazionalità o irragionevolezza. Della follia e della disperazione. Pretendendo, come sostiene Francisco Jarauta, il diritto a pronunciarsi in modo anti-classico, per dire l’indicibile, la morte o la non forma. Esito fondamentalmente scontato in una civiltà che ad un certo punto iniziava a mettere in dubbio l’esistenza tanto di Dio, quanto di valori e strutture appoggiate sulla ragione e l’idea di perfezione ultima.

Dal manierismo in poi, il pittore ha infatti già mutato il suo rapporto con l’occhio, da sempre organo privilegiato della sua disciplina. Dopo Leonardo da Vinci, che forse per primo ha cercato di indagare oltre la superficie ottica delle cose, servedosi però ancora di uno strumento positivo e razionale, sebbene fosse il suo metodo del tutto empirico, l’artista ha aperto lo sguardo su realtà speventevoli lasciando che queste forze irrazionali potessero agire sul segno e la forma, distruggendone la compattezza o la chiarezza, la lucentezza o la trasparenza, l’armonia e la proporzione, in una parola l’intelligibilità e la misura. In un certo senso ha chiuso gli occhi rigirandoli all’interno e da quel momneto ha cominciato a vedere con il corpo, con la carne e i nervi. Siamo entrati in quella notte oscura di cui parlavano i mistici, ma invece che salire il Carmelo per godere di una visione celestiale, gli artisti sono discesi verso la bassa materialità del reale, iniziando a frequentare l’abiezione e la perdizione dell’informe. Il tratto si è confuso, aggrovigliato, come trascinato al centro di un sussulto infernale, la materia distesa per secoli con lentezza e dolcezza si è improvvisamente increspata, agitandosi si è mescolata e gonfiandosi si è poi dissolta in rivoli tumultuosi, in chiazze oscene e volgari più simili a espettorazioni e vomiti che a rosee, argentee, eteree nuvolette. Anche i colori in questo cambiamento di suoni e armonie si sono accesi risentendo di una forza nuova e oscura. I suoni sono rimombati come effetti di una violenza in atto, non solo in potenza. A quel punto sono venute meno, dissolvendosi, anzi cadendo a terra e a terra spiaccicandosi, anche le iconografie classiche. Cioè quelle figure del mito o della iconologia cristiana, che per secoli avevano personificato forze del male, mostruosità, difformità, impulsi feroci, follie e sregolatezze dei sensi, trattenendole all’interno di quel vaso di Pandora che erano appunto le iconografie. E quelle forze, senza figura corrispettiva, hanno agito direttamente sulla tecnica e gli strumenti, imponendo la propria verità senza la mediazione concettuale e iconica di quel linguaggio formale che per secoli aveva fondato e disciplinato la visibilità secondo i principi della classicità estendendo il suo imperio non solo sul visibile e il conoscibile ma anche anche sull’indicibile e l’inumano (M.Foucault).

Dunque, ben prima della manifestazione eclatante dell’informale, come stile e disciplina autonoma, ovvero prima di Dubuffet e Burri e delle loro “operazioni informi”, la follia del segno e della forma, quella forza oltre la linea d’ombra del soggetto, classico, quindi razionale, e della sua metafisica, si è annidata nella pittura classica come espressione di una lignua anticlassica. Osservando certe opere, abbiamo detto, essa si trova in zone, dettagli, particolari che a volte attraggono come un vero e proprio punctum. Proprio per questo hanno a che fare con qualcosa di simile alla morte e al massimo dell’indicibile, a quanto è il male estremo, il destino inaccettabile e inspiegabile, quel misto di eros e violenza che è a fondamento dell’esserci stesso. In queste zone perturbanti, dove aleggia un sentore di putrefazione e di abiezione, siamo ad un passo dall’informe, cioè molto vicino alla dimensione più inquietante del dolore e dell’angoscia, tra le pieghe della follia, nella parte molle e debilitata di una crisi umanistica senza paragoni, quella di una sensibilità, che non facendo più affidamento alla ragione, si è scoperta in crisi di valori e di religiosità, e che perdendosi nel proprio orizzonte materialistico ha visto vacillare la propria fede nella morale (classica) e nella fede (cattolica) aprendo le porte ad un profondo negativo nichilismo.

Prima di altri gli artisti hanno avvertito questa crisi universale dell’uomo restituendone i segni inglorisi e ignominosi. Addirittura hanno anticipato e preparato questa crisi, elaborando una nuova pratica informale all’interno della propria grandiosa disciplina accademica: non potendo più ricorrere al vecchio sistema di segni e di figure essi manifestavano gli effetti di quello slittamento anticlassico elaborando una crisi della materia e della figura, in cui a volte il tema era il pretesto iconografico per praticare la propria eresia, il proprio abbassamento o sprofondamento nel difforme e nell’informe, consumando il sacrifico e liberandone gli effetti. Come Goya che, dopo Rosso Fiorentino ed El Greco, pochi decenni dopo il Piranesi e Fussli, pochissimi anni dopo David e Canova, dipingeva la Quinta del sordo, la sua opera testamento, vero e proprio auto da fé, coprendo di pittura nera, livida e tetra, di figure speventevoli, un serie di bei paesaggi agresti, quel genere di vedute che tanto andava di moda nelle ville e nei palazzi di una società che consumandosi nel lusso e nel libertinaggio era ormai arrivata al capolinea.

Queste dissonanze o slittamenti di senso avevano trovato espressione anche nell’universo compositivo della fine del Settecento e dei primi dell’Ottocento, ad esempio in certe suonate di Beethoven e nei suoi “inspiegabili” trii per archi e per pianoforte, o in quell’impressionante monumento anticlassico che è “La Grande Fuga”, quartetto per archi da eseguire in preda ad una condizione convulsiva. Tuttavia, se ci affidiamo alla storia dell’arte e della critica, la prima vera scioccante esperienza formale è senz’altro l’Olympia di Manet, definita alla sua epoca una sorta di cadavere putrescente. Scioccante perché per la prima volta la dissoluzione della classicità accademica, soggetto, forma, disegno, e tutto il resto, è portata in primo piano, esibita, denudata, e quindi offerta in pasto crudamente senza altra mediazione che la sua evidenza formale. Con quella stessa evidenza con cui appare l’Olympia che è puttana vera e che si da nella sua impudica sessualità, puro oggetto di carne e di piacere. E puro strumento di piacere o di doloroso godimento appare di fatto la pittura di Manet, quella nuova pittura oltraggiosda e irriverente, che veniva giudicata e condannata come oscena. “Olympia è la negazione dell’Olimpo e se Olympia ha scandalizzato, sostiene Bataille, è perché tramite di essa Manet ha rifiutato i diversi codici ideologici e formali che regolavano la pittura di nudo, fosse esso erotico, mitologico o anche realista” (1). ” Il personaggio di manet non è situatoi da nessuna parte, né nel mondo senza fascino del prosaico linguaggio del naturalismo, né nell’ordine convulsivo della finzione accademica”. La sua sessualità è indecifrabile perché oltre le forme, così come informe comincia ad essere la pittura, quindi inammissibile dal punto di vista della forma stessa. A parere di Bataille, forse il vero codificatore della categoria informe, perché l’unico capace di definire la materia informe al di fuori di ogni dialettica o di dualismo idealistico, l’opera di Manet rappresenta il primo caso di operazione scatologica. Quindi è la madre di ogni successiva opera “informale”. La materia brut, per l’appunto la forma informe, al limite del pervertito e del perturbante, è secondo il filosofo francese ” ciò di cui non si ha idea, ciò che non fa senso, che non ha diritti suoi in alcun senso e si fa schiacciare dappertutto come un ragno o un verme di terra”. è quella esperienza e oggetto di bassa materialità, oscena, disgustosa, spaventevole, intoccabile, che non può, non deve e non vuole essere riassorbita dall’immagine o dal contenuto, nel loro vecchio e perdurante ideralismo dialettico: al contrario quando tutto ciò le si avvicina tutto si riduce a forma derisoria, sgorbio, pasticcio, poltiglia, e gli unici termini a disposizione sono quelli di volgarità, bruttezza, oscenità. Tutto questo per Bataille è come la cacca, il riso, la parola oscena, la follia, qualcosa che fa anche appello a una esperienza di realtà e di sensazioni tipicamente infantile. Per questo scatena forze degenerative, regressive, basse, volgari, o meglio ancestrali e animali.

Da allora di materia informe, e di esperienze irrazionali permutate in difformità, abbiamo molti esempi. Da quel fantastico e sorprendente piccolo capolavoro dell’arte informale che è la tela donata da Duchamp ad una sua amica, pittura realizzata con getto di sperma disteso col polpastello (o altro ancora), che anticipa forse molte altre prove di basso materialismo. E poi Fontana, Burri, Fautrier, Wolfs e come indicizzato da Rosalind Kraus e Yve-Alain Bois, anche Rauschemberg, Morris, Gordon Matta-Clark , Manzoni, Twombly, solo per citare alcuni esempi di quella squadra eterogenea di cultori e sciamani dell’informe. A fianco di tutti questi, ma un po’ in disparte, Pollock, più informale di loro, più pittore, più artista capace di rivoluzionare la stessa fenomeologia dell’atto pittorico e gli esiti stessi della modernità. Abbassando tutto quanto era stato verticale fino a quel giorno sul piano orizzontale della vita stessa, quella vita portata a livello dei piedi, della cacca, dello sputo, dei ragni spiaccicati Pollock ha portato l’Olimpo ancora più in basso.

2-Oggi

Le grandi facce urlanti dipinte da Coda Zabetta, ma dipinte è un termine ormai poco appropriato per raccontare quanto accade alla materia e all’immagine dagli inizi del Novecento, approdano alla forma sollevandosi a fatica dal piano orizzontale e da quello verticale. Come sospesi sul tragico abisso della materialità (orizzontale) e dell’iconicità ( verticale), gli urli e le facce sembrano subire un attacco (isteria o libido) ancor più deflagrante, più furioso, terrribile e gaudente. L’attacco vitalistico, orgiastico, convulsivo del colore. L’attacco è ovviamente anche un rito e un sacrificio, essendo praticato con veemenza e furore, benché esso sia tenuto sotto controllo attraverso un metodo e una funzione, in questo caso la doppia funzione, logica e sacrificale, di cui il volto, il ritratto, la faccia è vittima e artefice. Senza trovare fissa dimora, in un va e vieni, ora superando la propria alterità ora rifluendo in essa, queste opere nascono e rifulgono in definitiva su tre fronti, quello del volto, l’altro dell’urlo, infine il colore, alternandosi in preda all’euforia e allo sgomento, ora emergendo da un fondo oscuro, ora inghiottendosi pure quello. Infatti l’urlo sembra sul punto di diventare ancor più lacerante, assordante, definitivo, o al contrario rifluire verso il più puro silenzio, verso quella linea d’ombra e di nichilismo da cui forse si era divincolato. Poesia muta, la pittura, lo è in questo a tragedia forse già compiuta. Apres coup, direbbe un noto filosofo a proposito di questo trattamento informale. E l’apres coup qui sarebbe il grido, che terrorizza e violenta trattandolo come pura materia un soggetto classico inscritto da sempre in un genere altrettanto tradizionale: il volto, il ritratto.
Il grido, e un poco più oltre l’urlo, mentre scatena forze, che deformano la classicità del volto, apre uno spazio cavo, profondo, un pozzo, un gorgo, al fondo del quale possiamo già ficcare lo testa, lo sguardo: il grido, urlato, scatena una spazialità altra e quindi anche un tempo altro, una dimensione del reale che si struttura sul fondo oscuro dell’inconscio e della psiche. Una dimensione (onirica, dell’immaginario, della libido) che fin dalle sue prime apparizioni si presentò in modo perturbante, per l’appunto informe. L’urlo non è solo ciò che agisce dal dentro, e da un tempo lontanissimo, per questo terrorizza chi si veda allo specchio urlante, provocando una specie di eco malefico e spaventevole, una vera e propria esplosione, un’onda d’urto che deforma la crosta e le strutture. Vorremmo dire che l’urlo è quella forza che può essere compresa solo osservando la materia e l’intensità difforme della stessa. Come se non tanto il soggetto quanto l’operazione riuscisse a dire l’urlo, urlando (vomitando) la materia stessa.

Dunque in prima analisi, le opere di Coda Zabetta, sembrano vivere tre esperienze: quella del ritratto, quella della materia, la terza quella del colore. Vissute al di fuori di ogni dialettica idealistica. Anche se appunto l’operazione informale si attiene alle logiche iconiche e spaziali di un genere e di un soggetto a suo modo ancora tradizionale. E queste tre esperienze ondeggiano, o forse slittano, sul piano instabile della figurazione e della defigurazione, su quello della forma e della difformità, della somiglianza e della dissomiglianza. Alla difformità della somiglianza, fa sponda l’altra ragion d’essere di queste opere che è tutta ancora nella forza di essere un volto, e di esserlo ancora nei confini della rassomiglianza. Il volto trascina con se il ritratto e la gestualità altera in modo disastroso tutto quanto, ma proprio il disastro, la cui verità è nell’urlo, l’altro genere e soggetto di matrice moderna, crea una nuova forma a partire dall’informale. L’informale quindi in Coda Zabetta non è tanto una scuola a cui far riferimento, un genere, quanto una pratica, un rito, un sacrifico, quello stesso compiuto da Pollock che ha riposto sul piano orizzontale la pittura tutta, in particolare quella di paesaggio e il paesaggio con figure.

L’opera dunque per assurdo ha origine fuori dal quadro e va oltre il quadro (se il quadro è il soggetto riconoscibile dentro all’immagine, ai suoi confini con i quali ancora si può rintracciare una geografia umana, riconoscere quindi una storia, una genealogia umanistica). Eppure gesto, colore, tensione, frequenza, distanza, consistenza, prima o dopo l’urlo, che è anche l’urto, ricompongono provvisoriamente il soggetto stesso, il genre, ovvero il quadro. L’artista, a mio avviso, non ritrae, né immagina, né tanto meno deforma, si tratta piuttosto di ripassare a memoria (ma è il corpo che ha somatizzato più che la retina) un esperienza del soggetto laddove l’io è altro da se. I volti e gli urli, urti e impatti con immagini e esperienze, che ancora dobbiamo nominare volti, ritratti, nascono da esperienze di simile bassa materialità, di abiezione, di angosciosa percezione. Una forza, un’intensita, esperienza che è ancora più profonda e altra dal soggetto, dall’io e dal tu.

Ecco l’urlo. L’altro che veramente sgomenta e provoca, costruendo intensità tali che la materia diventa cosa assolutamente difforme. Ma l’urlo non è solo materia, è anche spazio, quindi tempo. Nel senso in cui apre una dimensione altra, una voragine, un abisso. Caverna e gorgo, appare l’urlo quando prende sopravvento sul volto. Spazio e misura di una forza che domina su tutto e dappertutto. Qualcosa che deforma prima di tutto la superficie in quanto la trasforma in materia, bassa, deplorevole, informe. Ma la deforma proprio in quanto apre su una dimensione altra, su uno spazio e un tempo altro, La superficie del volto, l’immagine stessa, provano uno slittamento feroce, debordamento, dissipazione, rigurgito. Troppo facile spiegare l’urlo in pittura, da certi urli romantici, a Munch, a Berg (Lulu urla bestialmente), come metafora di paura e di bestiale godimento, paragonandolo al vomito e al gemito, quindi pensandolo come figura del terrore, della violenza, del male, della morte, oppure del piacere sessuale, quell’intensità deformante che prende il sopravvento sull’io, e il volto è prima di tutto lio, quando il godimento arriva a quel punto indefinibile di piacere, che tutto si fa troppo animale, bestiale, e il soggetto perde il senso del tempo, vivendo solo di pulsazione e flash, di dissipazione e contrazione. Troppo scontato riferirsi al grido di certi papi di Bacon, a certi suoi volti che urlando spasmodicamente si liquefano. Eppure è utile fare un po’ di esegesi; ad esempio è utile notare che mentre l’urlo agisce sul volto anche la pittura si liquefa, e con essa immagine e materia. Tutto il linguaggio occidentale si liquefa con Bacon, tutta la visibilità. Qui invece tutto esplode, crepitando e dissipandosi, macchie, schizzi, come un frutto spiaccicato, come un corpo calpestato, fatto esplodere. Quindi qualcosa d’altro violenta il soggetto moderno del volto. Forse la consapevolezza della violenza disumana che è la forza bellica dell’uomo occidentale. L’esperienza di un mondo che non cade, ma si esplode, gettando la propria forma difforme contro lo specchio dei media.

Questa è la tragedia e l’ironia di tale esperienza. Perché tutto qui si trattiene e non si ferma. Attratto da una forza gravitazionale resta al suo posto, limitrofo, in modo da ristrutturare un genere oltre ad un immagine informe si ma rassomigliante. Per giunta a colori. E che il grido, urlato, sia l’intensità dell’ atto difforme su cui il processo pittorico si organizza, si struttura, e anche la sua forma, epifania, tutta difforme e dissipata, lo sottolinea, rinforzandolo con la stessa intensità, e misura, quella macchia di colore violentemente gettato a fianco, una sorta di raddoppiamento sonoro oltre che figurale, altro urlo. (Splash). Macchie di pura pittura, e quindi pittura come operazione e non come tema.

Sergio Risaliti 2006

THE SHIELD AND THE FACE

The shield is an archaic military device. Once muskets appeared on the battlefield around 1500 it disappeared: what point was there in lumbering around the battlefield carrying a large, heavy lump of wood or metal if a man with a gun could knock a hole in it anyway? Nevertheless it still retains a deep symbolic meaning, for example in two popular English hymns
A safe stronghold our God is still,
A trusty shield and weapon;
Guide me, O thou great Redeemer…
Be thou still my strength and shield.
Or in video games where people still carry them! There in these contemporary fantasy myths a pilgrim or young hero will set off with a sword and a shield. It remains a rich metaphor, not just for heroism but for such things as the USA’s missile defence shield, and also as a term for medical or spiritual defence. The phrase “shield me from” is so common that the word has become a verb as well as a noun.
But though it does not figure in the arsenal of armies anymore it is very much a device used by police in riots to both protect them from hurled missiles and an aggressive tool to push protesters down or away. It has become here not the symbol of heroism but of oppression and institutional brutality. Circular-shaped shields are used by snatch squads: police who run into the crowd to beat or capture individual leaders.
If there is one image of the shield in art that remains haunting it is Caravaggio’s shield-shaped painting Medusa. In the myth she was so ugly that anyone who saw her was turned top stone; Perseus defeated her by using a mirrored shield to reflect her horrific face back at her. This image was re-invented in the late nineteenth century by Arnold Böcklin, both as a painting and as a sculpted shield. However he presents her more as a tragic figure she was – a beautiful woman turned to a vision of terror by Athena whose temple she worked in as a punishment for “letting” Poseidon rape her there.
The shield is therefore, as Coda Zabetta claims, still a potent one, but one with rich yet slippery connotations. He elides it with the human face. The face is like a shield
too – it protects our thoughts as well as supposedly expressing them. In English we say “shield” or “mask” as a way of saying “conceal” or “hide”.
If the persistent oval shape in these paintings is a shield, which side of the shield are we on? Do we stare at a shield held by someone else, bearing as does Caravaggio’s famous painting the image of a face? Or do we stare at the inside, concave side of the shield – our own shield – that is perhaps mirroring or reflecting our own features or thoughts?
Although the marks and flow of paint are, as always in Coda Zabetta, are strong and assertive we are in a complex and uncertain place, we have to think carefully where we are and what we see represents. As always in Coda Zabetta the marks and what they do is ultimately the thing itself. Above all they play on the inside and outside: the outside masking, shield-like shape of the face, on the inside the turbulent emotions and doubts. The face is always there: it is as persistent as a rock on the sea front that the waves storm against and flow over. If the face in its shield-like form represents the person, the paint that flows over and through it can be seen to represent history or the flux of time.
Again and again when we look at these paintings we may ask ourselves which side of the shield are we on? The eyeholes suggest this like a mask may be used for secure viewing, but a mask has associations of deceit and falsehood that a shield does not.
But his marks too can conceal as well as expose: his marks often cover up other images – for example, in an earlier series images from Chinese paintings – as if they were growths of form that are slowly materialising in front of us. Or as if, were to look down at out world from space, they were clouds moving across the globe.
And these are, lest we forget, above all else not metaphors or statements but paintings. In this series there is a wonderful variety of mark, mood and colour contrast or harmonies. Although they are provocative paintings that seem to stare back at us, that seem to occupy the space of the gallery in a challenging way, they are full of visual pleasures for the viewer. They present a discourse about the pleasure or sensuality of painting as well as one about identity and political strife.
In his statement Coda Zabetta talks about the horrors of Brazil, a country once run by a military regime whose crimes (like those of the equivalent military regimes in Indonesia, Philippines, Myanmar, Argentina, Chile etcetera) have never been fully exposed or punished. He has never been an artist to avoid serious themes such as
cancer, genocide in Rwanda, atomic bombs. The face is both the witness to these horrors and the assertion of the identity of the victim.
Do we believe in portraits anymore? Do we believe as people in a different age did that the face is mirror of the soul? Yes and no. Do we believe that the painter can capture the “soul” or “character” of the sitter when he paints him or her? Probably not but yet we remain fascinated by portrait painting and photography. We look at the photographs of these generals who ordered massacres, who directed “dirty wars” and we are puzzled because we cannot see what we want to see. They do not drip blood. They do not look malevolent.
These are and are not portraits. What do they portray: people or states of mind? They appear to be statements but the longer we look the more like questions they seem to be. These are two of the many paradoxes Coda Zabetta has touched again on in this recent set of paintings. He works with paradoxes and radical disjunctures or contrast: the contours of the face are as perfectly oval and as incorruptible and implacable as a shield, but the marks are loose, gestural, flowing. What ever the marks do, whether they define or cover it up, the face remains intact and unchanged. Sometimes an expression and a character will appear, conjured up by lines of age or facial expression, but always there are eyes: they watch us, they bear witness to what has gone before.
The word martyr comes from the Greek μάρτυς, mártys meaning witness. There is a sense of martyrdom or pain here. But above all there is the sense of witnessing – an act in which we are invited to participate.

Tony Godfrey 2013

PSYCHIC PERSONA

When the poet T.S. Eliot introduced his concept of the “perfect artist” during the thirties he was paying homage to those who functioned normally in everyday life, yet who performed their work in an aesthetically convincing way. For Eliot, the life-style of the artist was a secondary concern — in fact, separate from the actual creative process. Yet in today’s media-saturated, investment driven art world, the tendency to foreground the artist’s life-style over and above his or her means of visual production is done regularly, almost without notice. Indeed some artists have even cultivated this approach – Andy Warhol for one, Basquiat for another. In contrast, Marcel Duchamp was far less visible in his professional life, often indirect in his remarks, if not deceptive. I cannot speak of Roberto Coda Zabetta in these terms, because I know him only through his work, specifically his dynamic gestural portraits of large male heads. The work appears largely focused on men of African descent. I do not know whether Zabetta’s life-style is perceptively aligned with the subjects in his paintings or whether he maintains a separation in his artistic endeavor.

The real issue is whether Zabetta’s stark, expressionist paintings resonate in a way that is credible and consistent with his intentions as an artist. In other words, does his art give us a sense of what is beneath the surface by representing an inside view of his projected subjects? Are his subjects conflicted to the extent that they appear absent from themselves? Are they trapped in the banalities of commercial media, surreptitious violence, and repression? We do not have access to any of this. What is interesting is how the subjects constitute a kind of psychic persona, an “otherness” that ascertains the artist’s presence in relation to the subjects’ absence. This implies that the subjects in these paintings appear less about their inside motivation than about what exists outside of them, elsewhere. Yet there is a kind of existential dread in these faces. Zabetta is not telling us anything about the motives of his subjects – as one might expect in the expressionism of Kokoschka or Beckmann — but about what lies on the surface. In any case, we are left with something that is distinctly unclear, discomforting, and possibly threatening, a lingering sensation that goes beyond reason, an aura of emptiness or, better put, blankness.

Zabetta is a young, emerging artist, barely into his thirties, who has chosen portraiture as his means of deliver. Some of the images – if seen out of context – could be mistaken for popular illustrations, CD covers, for example. Conversely, Zabetta wants the scale and energy of his paintings to command the space of the gallery or the museum or the collector’s home and be viewed and understood as art. By intensifying the threshold of confrontational awareness in relation to the viewer, the artist incites the demons hidden within these faces to come forth. Even so, there is a peculiar detachment and innocence about these paintings, verging on a kind of naiveté. Zabetta’s way of seeing the male face in its raw state at the core of emotional turbulence may be more cinematic than it is related to the history of painting. This may lead some viewers to see them in graphic terms, but clearly there is more here than technique in spite of the painterly gestures that adorn the surfaces.

In contrast to Eliot’s “perfect artist” – a concept that is essentially a modernist one — I would suggest that Zabetta falls more within the cultural politics of postmodernism. Among the cultural figures of his generation, the possibility of remaining exempt from media visibility is nearly impossible, even if only for a brief period of time. Given the acceleration of digital and commercial media as offering the principle shift from the modern to the postmodern paradigm, it would appear that Eliot’s quest for cultural refinement has been temporarily, if not irrevocably obliterated. Rather than being concerned with formality or the ideal gesture, as in abstract expressionism, Zabetta’s hybrid painterly connotations are more linked to early transavantgardia in their search for metaphysical significance. His portraits have the tone of representing a hardcore machismo that simultaneously reveals both physical directness and elusive self-possession.

Like other artists influenced by the cultural politics of the eighties and nineties, Zabetta’s work does not easily escape issues of irony, detachment, fragmentation, chaos, and simulation – all of which can be traced in the portraits. In this sense, he is an artist who mirrors the global conflicts of the present moment, but he does it through his telescopic views of the psychic persona, the revelation that violent struggle and conflict are endemic to the torn and fractured countenances of ordinary men. Rather than go from the outside in, Zabetta paints from the inside out. The anxiety within these painterly marks and gestures are representational, but only to a degree. There intend to show us the traces of psychic distillation in these flattened remorseless faces – or so it would seem.

Still, there is another dimension in Zabetta’s work that opens a more palpable vision of his work. In mentioning the fear or the cover for existential dread in the faces of his subjects, I am reminded of the French writer Jean Genet. Genet was Moroccan by birth, a bastard without legitimate parents, who later became an acknowledged thief and murderer for which he was imprisoned. In prison, he wrote some of most powerful allegorical confessions in the form or plays and novels that revolve around his existential philosophy. What is impressive about Genet’s writing is, in some ways, as ineffable as the gestural marks than comprise Zabetta’s portraits. It is difficult to get to the source of what propels them into reality. We might consider the cultural parameters that inhabit the paintings of Zabetta as an existential confession. He goes to the source of being without knowing where it is, maybe through “otherness,” maybe through the threshold of a densely clouded confrontation — a tough-guy look where the presence of the gaze obscures our notion of presence.
Robert C. Morgan 2010