At the Venice Biennale Massimo Bartolini it’s been three times. This year, the artist born in Cecina, in the province of Livorno, brings architecture and music into dialogue with his work.
The The Italian Pavilion at the 60th International Art Exhibition – La Biennale di Venezia, promoted by the General Directorate of Contemporary Creativity of the Ministry of Culture, presents Due qui/To Hear by Massimo Bartolini. The exhibition project is curated by Luca Cerizza and revolves around an installation by the artist.
Can you tell us about your previous participations?
In 1999 I met Harald Szeemann at Massimo De Carlo’s gallery, which was located in via Bocconi, and after a few months he invited me to participate in my first Venice Biennale. In 2001, however, I was invited to an exhibition curated by Pier Luigi Tazzi and Fabio Cavallucci. On that occasion I created a work in the bombarde garden, which consisted of a relational space, or a white bar, which opened and closed like an oyster.
Then in 2009 Dara Birnbaum invited me to build a multimedia room for the Biennale, and I also received the proposal to contribute to the Nordic Pavilion, curated by the artist duo Elmgreen & Dragset. On that occasion I built an oblique floor, which created a distorted perception of the works that were placed in the garden. Finally, in 2013, at the invitation of the curator Bartolomeo Pietromarchi, they entrusted me with a residual space from the previous Architecture Biennale, designed by the architect Franco Purini, in which I created a path with bronze rubble and with viaticums on the walls by Giuseppe Chiari .
How did this Biennial represent a new experience?
If this Biennial brings something new to my personal experience, this lies in the great media impact it has generated around my work, incomparable to all the other exhibitions in which I have participated.
With what spirit did you approach the work at the Italian Pavilion this year where you had the chance to work on the entire space?
Creating an exhibition in which you are the only artist representing a nation, which would have many other equally deserving artists capable of covering this role, was a great responsibility for me.
How did you conceive the two works in the two rooms of the Italian Pavilion at Tese delle Vergini? Why didn’t you set just one entry but two?
From the beginning, together with Luca Cerizza, curator of the Pavilion, I thought of stripping the space as much as possible, with the intention of showing it in its nakedness. In this space, open and free, I tried to connect the two large rooms to the garden with music.
The intent was to build a place where the visitor can hear his own inner sound, which simultaneously combines with the sensations that reside in the place itself. The double opening expresses circularity: it evokes an absence of hierarchy that connects the three works in a free way.
Other artists also collaborated on this project. What are the methods of your collaborative approach to the creation of a work?
To collaborate, a work must be conceived as if it had welcoming cavities to accommodate other artists who can live there and work in them, influencing the entire project. As happens in jazz music, you invite other artists to jam sessions to see what they can do and also to learn from them, to see what music you produce together with others.
Art has always been a collective creation. Inviting some great musicians into the project put me in the interesting position of a great fan and student at the same time. I learned so much from Gavin Bryars, whose humanity is equal to his greatness as a musician. Kali Malone and Caterina Barbieri are amazing in their skill and in capturing exactly the intensity of a situation. It was a great achievement for me to have obtained the participation of these masters in my project.
The relationship is at the center of your work, with the viewer and the public. What kind of relationship-reaction do you think you will establish with the public of the Biennale with this work?
In my opinion, the viewer is the body that triggers the reaction that makes the work visible. William. S. Wilson had found a beautiful definition for the spectator, namely “participant-observer”. I hope that the audience, each individually, shaken by the sound and his steps, will gently bend over and settle in for a few seconds.
Does your invitation to listen take on any particular meanings in this present moment?
I think so: more concentration and less externalization. More attention, more justice and less opinions.
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