A Nomadic Life – Francesco Clemente in China
Springs Center of Art is pleased to present the solo exhibition of internationally renowned contemporary artist Francesco Clemente, “A Nomadic life – Francesco Clemente in China”. We have invited the acclaimed curator and critic, Huang Du, to curate this exhibition, and the works will be on display from September 3 through October 31, 2016.
Francesco Clemente is considered one of the most representative artists of the Transavantgarde. Born in Naples, in 1952, he lived through the social, political, intellectual and cultural unrest and transformations of the 1970s, when various intellectual clashes and debates led to a spiritual crisis. As the era of artistic innovation was drawing to a conclusion, the crisis of artistic practice became a subject of discussion. In the 1970s, the Arte Povera Movement lied aslant before the younger Transavantgarde artists. Arte Povera, a branch of conceptual art, followed the linear Darwinian logic that, since Marcel Duchamp, dominated the mainstream discourse of the 1970s. The Transavantgarde artists not only rejected such linear mode of thinking, but also sought out transcendence through non-linear, tangential, criss-crossing, overstepping approaches, or even took a step back, adopting a strategy of displacement and repetition. Thus, as a member of the Transavantgarde artists, Clemente’s works embodied the nomadic qualities of uncertainty, heterogeneity and fluidity.
In his youth, Clemente studied architecture in Rome, but soon he gave up his studies to teach himself painting. Clemente entered into the art world with a nomadic attitude. His command of artistic expression has shown effortless confidence whether in regard to subject matter, medium, style and modes of expression or to the flexible, liberal and transformative quality of his works. He has freed himself from historical and geographical confines, and this nomadic spirit is evident in the artist’s travels, particularly in Clemente’s adventure in Afghanistan in 1974 with the “Arte Povera” artist, Alighiero Boetti. Since 1975, Clemente set up a studio in the port Indian city, Madras, where he spent a few months of every year to work. The openness in Clemente’s art practice was not only meant to excavate the sediments of Western artistic development, but also to discover cultural resources beyond the Italian visual realms – allowing the art of history (from Egypt, Greece, Rome, the Renaissance, Surrealism, Expressionism and Indian art) to integrate with metaphysics (Christianity, alchemy, theosophy, astrology and Indian philosophy of consciousness and Chinese I Ching or Taoism), whereby avoiding to arrive at a singular artistic style while transcending the monotony of the Italian cultural context. The flexibility and freedom Clemente has shown in his artworks resemble “the map in the hands of the nomads”, without any predetermined destination, he drifts in an uncertain realm. Nomads have the ability to destroy any confines, rules and boundaries, while inviting newly generated art and language into their practice. Clemente’s artistic expression relies on “regenerating” and the differences in what would be regenerated nullifies the oppression of homogeneity while a non-linear flexibility shuns the limit of linearity. As we have seen, he has fully adopted the reproduction of images in his paintings, although repetition may be considered a form of appropriation, however, Clemente engages his imagination to step beyond simple appropriation. Moreover, images are displaced to engender new images and meaning. The artist’s adoption of repetition and displacement enhances the fantastic, enigmatic and surreal visual expression of his paintings. In his art practice, he would often incept with an object of certainty, then, allows his artwork to deviate from the preconceived hypothesis. For this exhibition, Clemente has spent one month to paint a large mural in the exhibition space, “The Tide of the Ocean of Stories” (700 x 2800 cm), where the title of the work, is drawn from Somadeva’s collection of stories Kathasaritsagara (The Ocean of Streams of Stories). His paintings on the wall are visual sediments that embody the deep and profound cultural tones of the two ancient civilizations – India and China, and offer a riveting and intriguing visual experience: to begin a flying self-portrait descending from above. Then the mural consists of, a woman resting her head on the clouds or on a pillow, wearing a large gown, reminding the viewer of Afro-Brazilian traditional ceremonial costumes; a three-legged boar headed in two directions with two small birds resting on the tree towering over its body; a fist pulling on a balloon; a man hanging upside down from a deer’s antler; a lotus blossoming out of the eye sockets of a skull; a couple embracing inside the mouth of a horse; a nose etc. These images are uniformly painted in brown-red ocher, its fragments, synopsis, whether independent or non-linear, their figures and forms lend to the making of a larger story, and every unit implies for extraordinary allegory and metaphors. The artist portrays an overall narrative with elements of humans, oceans, plants and animals with his unusual imagination and creativity. This work leaves out any kind of glamorous rhetoric, instead, highlights elements of theatricality and lyricism, vividly conveying the metaphors of suffering and joy, life and death. Clemente has a unique understanding on the relationship between nature and humanity, and nature to him is not necessarily a purely sensual concept: in other words, both humanity and nature depend on catastrophic changes and are in constant flux. His works of art often focus on representing the fragility of the dispossessed and the dangerous power of those who wish to change their state of existence. Therefore, this is an elegy woven with history and reality. Although Clemente has painted permanent murals for various important institutions, the temporary piece of this dimension presented at Springs Centre of Art is a first.
Besides the on site work, Clemente brought to this exhibition four sculptures/installations produced in India. Among them, one is based on his own image. Clemente is fond of noticing the homophony of “eye” and “I” in English. The head portrait is in fact a self-portrait of the witness, in other words, it serves as a point of connection between the self and the witness. A liaison that is obviously based on the five senses, shown as the different size metal chains attached to the nose, eyes, mouth, ears pulled by five radiating bound objects. Such symbolism can also be associated to Buddhist concepts. Buddhism reminds us that our senses and our learning of objects and matters are often exaggerated. If we look at these philosophical works of art in perspective, we see that they are charged with a strong sense of classicism, rituality, religiosity, mystery and theatricality.
Clemente often painted unique watercolors on hand-made paper. His transparent watercolor layering or shading serves as the impressionistic backdrop that perfects its subject matter. For the watercolors in the exhibition, he began collaborating with traditional Indian miniature painters. Under his guidance, these craftsmen skillfully and meticulously painted against every transparent watercolor layer, images found at the Shanghai flea market of old 1930′s labels and matchboxes which became equal components of this oeuvre, allowing the fragmented images to contaminate each other and overlap. The amalgamation of individual memories with historical/real images lends to a sense both of familiarity and bewilderment, allowing this work to reach its ultimate flavor.
Rather than just being a user of the concept, Clemente is a true nomad. His understanding of the nomadic life is thinking globally and acting locally. In the artist’s view, nomadic space is based on national space. He integrates a truly nomadic life into his art practice with the intention of expanding its vitality and adopts a “reproduction” which redefines cultural attributes. As for example in the ink paintings series he made recently in Beijing, where the naked self-portrait seems to jump out from the paper, his head painted in strange forms like a cartoon character: bald, a gazing pair of eyes, staring, sometimes appearing like two separate twins, or being solo, or making the hand gesture of Buddhist bodhisattva etc. Clemente continues to use repetition and displacement in these ink paintings, executing the various figures in wonderful and meaningful renditions. Clemente adopts the somewhat satirical and humorous style of a monologue and his approach seems to unveil the ominous contemporary circumstances while the addition of a poetic, metaphysical tone expresses freedom of choice and has the appeal of an enigma. The exhibition also includes a separate section with Clemente’s valuable photographs, two documentary films, artist books and collaborations with poets, as well as monographs on his work.
Francesco Clemente is considered one of the most internationally renowned artists over the last four decades. He is an artist of rich cultivation and knowledge, who has been invited to participate in major international art exhibitions such as Documenta in Kassel and the Venice Biennale. His solo exhibitions include the ones at the National Galerie Berlin (1984), Centre Pompidou, Paris (1994), The Guggenheim Museum (1999) New York and Bilbao, Galleria degli Uffizi in Florence (2011), Rubin Museum of Art, New York (2014) etc. His works have been acquired by acclaimed art museums, foundations and private collections. He is a member of The American Academy of Arts and Letters.
