The emergence of new conditions and the appearance of new problems bring with them new methods and new terms of measurement, plus a need for new solutions.
Piero Manzoni 1960
Our Gallery 2 show, "Forever", brings together only three pieces from three different artists. While sparingly, the works fill the space powerfully.
At once minimal and chaotic, the works correspond formally and conceptually. Having made works of carpet, silver, and pink foam, installations and abstract paintings, Rudi Stingel's large monochrome canvas is a landscape of tattered Styrofoam and dripping waxy silicon. Ernesto Neto's warmly yellowing sculpture has the quality of liquid frozen in place, simultaneously sterile and inviting. Finally Piero Manzoni, who even thought of his own breath as a work of art, has contained a bit of chaos with his sheet of polystyrene balls.
The three works, through their self-conscious materiality refer back to one another. Piero Manzoni was obsessed with the idea of the artist, the surface of things and the idea of color, or more precisely, of one color. He made great declarations and wrote manifestos. In the same vein, at one point, Stingel released a book with instructions on how to re-create his paintings. While Manzoni's monochrome rectangle pre-dates the other two works, suspended somewhere between painting and sculpture, they all question the idea of having a template for art-making and ask us to do the same.