ART-PRESENTATION: Marc Camille Chaimowicz

Increasingly influential for younger generations of artists, Marc Camille Chaimowicz’s work explores the space between public and private, design and art, and includes painting, sculpture and photography with prototypes for everyday objects, furnishings and wallpapers. Since his early installations and performances, the artist has continued to develop a broad visual language embracing materials and forms from both fine and applied art.

By Dimitris Lempesis
Photo: Triennale di Milano Archive

For “Maybe Metafisica”, his first solo show in an Italian public venue, Marc Camille Chaimowicz has conceived an exhibition design linked to the history and architecture of the Palazzo dell’Arte with works revealing a formal and emotive affinity with the most oneiric of the historical Avant-Garde movements, Metaphysical art, and its artistic heirs. For Chaimowicz, domestic objects and interiors are heavily invested with cultural, literary and biographical references, and configurations of his works take on the form of an expanded and ever-shifting still life. “We should resist the tyranny of linear time for one which is much more elusive, labyrinthian, gracious and once understood, perhaps even kindly. Once we recognise that it can fold in on itself – wherein, for example, recent events can seem distant and more distant ones seem closer – we then have a greater fluidity of means”-Marc Camille Chaimowicz. Starting from Giorgio de Chirico’s “Il Figliuol prodigo” (1973), in which a father and son are painted in a bare interior imbued with a surreal disquiet, the exhibition follows a circular path, characterized by a sense of suspension. Immersed in this atmosphere, the observer encounters some of the most characteristic expressive modes in the artist’s quest, ranging from decoration to painting and from installations to the construction of interiors. The domestic intimacy of reclining desks is juxtaposed with works of architectural inspiration such as the “Arches” (1975-2016) and the “Two-Speed Staircase” (1999-2016), giving rise to places pervaded by a dreamlike quality, sometimes physically inaccessible, as in “We Chose Our Words With Care, That Neon-Moonlit Evening; It Was As If We Were, Party To A Wonderful Alchemy” (1975-2008), a work that can only be viewed through holes in a curtain, or the mysterious “Project For A Rural House” (2003-16), which immerses the viewer in the meditative atmosphere of motionless time.

Info: Curator: Eva Fabbris, Palazzo della Triennle,    Viale Alemagna 6, Milan, Duration: 14/10/16-8/1/17, Days & Hours: Tue-Sun 10:30-20:30, www.triennale.org