ART CITIES:Paris-Gina Pane
Gina Pane is a seminal figure in the history of Body Art and more generally in that of the arts scene in France during the ‘70s and’80s. Gina Pane is best known for “Actions” in which she used her own body in her work in extreme ways, such as making small incisions in her flesh with a razor blade as in her signature piece “Azione Sentimentale”. Pane’s work was often mentioned in relation to U Chris Burden’s self-inflicting body actions.
By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Galerie Kamel Mennour Archive
Throughout her career Gina Pane moved between painting, drawing, sculpture, installation, and Action with equal facility, whether in the heart of nature, as she did the “60s, or before an audience in the ‘70s. Photography made an appearance within the context of her “Constats d’actions”, produced in close collaboration with Françoise Masson. The exhibition bears witness to the wealth of Gina Pane’s vocabulary with three major singular works, produced about a decade apart from one another respectively: “Souvenir enroulé d’un matin bleu” (1968), “Action de Chasse. C’est la nuit chérie…” (1979-1981), and “La Prière des pauvres et le corps des saints” (1989). Exhibited for the first time in Turin in 1969, “Souvenir enroulé d’un matin bleu” takes the form of a wooden cylinder covered in blue felt and fixed to a metal structure on which the words ricordo avvolto di un mattino blu have been engraved. Gina Pane would reveal in a late interview that this recurrent use of felt in her productions is tied to a childhood memory. This attraction to the mysterious forces that surround and inhabit us can be seen in the monumental mural, “Action de Chasse. C’est la nuit chérie…” The work embodies a decisive turning point for the artist who, after producing 30 Actions in public, had decided not to do any more. When she was invited in the U.S.A. in 1979, Gina Pane chose to send instructions, which two performers would interpret two years later at Franklin Furnace in New York. The large mural presented here is the work’s third realisation or the “Partition of the Action”, which the artist exhibited in 1981 at the Galleria Multimedia d’Arte Contemporanea in Brescia. The work brings together the immoderate dimensions of a large, 24 panel colour drawings (black, white, blue, red, orange) in charcoal, pastel, and gouache, with the action object: a tiny little wooden house painted green. In order to bring the viewer closer to the darkness, by way of introduction Gina Pane adds a succinct dialogue between a man and a woman, which one images to be murmured. “La Prière des pauvres et le corps des saints” is the artist’s last work. This is made up of three groups of three horizontal glass cases dedicated to three saints the artist had paid homage to before: Saint Sebastian, Saint Francis, and Saint Laurence. The central cases allow one to see the bodies of the Saints brushing up against the surface of their brass sarcophagi. The cases on the left exhibit memories of their attributes or the instruments of their martyrdom: the forged iron bow bristling with arrowheads for Saint Sebastian, the rusted iron Tau cross for Saint Francis, the charcoal-blackened wood to evoke the gridiron of Saint Laurence. The right-hand cases show the saints’ robes in symbolic colours: red felt for Saint Sebastian to reflect his body pierced by an arrow, brown felt for Saint Francis to recall his vow of austerity and poverty, sky blue felt for Saint Laurence to signify his bodily ascesis and the element of the air. Words from the “prayer of the poor” are engraved in the brass and the glass of the cases, such as to recall that it was for others, and to bring salt, honey, and fire, that these saints gave their lives.
Info: Galerie Kamel Mennour, 6 rue du Pont de Lodi, Paris, Duration: 12/3-16/4/16, Days & Hours: Tue-Sat 11:00-19:00, www.kamelmennour.com
