ART CITIES:Milan-Goshka Macugna at Fondazione Prada

Goshka Macugna is a female artist from Warsaw whose artistic works are often the result of a polyhedral process in which she tends to act as artist, curator, collector, researcher and exhibition designer. Her work method is often referred to as cultural archaeology. An exhibition is always preceded by archival research, often linked to the institution for which a given project is being created.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: Fondazione Prada Archive

In the exhibition “To the Son of Man Who Ate the Scroll”, Goshka Macuga explores the art of rhetoric and artificial memory as intricately linked tools for the organization and advancement of human knowledge, the so called Ars Memorativa. Goshka Macugna works across a variety of media including sculpture, installation, photography, architecture and design. Her work intend to investigate the human being of contemporary menkind and its attitude to attribute the label “the end” on its time and universe. The exhibition developed by the artist for Fondazione Prada’s spaces, brings together reflections on seminal issues such as time, beginnings and endings, collapse and renewal. Observing humanity’s concern with the conclusion of mankind, Macuga poses a fundamental question: how important is it to address the question of “the end” in the context of contemporary art practice? “My work alters the context”, explains the artist “I hope that it can create temporary changes in how the viewer perceives certain concrete items, objects, works of art, pictures and stories. History changes over time, our memories change as a result of new experiences and our experience, in turn, influences our memories”. The exhibition is the culmination of a lengthy period of in-depth research attempting to formulate a methodological categorization of material and information around such topics. The artist looked at the art of rhetoric and artificial memory as intricately linked tools for the organization and advancement of knowledge. The ground floor of the Podium becomes the setting for an android created by Macuga and produced in Japan by A Lab. The android recites/rehearses his monologue constructed from numerous excerpts of seminal speeches, claiming himself to be a repository of human speech, though “Who this knowledge is preserved for is no longer clear”, in this scenario, in the time known by the robot, the human perspective is no longer valid. The android is surrounded by a selection of large works from the Prada Collection and Museums around the world that evoke ideas of the cosmos, by artists including: Phyllida Barlow, Robert Breer, James Lee Byars, Ettore Colla, Lucio Fontana, Alberto Giacometti, Thomas Heatherwick, and Eliseo Mattiacci, along with a new work, titled “Negotiation sites” after Saburo Murakami, realized by Goshka Macuga in collaboration with Kvadrat in Denmark. On view on the upper floor of the Podium is an installation titled “Before the Beginning and After the End” the result of a collaboration between Goshka Macuga and Patrick Tresset. Five tables each present a 9,5 meter long paper scroll covered with biro sketches, texts and mathematical formulas, diagrams and schemas drawn by Tresset’s system “Paul-n”. On a sixth and final table, robots of the series “Paul-A” continue drawing in real time for the whole duration of the exhibition. Ancient and contemporary artworks by, among others, Hanne Darboven, Lucio Fontana, Sherrie Levine, Piero Manzoni, and Dieter Roth, rare objects, books and documents are displayed on top of the scrolls to create a juxtaposition related to the evolution of humanity and its possible collapse. The three spaces in the Cisterna host a large new sculptural work conceived by Macuga, consisting of 73 bronze heads representing 61 historical and contemporary figures such as Albert Einstein, Sigmund Freud, Martin Luther King, Karl Marx, Mary Shelley, and Aaron Swartz, connected by long bronze poles. This work can be seen as a realization of an imaginary encounter between thinkers of different historical periods and geographical and cultural backgrounds, whose ideas reflect on the complexities of human nature and its history.

Info: Curator: Goshka Macugna, Fondazione Prada, Largo Isarco 2, Milan, Duration 4/2-19/6/16, Days & Hours: Mon, Wed & Thu 10:00-19:00, Fri, Sat &Sun 10:00-21:00, www.fondazioneprada.org