As opposed to the traditional fair however, Sunday was conceived around an idea of informality and spontaneity that is a long way from the partitioned cubicles of the Lingottos that appear everywhere: open spaces, no set demarcation between the exhibitions held by each participating gallery, all in all a party-like atmosphere. It brought together young galleries from Berlin – for the most part – and from other European countries, or nearly so (Iceland and Turkey); many of these had already taken part in a similar event, "7x2", that was held last year during gallery weekend, perhaps due to the continuous layout of the space, perhaps due to the frankly rather invasive style of the architecture – a big black wedge-shaped building, newly opened, designed by the practice BundschuhBaumhauer – the works appeared particularly rarefied, small, deliberately poetic and without words. It was difficult at times to keep in mind that what one was looking at was a collection of galleries spread over a continent and a half and not a cleverly designed exhibition. The aesthetic consonance of many of the artists shown could certainly signify a proximity to current trends in artistic research with regards to method and intention, especially for a younger generation. It could, however, also signify something else.
Among the artists present at the fair though, one whose work particularly stood out was Anca Munteanu-Rimnic, a Rumanian artist who lives in Berlin and was represented at the fair by the gallery PSM. Exploiting photographic material linked to the work of her father – a potter active in the 1970s, who depicted each prototype in a rough and agonising snapshot, holding it in his hand against a changing sky, sometimes against the light, sometimes a bit dark, a bit crooked, and so on – Munteanu presented a series of photographic paintings and a sculpture with a strong visual impact able to comment, very personally, on the problem of the survival of certain aesthetic forms, their heredity, citation.
The problem of the relationship with images from the past – in a fair that if anything tended to focus on their use – was defined in a more critical manner by Danilo Correals, presented at Sunday by Supportico Lopez. Correale's project, in the form of a book, a series of archive photographs and a selection of videos, was a reflection on the theme of vandalism – the destruction of images – and on how this practice was on the one hand aimed at producing other images and on the other informed by the portrayal given of the 'vandal' in educational and didactic material. Correale's installation showed a kind of short circuit of the image: the portrayal of the iconoclastic becomes itself an icon, crystallising in the imagination a practice that is potentially subversive and thus normalising it.
Another lateral view of the question was offered by the work of Stephen Sutcliffe – brought to the fair by Rob Tufnell – who usually works with videos constructed based on found footage. His presence was announced both in the press release for Sunday and in the area dedicated to his gallerist. Unfortunately, however, for organisational reasons his work could not be present. Perhaps this is also a way to speak about the proliferation of images.
Vincenzo Latronico
