In her solo exhibition that opened recently at the gallery Klosterfelde in Berlin, "Out Of It", Lara Favaretto didn’t show those past sculptures, but three new installations related to the issue of missing persons. It is a theme that Favaretto had already dealt with before with the swamp (Momentary monument, 2009) she made at the last Venice Biennale, and has further explored in a documentary just released by Archive Books, entitled, Momentary monument I. This first volume of an ongoing publication project is a selection from a huge archive the artist has assembled by about her personal obsession with people who, more or less voluntarily, have disappeared and covered their tracks – from Villon to Bobby Fischer, from Salinger to Bierce – because they wanted to be reborn, because wanted to escape, because it was an antidote to something that needed an antidote, because why not.
The exhibition includes three installations that are part of a cycle of twenty homages to twenty missing people. In order to pass through the entrance, you're forced to walk on the first of such homages, that completely fills the room: a rectangular container, a few centimetres deep, in polished brass, full of dark, loose soil. On the ground, the footsteps of those who have gone before you are visible. After crossing the installation, visitors leave black footprints on the gallery floor. Immediately following, you are faced with a glided silver whistle hanging from the ceiling on a long chain that leaves it hanging at mouth height. Some initials are are engraved on it. One's view, beyond the next gate, is obstructed by the third homage: a box of light-coloured wood, hermetically sealed and tall enough to almost reach the ceiling, placed so as to obstruct the entire area, allowing movement only through a narrow alley on the side. The top of the construction is also covered covered dark soil. It seems that there is something inside it, but nobody knows what it is, and there is no way of knowing.
The works’ titles, the artist's background and the book she just published offer, certainly, a few ways in which these works might be understood. It's possible, however, to ignore theory and statements, to ignore the swamp project, ignore Lara Favaretto's earlier work. In that case, entering "Out Of It", we would be faced with a representation of solitude. Something that is closed, hermetically what is inside; a way to keep track of those who pass; a way to call back those those that are too far away: three variations on the abandonment syndrome, again.
The book, of course, would resist this interpretation, its title and contents irrevocably pinpointing its nature: that of being an archive of materials about people who have disappeared, who have sought solitude. They are there, all together.Vincenzo Latronico