Art/&/Memory: The Work of Jack Sal with Alessandro Cassin and Lyle Rexer

February 4th, 2010

 

A conference in conjunction with Jack Sal’s solo exhibition, De/Portees, a multiscreen projection in memory of the Italian Deportees, at The Italian Cultural Institute in New York.

 

Panelists:

Writer and journalist Alessandro Cassin

Art historian and curator Lyle Rexer

Artist Jack Sal

De/Portees

A multi screen projection in memory of the Italian Deportees 

by Jack Sal 

 

January 27-Febuary 27, 2010

Opening: Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 at 10:00 a.m.

The Italian Cultural Institute/Istituto Italiano di Cultura 

686 Park Avenue Ave New York, NY 10021

 

Making use of video/computer projectors and monitors, De/Portees uses as its contents the geographical location of the Italian camps used for detention, imprisonment and points of transfer to Nazi Concentration Camps located throughout the German occupied territories. Apart from the best-known camp, located in Fossoli-Carpi (Emilia Romagna), hundreds of other locations were used as part of the chain in the mechanism to gather, arrest and deport Italian citizens, and deliver them to their fate.

 

Two projections and a monitor will be located within the gallery space of the exhibit to create a quality of “displacement” and to reveal the extent of the number of places and persons directly touched by the deportation. The first projection reveals a computer generated list of the locations of camps throughout Italy using yellow type on a black background.  The second projection includes a computer generated list of the hometowns & villages of the deportees, located throughout Italy, using blue type on a black background.  The monitor displays a video of the published pages of the list of the deportees from throughout Italy with a soundtrack of an English (for New York) and an Italian text by Primo Levi. 

 

The popular myth is of an Italy reluctantly and without much effort or organization collaborating under duress with their German/Nazi allies. The number of Italian camps and the quantity of people deported and arrested dispels the idea of lack of responsibility and brings together the evidence of location of the camps “sotto casa” in Italy. Using the extreme corners of the space, the viewers’ sense of orientation is linked to the three “images” of names, places and the book of the list, pressing the association of the deportation with its roots in Italy.

 

From the 7th to the 30th April 2010 De/Portees. A multi screen projection in memory of the Italian Deportees by Jack Sal will be exhibited at the Casa della Memoria e della Storia in Rome.

DePortees logo
Related:
Jack Sal: Re/Vision, installation view

JACK SAL: Re/Vision

January 22 - February 28, 2009

Categories: spotlight

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JACK SAL: Re/Vision

ZONE: CONTEMPORARY ART begins 2009 with “Jack Sal: Re/Vision,” a long overdue exhibition for a multi-faceted artist. His work appears in the many permanent collections, including the Museum of Modern Art and the International Center of Photography in New York City, the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam and the Museum Moderner Kunst in Vienna. He is a respected figure in Europe, where he has mounted a series of remarkable site-specific installations. He has collaborated with William Wegman and Sol Lewitt and exhibited along side Sigmar Polke and Nan Goldin. But Sal’s work remains largely unfamiliar to the American public.

 

ZONE is presenting a cross section of Sal’s work, including a chapel-like space of large-scale paintings, using gesso and silk surgical tape, created specifically for this installation. Minimalist yet profoundly humanistic, his work has a handmade look, which carries over into a group of smaller paintings and works on paper.

 

Sal is intensely aware of the temporal dimension of his work, in general, and this exhibition, in particular. He sees this new year as a “moment when the demarcation of change is upon mankind….” and it is the engagement of culture with such conditions that make up the conceptual language of the works created for Re/Vision. These art works refer to their own making and ultimately refer to the tabula rasa of this very important moment. Temperamentally, he has much in common with Terry Riley, the composer of seminal works of musical minimalism such as the serenely joyous “In C”. Like Riley, an unassuming figure who never crossed over into mainstream success, Sal works with pared-down idioms, avoiding epic emotions and climaxes, and finding lyrical grace in repetition on an intimate scale. In “Minor/Key” Sal makes an oblique musical reference, isolating an ebony piano key and enshrining it in a box.

 

While he sees marking as a basic artistic act, Sal also incorporates the natural processes inherent in some of his materials. A celebrated photographer, he uses photo-printing paper to capture light and has revived the cliché-verre technique used by nineteenth-century pioneers in the medium. He slices lead plates and allows them to weather naturally: the veining coalesces into landscape-like patterns. These small, square panels provide a dark counterpoint to the predominantly white works in the exhibition. Using a relatively simple palette, Sal explores a wide range of materials and ideas, offering a fresh vision of the art experience

JACK SAL: Re/Vision

January 22 – February 28, 2009

 

Opening reception

6-8pm, Thursday January 22

 
Related:
Jack Sal: Re/Vision, installation view

JACK SAL: Re/Vision

January 22 - February 28, 2009

Categories: exhibitions

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