Rewind: Massimo Guerrera
Clint Roenisch Gallery, Toronto
The request to take off shoes is apt. Underfoot is close contact with plush carpet: soft, sensuous. It has the added effect of slowing down one's pace to that at which the works themselves seem to progress. This is slow viewing that becomes meditative, especially at the moment when the lingering aromas from a just-finished meal in the back of the gallery hang in the air. Inhale. A stage is being set. The viewer is part of a performance: pictures and sculptures at an exhibition entitled "Darboral."
Small-scale plaster sculptures gathered on the floor represent imprints of arms, hands, palms, feet. In translucent plastic containers the artist has also placed heads, almost in the guise of a Buddha. Some bear brownish stains, residue from past performances, while others, more recently created and therefore white and pristine, soak in a mixture of olive oil and spices. As the aromas of food are received into your nostrils and down into the chest and body, rendering you somehow lighter and fulfilled, so does this anonymous head absorb the oil and spices. A communion is established between you and these objects and heads—an organic commingling of viewer and viewed—created by the synesthesia of the moment that began with the simple gesture of taking off your shoes.
Moving from the floor to the walls, the exhibition proceeds with perhaps its strongest part—canvases on which the artist has drawn with expert care in a classical vein, or so it seems. Guerrera draws on paper that he then collages to the canvas in a process called marouflage. This act of layering continues the ongoing organic process of the exhibition. Various forms, such as seated human figures, emerge from the drawings' surfaces. They drink tea or walk, some carrying a fruit-bearing tree from which a clump of roots flows down the canvas's surface to form what looks like a body organ, a kidney perhaps, that mirrors the root bunch. Etched in brown ink reminiscent of a Renaissance drawing, the figures participate in a tea ceremony and engage in conversation (depicted by gentle swirls and vectors of red ink drawn close to their mouths). Someone stands above the seated figures; an arm touches a seated man's shoulder and, from that shoulder, through the arm, lines of energy flow in a moment of silent and sublime exchange.
Much has been written about Guerrera's performative actions with food and communal meals, but little about their relation (conscious or otherwise) to the work and performance of Daniel Spoerri and Rirkrit Tiravanija and possibly even Hermann Nitsch. Yet what distinguishes this installation, whose title combines the French words for art, tree (arbre) and "by mouth" (oral), is its silence and harmony.
Spring 2005
Subscribe to Canadian Art today and save 30% off the newstand price.
