#renatoleotta

[renato-leotta]

LUCE digitally transfered 16mm film, 2018 5' loop installation view Manifesta 12, Palazzo Butera, Palermo

[renato-leotta]

Gipsoteca MONDO, Museo Archeologico del Reale Palazzo Biscari, Catania, 2021

[renato-leotta]

Gipsoteca MONDO, Museo Archeologico del Reale Palazzo Biscari, Catania, 2021

[renato-leotta]

Roma Maxxi, Roma, 2020 photo Roberto Apa

[renato-leotta]

Roma Maxxi, Roma, 2020 photo Roberto Apa

[porcileorg]

On Renato Leotta’s 'Eine Sandsammlung’ @ Kunsthalle Skt. Gallen (2018)

Author: Beniamino Foschini - Munich, October, 2019.

"And then you win nature (mechanical philosophy) by imitating it in a mythical way (rhythms, returns, fates)."

Cesare Pavese, 'Diari,' January 10, 1950.

'Eine Sandsammlung' by Renato Leotta (* 1982, 'by now' living and working in Sicily) is a curious exhibition [click here for images], if only one could consider the museological sense inscribed in the title itself: it allows us to reconsider our fragile relationship with a Nature of 'ancient' taste. In the central space of the Kunsthalle Sankt Gallen, Leotta stages an 'uncertain' archeology, an archeology I would like to define better, especially conflicting with many 'archival' claims in contemporary artistic practice. In the exhibition's press release there is a great insistence on the notion of 'archive,' but this is obviously due to contingent needs, whether they are of a conventual order, or of a pedagogical one (in order to understand that contemporary art is concerned).

Thus, a relationship with a Nature of 'ancient' taste: on four pedestals of different height, white on the sides, turquoise on the surface, Leotta has placed 29 sculptures, 'Gipsoteca' (2015). They present as many sections of beaches, by different rectangular bases, that the artist has produced on various Sicilian coasts. If the support of each sculpture is a precise cast of the regular irregularities—thus 'natural'—of the shed in question, on its surface the artist has transposed—yes, taking from, appropriating—the respective sand, made of specific colors and peculiarities, whether the latter might be considered 'kitsch', such as pebbles and shells; sometimes, only sands. First of all, the display of these geographic and geological specificities—of 'simulacra' in the most ancient sense of the term—has a pictorial quality: the rhythm of different sands' colors, of different natural elements, play through various forms with an abstract and planar imaginary. On the other hand, it is 'natural' here to consider consolidated experiences, from which, I believe, Leotta tries to detach himself. The first impulse comes from the 'Non-geography' by Robert Smithson: obviously the 'Nonsites' installations (1968) come to mind. The American artist puts a raw geomorphic material in a regular grid of minimalist containers, being this grid related to similar ones made of maps or documentary photographs (sometimes accompanied by statements), with the constructive function of estranging what is seen and what is experienced inside the exhibition space. However, according to Leotta, 'Gipsoteca' does not question the statutes and places in the sense of an institutional critique—thus presenting an attitude of conceptual taste—but it addresses the pictorial possibility of Nature, ordered by anthropometric symmetries. It shows a taste of a cataloger, which becomes formal, as in the origins of archeology. An archeology that has its prodromes in the formal passion of a Prince of Biscari, Ignazio Paternò Castello, eccentric and Sicilian contemporary to the most famous Winckelmann: from this Derridian supplement seems to breathe the practice of Leotta, a horizon that the artist himself defines 'Hellenic', through his constant research on a presence of an origin, and on a difference of Rossinian type.

 However, this does not have to force the reader in bringing back his memory to a certain 'Trópicalia,' even if a sentimental and ideological proximity can not be denied. According to Hélio Oiticica, the term 'Trópicalia' (1967) was the way to establish a spplement, with respect to the Western evolution of art and its narration. Leotta insists on the 'Hellenic' imaginary of his practice: according to the artist, Sicily does not stand for a search for, or a precise notion of origin, an exoticism somehow historical and castrated, but instead it offers the reason for reconsidering formal processes. It relates to fundamental questions about our necessity for images: why and what is an image, when I think of it, I produce it, I differentiate it from other ones? In this sense, the appropriation of Leotta still plays with Oiticica's 'apropriaçaoes,' out of every Duchampian dogmatism.

 This collection of sculptures has for Leotta a horizon, which he calls 'gliptoteca.' The glyptotheque is basically a collection of sculptures and plaster casts. Starting from the eighteenth century in Europe, the glyptoteque substantially housed plaster copies of Greek and Roman antiquities as well as originals and represented the basis of artistic pedagogy. Every art academy of a certain age preserves copies from the ancient and every art student has, sooner or later, copied from the ancient. But, if there are short circuits in the traditional sense of such a collection – as Canova did realize in Possagno – I love Leotta's subversivity in establishing a 'Hellenic' and geographic glyptoteque, based on sculptural and pictorial work on the field. Of course, this is not meant 'symbolically,' so it is worth to overturn conceptually the 'icon' of an ancient sculpture—many examples: from Jeff Koons to Francesco Vezzoli, who, actually, indulge in a 'baroque' symbolic imaginary. It is factually practiced: Leotta poses himself indirectly as a proto-archaeologist in regenerating the gaze towards most banal and current things, such as a beach frequented by people of all kinds, ages and social status. And his 'Gipsoteca' can be declined indefinitely, as the artist plans and as the title of the exhibition, 'Eine Sandsammlung.' seems to suggest. It reminds me of another object-simulacrum, 'El libro de arena' by Borges, the book of infinite knowledge that everyone is looking for, whose possession they all aspire to.

Work on nature, understood as the perception and reproduction of the latter, is therefore the center of Leotta's practice. Moreover, it shows a very strong difference with regard to a certain 'artpoverism,' from which Italian art seems entangled by too many decades: the use of poor materials does not respond to an estrangement, but to a contiguity, we could say, mimetic, if not 'sympathetic,' as if to say: Nature says more than language.

In the series 'Zeit und Wasser (Mondphase 1–5),' 2017, Leotta shows five average format silver-gelatin daguerreotypes (about 130x120 cm). At first glance, lines and biomorphic forms are visible, but at a more careful analysis there is something 'recognizable.' A certain proximity to the sea suggests me that these photographs have to do with a mirroring, a 'doppelganger' of nature. Still mimesis. This 'double fragile' is revealed in Leotta's own adventure. The artist has produced a wooden box containing sensitive paper; with it he immerses himself in the lunar sea with this surface-supplied diving 'camera obscura'; he obtains the photographic image of the moon's reflection on the sea's surface, thus crystallizing the image of a natural image. Almost obvious: 'Zeit und Wasser' reconsiders the 'Cosmogonies' (1960–61), the extreme attempts of Yves Klein to abandon the authorial order of the subject, in order to leave to plants, rain, wind, and color the 'imprimatura' on the canvas. Leotta goes back to his origins, that of a photographer, and to the simple chemical possibility of the trace. However, the story does not grasp the complexity of every single image, a powerful icon of the zero degree's eternal return.

The 'Multiverse' series (2017), three blue shrouds on which the salt traces leaves its 'automatic' on the canvas signs, is of similar sentiment. But this series seems too indebted to the Western tradition, and to Klein of course, if only for the use of blue: a visual tradition which is difficult to escape, if not to struggle with. In spite of the evident formal and cultural precariousness of these last works, its necessity in the exhibition's display can not be denied, as the spectator has to dive—obviously figuratively—into the expenditure system of the exhibition stage.

With this exhibition, Leotta is able to give a less didactic 'Hellenistic' breath to his work, thanks to the context of the display, of which he is a true 'maestro.' On the one hand, certain hitches are necessary, when one gives himself, as a supplement, to the foreigner of language: in a contemporary normative scene like today, where everyone understands everything, it is audacious to insist on a personal 'Trópicalia.' On the other hand, it is necessary to reiterate the implicit specificities and to repudiate exotic expectations, in order to present to an audience a certain idea of artistic identity.

I would conclude, again, with the Italian poet Cesare Pavese (from his 'Diaries,' 9 February 1950) and I would leave my reader like this:

“The theme of a work of art can not be a truth, a concept, a document, etc., but always just a myth. From the myth directly to poetry, without going through theory or action.”

[renato-leotta]

Notte di San Lorenzo terracotta tiles, 2018 site specific dimension installation view Manifesta 12, Palazzo Butera, Palermo photo Sebastiano Pellion Di Persano

[renato-leotta]

Notte di San Lorenzo terracotta tiles, 2018 site specific dimension installation view Manifesta 12, Palazzo Butera, Palermo