GIANNI PIACENTINO,

A very abstract idea, a very concrete action

Laura Cherubini

 “We see more wheels than trees in our lives today.”* (Gianni Piacentino)

 “Arte Povera defended nature, while I have always been closer to the technical nature of things. I believe that the ‘landscape’ of our age is also one of cars and planes and everyday technological devices.”¹ In 1965 Gianni Piacentino started working on a series of elementary structures that referred to the concept of furniture and that entered and formed part of the artificial nature of contemporary landscapes.² Piacentino’s work is something quite unique in the world of Italian art, especially when it is compared with that of artists of his own generation. In his case, it might be possible to find a greater convergence with international artistic practices, such as Richard Artschwager’s, than with what was going on in Italy. Some have referred to Artschwager’s furniture-toys as “Platonic furniture,” though in actual fact they are neither one nor the other. It is just that his objects really do look like pieces of furniture, while Piacentino’s simply extract the idea of furniture. As a result, the concept of “Platonic furniture,” which in Artschwager’s case refers mainly to the aspect of non-functionality, in Piacentino’s case might appear to be etymologically more fitting, since it indicates compliance with the idea. It is true that, in the work of a great exponent of Arte Povera like Jannis Kounellis, references to beds, doors or tables are of fundamental importance, but in this case of domestic furnishings there remains an idea of measure—a measure of man and of his life. Piacentino’s “furniture,” on the other hand, is depersonalised, detached from the anthropological dimension of human life, plunged into a different dimension and made virtually absolute. In an interview of 1968 in Marcatre, Tommaso Trini emphasises the importance of colour in Piacentino’s work, while the artist maintains that he receives new creative input directly from technological information.

“The first to write about my work was Paolo Fossati for the Arte Abitabile exhibition at Sperone’s gallery in 1966.” Michelangelo Pistoletto showed a work that involved a sixteenth-century wooden sculpture. Piero Gilardi brought a structure made of scaffolding tubes (Gilberto Zorio was his assistant). Pistoletto had stuck mirrors onto his Oggetti in meno [Minus Objects] and also onto his Pozzo [Well], which previously had none. And indeed Pistoletto showed three Minus Objects: Lampada a mercurio [Mercury Lamp] of 1965, Semisfere decorative [Decorative Semispheres] and Scultura lignea [Ligneous Sculpture], both made in 1965-66. Gilardi also showed one of his Tappeti natura [Nature-Carpet]. The exhibition was particularly interesting because the three artists did indeed represent three different positions, and ones that were very advanced at the time in Turin. The photos of the display convey the idea that the works inhabit the same space and almost appear to interpenetrate in a sort of fusion (in Identité Italienne, Germano Celant considers this exhibition to be the first example of an environment in Italy, a notion that did not, however, particularly interest Piacentino, as Trini points out). Even so, the almost architectural structure created by Piacentino contrasts starkly with the others in terms of its discipline and definition. What emerges is an absolute limpidity, minimalism, succinctness and concision, which distinguishes it from the work of the other two artists, making it rather unusual in Italian art of that period.

In 1967 Con temp l’azione was curated by Daniela Palazzoli in three different galleries in Turin: Christian Stein, Il Punto and Sperone. The idea was that of energy circulating between one gallery and another, and indeed the arena for this exhibition was not just the gallery premises, but also the city streets between them. The play of words in the title (which can be read as both “contemplation” and “action in time”), sought to turn contemplation into action, highlighting the element of time. Piacentino exhibited together with Getulio Alviani, Giovanni Anselmo, Alighiero Boetti, Luciano Fabro, Mario Merz, Aldo Mondino, Ugo Nespolo, Michelangelo Pistoletto, Paolo Scheggi, Gian Enrico Simonetti, and Gilberto Zorio. The focus and centre of the situation at the time appears to have been Sperone’s gallery, which the following year organised a sort of away-trip to the Galleria De’ Foscherari in Bologna, before moving on to the Centro Arte Viva Feltrinelli in Trieste. In this second exhibition of Arte Povera, curated by Celant, the six artists of the first show (Boetti, Fabro, Kounellis, Giulio Paolini, Pino Pascali and Emilio Prini) were joined by Anselmo, Mario Ceroli, Merz, Piacentino, Pistoletto and Zorio. This was also when Pier Paolo Calzolari became part of the group.

In January 1968 came Boetti’s Manifesto, in which Piacentino’s name was fourth on the list, with two symbols next to it (though they are considered undecipherable by the experts): he shares one with Fabro, Gilardi, Pistoletto, Boetti, Kounellis and Merz, and the other with Pistoletto, Boetti, Pascali, Merz and Mario Schifano.

1968 also brought the exhibition Il percorso at Mara Coccia’s Studio Arco d’Alibert. The works of the artists from Turin were shown for the first time in Rome,³ the city that was the real standard-setter at the time at the Italian and international level. The exhibition came about through Maria Pioppi, Pistoletto’s partner. She had worked at the gallery owned by Coccia, who told her she wanted to invite the young artists from Turin to the gallery. The original idea was to involve Celant, but he would only accept on condition that the exhibition would have been called “Arte Povera.” The title that was ultimately chosen, “Il percorso” (the “pathway” or “journey”) was more open and thus more suitable for a show that would involve Pistoletto and the other artists, who also came together in a series of meetings.⁴ Il percorso opened on 22 March 1968 with Piacentino, Pistoletto, Nespolo, Mondino, Boetti, Merz, Zorio, Anselmo and Paolini (in the order in which they appear on the invitation). A little incident blew up around Gilardi, who declared he was “in a position of inactivity.” The gallery owner came back to him offering to publish an essay in the catalogue (for which Henry Martin too was invited to contribute) even though the artists stated “the non-necessity of theoreticians.” The title, however, also referred to a very original type of proposition: “The exhibition is no longer an exhibition and the habit of calling the work of a number of artists a ‘group show’ needs to be forgotten.” Also “opening” is “another word to be eliminated here. From the moment the material enters the gallery, right through to the end, everything is an ‘opening.’” Coccia intended to publish a catalogue (but in the end was unable to, which led to some issues with a few of the artists) and called in Mario Cresci to photograph the displays: “I think he’s the right person. He follows everyone’s work, he works himself and he doesn’t talk but loves them and understands them. He’ll bring us 12 sheets of stunning contact prints. We all agree: they’ll be used as they are, without any modifications.” Piacentino showed his Tavolo [Table], (1967) which was also mentioned in Alberto Boatto’s reviews in Cartabianca (for which the artists laid “their own mental spaces” on the line) and by Tommaso Trini in Domus (which interpreted the show as a “Chinese snake of the creative community”). But what most concerns us here is a note that appeared the day after the opening: “The sense of concrete perception and ‘pointless’ action and thought. Works that cannot be consumed. A very abstract idea, a very concrete action with no ideology, no poetic vision, no dialectic in between: just a ‘psychic whole.’” It was hand-written by Piacentino himself. These words pretty well sum up his position at the time, but they also clearly distinguish his work from that of the other artists.

Prospect 68 in September, at the Städtische Kunsthalle in Düsseldorf, curated by Konrad Fischer and Hans Strelow, presented 16 European and American galleries and Gian Enzo Sperone showed works by Calzolari, Boetti and Prini together with six by Piacentino: Palo [Pole], Tavolo I [Table I] and Tavolo II [Table II], Sbarre su cavalletti [Bars on Trestles] and Specchiera [Mirror] all from 1967 and Oggetto marmorizzato [Marbled Object] of 1968. Other Italian artists (Anselmo, Merz and Zorio) were invited by Ileana Sonnabend. She had arrived in Rome in the late 1950s to open a gallery with Plinio De Martiis and, since that time, had spent a lot of time in Italy.

Later that year, in October, Arte povera + Azioni povere was put on in Amalfi by Marcello Rumma and curated by Celant. Fabro presented the first Italia and Felce [Fern] both made in 1968, as well as previous works (which were more in harmony with the research being carried out by Piacentino): Tutto trasparente [All Transparent] and Mezzo specchiato e mezzo trasparente [Half Mirror Half Transparent] both dated 1965. On this occasion, Piacentino showed his Specchiera and Oggetto marmorizzato. Piacentino differed from his friend Paolini for his interest in colour, which Paolini saw as given by its absence (as Fagiolo and Quintavalle pointed out very early on), but also by his very nonchalant approach to the display (“with nails showing,” says Piacentino). Even so, the striving towards an objective process that Paolini develops in a work like Vedo [I See] might suggest some point of contact at the time, even though it maintains a clear distance. It was during this exhibition that Piacentino put his finger on the real rift: “There was a discussion in which Gillo Dorfles said: ‘Gentlemen, there are three quite extraneous artists here: Paolini, Fabro and Piacentino.’ And indeed his reasoning was flawless.”⁵

The first exhibition with his vehicles came in 1969 at the Galleria Toselli in Milan, where in 1970 there was an interesting group event with works by Maurizio Mochetti, Piacentino and Pistoletto. “The vehicles exhibition was stunning, really one-of-a-kind,” says Franco Toselli. “It was a sculpture like nothing else, it was quite unique.”

Gianni Piacentino was interested not so much in the relationship with nature, which was attracting many artists in the Arte Povera group at the time, as the mechanical elements of our everyday lives. Machines that need to be made to perfection. “I just love making a perfect coating.” Luciano Pistoi talked of “perfectionism to the point of obsession.”⁶ Piacentino’s project revolved around the potential offered by technical skills. Except that technology was not just standard practice for him: it is worth remembering that this was an artist who had studied philosophy. Martin Heidegger, in his essay The Origin of the Work of Art, notes how the Greeks had a single term to refer to “art” and “artifice.” The word, téchne, refers to a particular form of knowledge that is not disconnected from practical work. And this appears to be precisely the meaning of the word “technique” that is most fitting to Piacentino’s work.

What is striking about it is not so much its precocious minimalism as the power of synthesis concentrated in its minimal form. And if it is fair to talk of Minimalism, it is certainly closer to John McCracken’s than to that of Donald Judd.⁷ Piacentino’s objects cannot be used, but they are made as though they could be. In this opposition lies the sense of a work that resists interpretation and that appears as a mute object (to borrow a term from Douglas Crimp). “Piacentino gives rise to incessant suspicion, building posts, tables, casings, mirrors and other things that are like ‘design’ objects, but which are not,” writes Trini, “Piacentino’s sculptures break down this gap, with the suspicion of their ambiguous image and function making references that range from art to industrial aesthetics and vice versa.”⁸ Saul Ostrow writes: “In hindsight by cutting across these lines of demarcation, Piacentino explicitly addressed questions of functionality, authorship, and commodification in ways that artists would not do till the 1990s.”⁹ If we think of the way artists like Tobias Rehberger and Jorge Pardo relive design, we can see how Piacentino is more topical today than other fellow-artists of his.

The importance he gave to colour led him to create a sort of Pantone of his own. “Colours that are always invented, never primary.”¹⁰ Work on restoring an Indian-brand motorbike in 1968 opened up a new dimension in his work, just as pictures of the Wright brothers’ aeroplane on postage stamps had led to a new line of works in 1972.

Piero Gilardi’s catalogue essay clearly conveys the atmosphere in Amalfi: “Camped out in front of the entrance, Boetti was gathering together about 30 gadgets and material samples, all labelled by his gallery, inside a square of white fabric laid out on the ground. Further on, Piacentino was patiently unravelling the crepe paper tape of the packaging and of his structures. Pistoletto and Carlo Colnaghi were wrapping an ancient sarcophagus with multicoloured rags, bought in bales and packed for sale...¹¹ Other artists arrived in the afternoon: Fabro came like a hangman to append a geographical silhouette of Italy from a steel cable, Paolini simply hung on the wall a panel of names woven in such a way that they could be deciphered only by those who knew them... At seven in the evening came the show of Pistoletto’s destitute “guitti”: they started out on a tour through the picturesque little alleyways in the village, ending up in the square with a great following of children and locals. The recital of the Tamed Man took place under the lights of the television reflectors, with Henry Martin as the brilliant actor of a man to be tamed. As an artist, Pistoletto almost appears to constitute the point where the two sections of the exhibition—objects and actions—come together. He almost embodies the ‘+’ in the title, between ‘Arte Povera’ and ‘Azioni povere.’” Gilardi, who was beginning to write as a critic and theoretician, describes the feverish, creative atmosphere of those days. We can imagine, and almost feel, the perfection of Piacentino’s packaging and that adjective, “patiently,” shows us what dedication and precision the artist devoted to his work. A degree of accuracy and commitment to manual work that has always been a part of Piacentino, and which nevertheless contained no craftsmen’s complacency. A craftsman allows traces of his hand and echoes of his sensitivity to emerge in the finished work, whereas here the whole autobiographical, individual and emotional sphere is left out. In this case what we find is more of an identification with the method through which the process of depersonalisation leads towards the work.

“I started putting on my initials, because the question of the signature has always bothered me. It was a problem that industry had already solved.” Another autobiographical pointer to be eliminated. “Piacentino, working in series, replaced the artist’s signature with a set of trademarks—his initials or his name, often rendered with a cursive flourish—that loosely emulate the classic logos of MG, Ford and Fiat.”¹² Everything in Piacentino appears to be striving towards an impersonal dimension in which even the signature (the essence of the individual’s name and handwriting) tends towards the logo. “By branding products with his trademark, he refers to their industrial nature, even though they are made by hand.”¹³ The signature turns into a logo and any emotional, autobiographical evidence disappears, making way for a colder, more neutral stamp which acquires an aura of impersonality.

Two elements may help us understand Gianni Piacentino’s work: one is his splendid collection of postage stamps on the theme of flight, from Mercury and Icarus onwards, all gathered together in containers designed by him. The other is his sidecar racing,¹⁴ an exercise in acrobatics for two and more a question of performance than of mechanics. Paradoxically, there is no contradiction between the personality of Piacentino—the ironic, self-assured, sardonic hero who lives his own dangerous life himself, somewhere between James Dean and Steve McQueen—and his work. In the latter, his experience is turned into independent, essential forms, crystallising into the absolute necessity of the shape.

* Note: Where not otherwise indicated, the quotations come from conversations with the present writer.

1 Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, “Gianni Piacentino” (interview), Flash Art, December 1991.

2 Cf. Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev (ed.), Arte Povera, Phaidon, London 1999.

3 In 1967 the exhibition Fuoco Immagine Acqua Terra [Fire Image Water Earth] curated by Maurizio Calvesi and Alberto Boatto was put on Fabio Sargentini’s gallery L’Attico in Rome. It was a sort of annunciation of Arte Povera, with the use of primeval materials such as earth, water and fire by artists such as Pascali and Kounellis.

4 The gallery was in Via Ferdinando di Savoia 2 at the time. Mara Coccia has collected all the documentation (except for Celant’s letter, which is however still in her archive) in 22 marzo 1968 Mario Cresci fotografa ‘il percorso’ di: Piacentino, Pistoletto, Nespolo, Mondino, Boetti, Merz, Zorio, Anselmo, Paolini allo Studio Arco d’Alibert di Roma, Mara Coccia, Rome 2008.

5 Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, op. cit.

6 A conversation between Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, Luciano Pistoi and Rosa Sandretto in Piacentino Mochetti Alviani, catalogue of the exhibition in 1990 at the Galleria Rocca 6, Turin, 1991. The essay about Piacentino is by Angela Vettese.

7 Barry Schwabsky, “Gianni Piacentino. Esso Gallery,” Artforum, September 2002.

8 Tommaso Trini, Piacentino: la percezione del sospetto, catalogue of the exhibition at the Studio Annunciata, Milan 1968.

9 Saul Ostrow, The Unexpected Complexity of Gianni Piacentino, catalogue of the exhibition at the Esso Gallery, New York 2004.

10 Giacinto Di Pietrantonio, op.cit.

11 “The first thing that struck me in New York was the packaging department.”

12 Marcia E. Vetrocq, “Fast and Cool,” Art in America, June 2002.

13 Saul Ostrow, op.cit.

14 In one of the invitations to the Galleria Toselli.