Santiago Reyes Villaveces, Harp, 2019.
Courtesy The artist, The Blank Contemporary Art, Fondazione Amleto Bertoni
Installation view. Sacristy of Sant’Ignazio former church, Saluzzo (CN), Italy

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH SANTIAGO REYES VILLAVECES

The Harp project consists in constructing an exploded copy of the Tópaga harp (1680) that occupies the architectural space of Sacristy of the Church of Sant’Ignazio.
The instrument’s design is deformed through the use of an elliptical structure with two foci-bridges.
Making use of the Sacristy’s open drawers, windows, and physical structure itself as resonance boxes, Harp fabricates a polyarchic harp (of multiple origins) as a flow of historical, architectonic, embodied, and decolonising frequencies that aim to destabilize the origin story delivered to the “new world” by the Jesuit harp.

Klaus Rinke
Taking Possession of the Mediterranean for the Arts
Spain, 1969
100 x 140 cm
Courtesy of the Artist

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH KLAUS RINKE

“I found that water was a sculptural material. In handling water, I concluded that filling up a sculpture with water takes time. A ton, how long to fill it up? How long to empty?” Rinke uses the element of water as a universal symbol of femininity and fertility, purification and flux, often focusing on the evaporation of water to depict its impermanence. In his art, he emphasizes water as an essential element focusing on its importance to life and human well-being. His work with water also serves to highlight his environmental concerns emphasizing the fragility, scarcity and interconnection of our global water sources.

Nathalie Djurberg & Hans Berg
Dark Side of the Moon, 2017
Stop motion animation
06:40 min.
Ed.: 4, II

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH NATHALIE DJURBERG & HANS BERG

One need not be a chamber
to be haunted –
one need not be a house –
the brain has corridors – surpassing
material place.

Far safer, of a midnight meeting
external ghost
than its interior confronting –
that cooler host.

Far safer, through an abbey gallop –
the stones a’chase –
than unarmed, one’s a’self encounter –
in lonesome place.

Ourself behind ourself, concealed –
should startle most –
assassin hid in our apartment –
be horror’s least.

The body borrows a revolver –
he bolts the door –
o’erlooking a superior spectre
or more.

Studio of Paolo Icaro, Tavullia, 2019
in the foreground
P. Icaro, Racconto, since 1969, onyx, lead,
cm. 116x152x11

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH PAOLO ICARO

I thought I had met in that ingot of common steel, commonly called iron, a proportion, a unit I would say” symbolic “of all the iron: that metal was all there inside in an atomic explosion. That ingot was not a form, it was not an object but a thing in itself. So I looked for other materials that were equally intensely appealing to me, and the only formal criterion that I imposed was the size of the first Racconto. […] The other criterion was intensity and the satisfaction of the various meetings, now echoes of memories now of nostalgia, of places and situations.

extract from Paolo Icaro. Faredisfarerifarevedere, curated by Lara Conte, Mousse publishing, 2016

Jorge Macchi
Overwhelmed
2018
watercolor on paper
29,7 x 42 cm
Courtesy the artist and GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Les Moulins / Habana
Photo Ela Bialkowska, OKNO Studio

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH JORGE MACCHI

The artist takes the hand of the visitor and leads him into the forest. He knows it very well (in fact he has planted all the trees). He takes the visitor to a clearing in the middle of the forest. They stay there for some minutes in silence. Taking advantage of a moment of distraction the artist disappears behind some bushes and runs until he reaches the limit of his forest. The visitor suddenly realizes that he is alone in an unknown place. He tries some paths to go out but all of them bring him to the very same place. He regrets having been distracted with those flowers.

Jonathan Monk, Monk, 2002, Polished stainless steel, Edition 3, 439,5 x 132 x 38cm, (173 x 52 x 15 in.)

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH JONATHAN MONK

Quite often I see the works of other artists and think… I like that… how can I use it and make it mine?
How can I shift the context and create something new, something Jonathan Monk.
I’m quite sure a lot of artists secretively feel the same…
Some years ago I was looking through a catalogue of sculptures by George Condo and was pleasantly surprised by the contents – I actually like his paintings and he seems to be a really interestingly obsessed artist. But the sculptures I encountered on the printed page were wildly different to my expectations – I saw large polished stainless steel three dimensional cutout letters spelling out the names of Jazz greats – MILES DAVIES, BIRD (Charlie Parker) and MONK as in Thelonious – I think the rest you can work out for yourself…

‘Echoes (Oracle Version)’, by Lorenzo Senni, 2017, Tate Modern, London. Courtesy of Tate Photography

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 PAROLE CON LORENZO SENNI

All my X’s live with hexes.
This is why I hang
Myself with jealousy upon a fencepost half mast.
Fashion: war between
The guilty and the guilty and the guilty and the guilty
And the teen.
Not throwing stones at you anymore.
Your name’s in lights and I don’t wonder
Anymore… anymore

taken from Glassjaw’s song “Tip Your Bartender” (2002)

Motus naturalis, 2017-2018, olio su lino, 240 x 325 cm, courtesy l’artista e Guido Costa Projects, Torino

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH MANUELE CERUTTI

“Giovanni Giudici, La vita in versi”

Metti in versi la vita, trascrivi
fedelmente, senza tacere
particolare alcuno, l’evidenza dei vivi.

Ma non dimenticare che vedere non è
sapere, né potere, bensì ridicolo
un altro voler essere che te.

Nel sotto e nel soprammondo s’allacciano
complicità di visceri, saettano occhiate
d’accordi. E gli astanti s’affacciano

al limbo delle intermedie balaustre:
applaudono, compiangono entrambi i sensi
del sublime – l’infame, l’illustre.

Inoltre metti in versi che morire
è possibile a tutti più che nascere
e in ogni caso l’essere è più del dire.

Collezione Lo Specchio, Arnoldo Mondadori Editore, Milano 1965, p. 170-171

Giulia Cenci, studio view, halfweg 2018
photo credit Katherina Heil

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART
99 WORDS WITH GIULIA CENCI

There are pieces of this and pieces of that, but none of it fits together. And yet, very strangely, at the limit of all this chaos, everything begins to fuse again. A pulverized apple and a pulverized orange are finally the same thing, aren’t they? You can’t tell the difference between a good dress and a bad dress if they’re both turn to shreds, can you? At a certain point, things disintegrate into muck, or dust, or scraps, and what you have is something new, some particle or agglomeration of matter that cannot be identified. It is a clump, a mote, a fragment of the world that as no place: a cipher of it-ness.

Paul Auster, In the Country of Last Things.

Driant Zeneli
And Then I Found some Meteorites in My Room
video installation, 22’00” min, live streaming of ISS and sound performance by DJ Sulejmani
Photo credit Andis Rado, Courtesy The Artist and Bazament Art Space Tirane – 2018

THE BLANK CONTEMPORARY ART 
99 WORDS WITH DRIANT ZENELI 

“Why are you interested in the space?” Flora asked me.
“I am curious of those who observe it. I would like to know what there is in the space between your father Bujar, 158 height at Metallurgjik, and the maximum height of the International Space Station (ISS), located 400.00 km far from the terrestrial surface…”
“What is the ISS?”
“The International Space Station functions as a laboratory where experiments are made in condition of microgravity in the law terrestrial orbit. Dedicated to scientific research and managed as a joint project between five different space stations.”
And then Flora’s father, Bujar, asked me with a low voice:
“So what it the sense of all this?”
“The attempt is to create a space in which the work can share with the public a physical as well as a mental dimension. The interview about your perception of space that you gave to Fatmira Nikolli at Metallurgjik, will resonate with the transmission of the streamed images from the International Space Station (ISS), 400.00 km away from the earth surface. Everything will then be catalyzed by the sounds mixed by your daughter Flora (DJ Sulejmani) during the opening of the exhibition. In this way, the public will not only participate, but it will be an integral part of the artwork, as we are all part of the solar system”.

January – Mealurgjik Elbsan – 2018
And Then I Found Some Meteorites in my Room
from the diary of Driant Zeneli