THE CONSEQUENCES OF BEING A SUBJECT
RACHELE CALISTI
Opening 25.09.2024, 6pm-9pm
Until 23.10.2024
[Prologue]
What happens in rooms when people leave?”
This is the question posed in the title of a cycle of works by Alberto Garutti. From 2001 to 2023 he presents in the exhibition spaces furnishing objects of common use -tables, benches, chairs, chests of drawers- with a milky white color. During the hours of the day, visitors wandering through the rooms can observe nothing but ordinary objects unsuspectedly left in place. At night, when the rooms are empty, the objects glow with a fluorescent light. “All places without people are a great enigma.” he said. His work, although posed through a question, seems to respond to a famous quote taken from the philosopher George Berkeley: “ If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?”. If by equivalence we applied the same logic in a room, the question would sound more like this: are objects able to desire too? Minimalist artists, with their serial objects, were the best in this game. “What you see is what you see” as a child who plays at repeating the same word a thousand times until only sound remains. They tried to remove all traces of the subject-creator’s intentions from the work, any personal story. But what remains is the look that the objects exchange with each other, a narrative that goes on regardless of our own. Like an empty room after everyone leaves, the obviousness of the object as such is unresolvable in our presence.
