Ange Leccia
Girls, Ghosts and war
Galleria Six, Milan
20 October 2018 - 26 January 2019
Galleria Six presents a solo show by Corsican artist Ange Leccia curated by Elio Grazioli
In the '80s Ange Leccia became famous for one of the simplest yet most fascinating artistic operations, a sort of double readymade. In fact, he took two copies of an object, of various sizes, even very large, such as the caterpillars at Skulptur Projekte in Münster (1987) or two airplanes or two oil tankers (of which a photographic version is on display), arranged one in front of the other (or next to it) . It was a radical and significant operation as never before, if one thinks that doubling is the basis of a certain idea of postmodernism. One of the most important exhibitions of American art of the period was titled Art and his double (1986). Ange Leccia's version was more limpid than the American ones and at the same time unequivocally poetic, suspended and not demonstrative . Two identical objects, that were simply juxtaposed, "arranged" as the French say (and it was the title of the works: Arrangement), as if they were a reflection of one the other, or as if they were kissing, as an encounter, but also as a confrontation . Because a relationship between two parties is the simplest but also the most paradigmatic one: what happens between the two? What unites them and / or separates them? how are they together? But the fact that they are identical gives these questions sort of an enigmatic allure, as in the case of twins: something flows between the two, unity is the whole, no longer the single, or other.
In the '90s Ange Leccia went on to make more and more videos - he had already shot them before, but never shown before, and they are back now. Sometimes he put two projections of the same video next to each other, but gradually Ange Leccia goes from identical subjects to other forms of relationship . Therefore the video can now either be alone or inserted into complex video installations. It is as if instead of looking at the two objects now Ange Leccia looks rather at the space between them, the one in which they touch, while remaining separate: something happens there, something special. Videos are a particular medium: the shooting first, with its face to face with the subject that is shot, and the projection then, with that peculiar device that is the screen, seem to contain the two from the beginning , the doubling and the relationship. But Ange Leccia also goes in search of subjects that make this new and different doubling clearer: the explosion, the wake of the ship, the shore, the lightning, the intermittent light. There, in threshold spaces, all sorts of mixing or tensions take place, of turbulences or contacts. All ever-changing visual forms.
Elio Grazioli
GALLERIA SIX
Piazza Piola 5 - 20131 Milan
