2011
TRA
EDGE OF BECOMING
Palazzo Fortuny, Venice
From 1rst June through 21rst November 2011
Following the path opened by the trilogy ARTEMPO (2007), ACADEMIA (2008)
and IN-FINITUM (2009), the exhibition TRA. EDGE OF BECOMING (2011) is aiming
to create a new gate for aesthetic experience with the will of enhancing
revelation, pleasure, and knowledge.
Organized by the Axel Vervoordt Foundation (Wijnegem, Belgium) and the
Museum Palazzo Fortuny (Venice), TRA. EDGE OF BECOMING continues to explore
the transversal connections between place, history, creative heritage and
universal wisdom. The rich and multidisciplinary legacy of Mariano Fortuny,
the wabi inspirations of Axel Vervoordt, the reflexions of economy thinker
Bernard Lietaer, scientist Eddi de Wolf, or architect Tatsuro Miki (Taro)
created the starting ground for this exhibition.
CURATORIAL TEAM
The specific curatorial team for TRA. EDGE OF BECOMING is composed by
Daniela Ferretti, director of Palazzo Fortuny; Rosa Martínez, independent
curator and art advisor; Francesco Poli, philosopher and art history
professor; and Axel Vervoordt, president of the Axel Vervoordt Foundation.
Their synergy is in motion to draw bridges between diverse systems of
interpretation and to propose another intense step to read the world through
art.
CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK
1.- THE TITLE
The title of the exhibition is TRA. Chosen for its strong and suggestive
conciseness, that includes also the word “art” (if read at the inverse). As
preposition it signifies “in-between”, “inside”, and as prefix it has also
the meaning of an action that goes “beyond”, “ahead of”. As a suffix, TRA is
common to many Sanskrit words: mantra, tantra, yantra. Mantra consists on
the root “man”= to think and the suffix “tra” designating a tool or an
instrument, hence a literal translation would be “instrument of thought” and
the sound that transforms mind. Tantra is the ancient system of knowledge
that connects sexual and cosmic energy. Yantras are the signs and drawings
that act like doors for energetic healing.
TRA recalls the complex and problematic ensemble of cultural and symbolic
meanings that are connected to the concept of threshold and door. It
concerns a physical and mental place that defines the point of interrelation
between inside and outside and vice versa. It relates to the idea of
crossing, of being purified and renovated through a ritual or an initiation.
It is the space (or empty space) between two dimensions that marks the
moment of passage from a condition to another, a breach towards new
experiences. It is the idea of border that, seen from the point of view of
its surpass, becomes site of process of creative transformation.
In this sense TRA connects to the Japanese notion of “ma” that indicates the
empty space between two objects, the interval between two sounds or
gestures. It refers to emptiness as a positive dimension of spatial and
temporal suspension. The meaning of the ideogram of MA is formed by two
elements that mean “door” and “sun”. The two elements bind together
etymologically mean “interstice of a casement door through which a ray of
light is filtered”.
The subtitle of the exhibition TRA is EDGE OF BECOMING. It relates to the
void as the pregnant possibility of energy, to chaos as the state of
infinite becoming, and to becoming as the movement towards a situation.
Quantum physics has stated that interaction, becoming -and not essence-
conform the identity of things. Interpretation then creates reality. The
edge of chaos is the passage of non-existence (MU) to life and death. The
Greek word Chaos has also the meaning of gap and refers to the formless
state preceding the creation of the universe. But as Deleuze and Guattari
said some order is required not to be lost: a cut in the chaos, a plan of
intelligibility is always needed. And art is offering itself as a mediation.
While the rational, empiric and technological Western world has abused of
the male and Ying power, the Eastern systems of knowledge have always
sustained the dynamic processes of non-linear interaction between Yin and
Yang polarities. TRA. EDGE OF BECOMING is also looking for that healing
balance, for a creative interaction that unfolds every beginning, every
birth, every renaissance.
2. THEMES FOR THE EXHIBITION
In the exhibition different themes emerge, and are interconnected with great
freedom and fluidity, themes connected to the suggestions and references
generated by the concept of TRA. For example:
The threshold of visual perception in painting.
The relationship between the individual and his physical space of existence
(the empty and filled space, between openness and closure).
The fascination of architectonical spaces (doors, arcades, bridges,
galleries, passages).
The theatrical representative dimension (the curtain that divides and
connects reality and fiction).
Symbols and figures of TRA (but also of MA) as for example Giano (the Good
of the doors, passages, of relation between past and present).
The places, figures and works that are expression of the intersection and
interconnection between different cultures (in particular between Eastern
and Western cultures)
Venice as sight of intersection between different cultures, as door between
the East and the West.
The relations between past, present, future.
The threshold of consciousness, the passageways towards the imaginary
realities and the unconscious.
The enchantment in the suspended dimension of the aesthetic, spiritual and
mystic experience.
3. THE VENUE: THE PALAZZO FORTUNY
The dimension of TRA will concretise itself and take form also and most of
all in the elaboration and mise-en-scene of the exhibitions’ set up. The
Palazzo Fortuny will become the common living place for artworks, the
embracing context for their fruitful interactions.
The project of the exhibition aims to transform the four floors of Palazzo
Fortuny in a complex exhibition trail that involves the visitors in a
artistic, and at the same time suggestive and profound, experience, where
dialogue and confrontation between the artworks and between them and space
is of fundamental importance. It will create spatial situations that are
animated by particular aesthetic atmospheres that in their ensemble form a
spatial and temporal score (suspended between past and present) through
which the fascinating and problematic meaning of the concept is staged.
In TRA.EDGE OF BECOMING artworks will breath together in a clima of playful
trust. Their intimate connections will expand their affective and cognitive
power through the space that hosts them. TRA will enhance their secret
correspondences, their capacity of echoing meaning, their power of
reverberation. Through elective affinities, TRA will propose morphological
hypothesis to reveal the iconology of intervals. Through synchronicity TRA
will explore the power of symbolic migrations to dissolve frontiers. And the
senses, the mind and the emotions will be awaken towards new becomings.