TUSCIA ELECTA - Massimo Bartolini

Massimo Bartolini
	MASSIMO BARTOLINI [Cecina, 1962] Massimo Bartolini's works live in close connection with the place that hosts them. The artist intervenes in a completely anti-monumental way on a space, whether a closed, private one or an open, public one; he modifies it, interprets it, defines it. These are raised, softened, modulated spaces. Bartolini annuls space-time coordinates, takes a fresh look and participates with a light, ironic touch and with an efficacious, lucid language that is highly communicative and rich in meaning.
His works engage the spectator who, called upon to participate in an active way, feels the need for a different perception, a regenerated and poetic point of view, a new sensibility with regard to things. And so in the interpretation of the spectator-cum-actor, the object can reveal an unknown spirituality and an undefined sense of estrangement and otherness: a window sill filled with flowers in the middle of a wood, a raised room that swallows up the objects inside it, a tree that invades the sterile intimacy of a room from the outside with its branches. Within a physical space, which is also and especially a mental space, Bartolini, as if recreating fragments of invisible cities, explores out-of-the-way territories, leaving behind a light, almost imperceptible mark. Bartolini has exhibited in Italy and abroad. He participated in the 1999 Venice Biennial and in numerous major international exhibitions, including Manifesta 4 (Francoforte, 2002). He has also exhibited at P.S.1 in New York (2001), at the Witte de With in Rotterdam, at the Museu Serralves in Porto, at the Accademia di Francia di Villa Medici (Rome, 2000), at the De Appel Center in Amsterdam (1998), at the British School (Rome, 1997) and at the Konstmuseum in Malmö (Sweden, 1995).
INTERVIEW: Q. TusciaElecta this year concentrates on a few of the nodal spaces of individual communities, individuated in piazzas and main streets of the seven promoting municipalities. The plan as a whole suggests a reflection on the current role of art in public spaces, on what we mean today by "public", and on the significance that can be given to the very notion of public art, which is constrained to a perennial and ever-more indeterminate redefinition. In your opinion, is there still in existence something that we can call the "public sphere"? A. Art speaks privately to the public: the perfect opposite, that is, of what various disciplines (certainly cinema, certainly TV) do, speaking publicly to the private individual. The fact that art (at least the art we are dealing with here at this moment) is created mainly in private has often led to errors such as cutting out for it a privileged space that is kept separate by a system. That has given this art concentration and taken away diffusion. The spaces left free have thus been occupied by other disciplines more in conformation with the society that had been developing since the beginning of the twentieth century. This society sacrificed the "exactness" of a biological tempo with the "efficacy" of a technological tempo. Reuniting exactness and efficacy, nature and society, is a task which in my opinion should be entrusted to this art. Q. Springing from an idea of re-interpretation of the role of the monument, the work of art expands into a "widened field" of experience that involves the territory as a whole (from the space to relations with its inhabitants and with its productive activities). How would you define your intervention in relation to the host space, in terms of meaning, function and use? A. It could be a place where people can meet without talking, sit down next to each other on the same bench and see a submerged light that is none other than an abat-jour. Fortunately, the works then refute every intention. Q. What are the limitations, and what are the stimuli, of a confrontation with a territory that is already characterized from the point of view of tradition and of landscape, like that of the Florentine and Sienese Chianti? A. For me, this landscape is a condition and not an occasional encounter. No limits nor stimuli: I am part of this landscape and this tradition. The only thing to be careful of is that we need to knock before we enter into any inhabited place. Q. How would you insert the work Conveyance into your artistic path? Are there new elements (from a technical point of view as well), or is it something akin to all of your other works, albeit conceived for an open space? A. I like to think that there is a material, like an unchangeable and permeable movement, that is always the same. An attitude is always the same, but the sameness notwithstanding, it has encounters that allow it to manifest itself in ways that are always different. For example, in this case the encounter was due to a text that I had asked W.S. Wilson to write for an exhibition. The title of this text was Conveyance. This word and the thoughts I had at that moment were the origin of this work. This brief exchange of words was illuminating: M. Bartolini: "I was touched by this word, conveyance, maybe because I don't know english very well and so I build up the missed part of the meanig. It is something like suggestions? A convoy of suggestion?" (…) W.S. Wilson: "Conveyance begins as a word used to point toward means of transportation. An airplane is a conveyance which conveys people along a VIA. (…) Convey is associated through its etymology with viaduct, voyage, deviate, devious, envoy, obvious, pervious, previous, trivial and trivium" (…)