Arte Fiera Bologna / Artfair

under destruction

03.02. – 5.02.2023

We are showing the following artists:
Evelyn Loschy (Austria)
Marko Marković (Croatia)
Giovanni Morbin (Italy)
Slaven Tolj (Croatia)

BolognaFiere
Hall 25 and 26
Piazza Costituzione, 6, 40128 Bologna

galerie michaela stock Booth: P25 / B11

While this phrase can basically describe the ethos of “Under Destruction”, the exhibition raises the stakes normally linked with such a deleterious theme. Not only does it explore the various modes of destruction in art, but, more importantly, it also addresses to what ends it is implemented. Auto-destructive art is a term invented by the artist Gustav Metzger in the early 1960s to describe radical artworks, in which destruction was part of the process of creating the work and the victim becomes the piece of art itself.

The exhibition for ART BOLOGNA has undertaken the task to highlight this phenomenon displaying works like performances (video, photography) and kinetic sculpture by four conceptual artists from different cultural backgrounds and ages. These four artists work with identity and thematically intersect to sharpen one’s view of the complex processes of the human being, the focus lying on its existence, both torn between (social) standards, (physical-emotional) possibilities and artistic strategies and refers to the modern history and circumstances conditioned by political structures and economical changes. They tell a story of resistance, inner conflicts and the struggle for power and subjection. The performance-artists radicalize the artistic act by examining the grammar of pain and endurance, surpassing distinctions between the physical and psychological. The use of the body and all of its experiential implications also involves evaluations that are ideological and social.

Performance Marko Markovic
Performance Giovanni Morbin
Performance Slaven Tolj

Press review Art Magazin, 2023

Evelyn Loschy

Evelyn Loschy works with a large variety of materials and methods, reaching from video, photo, to kinetic, (auto-)destructive sculptures. The (self-)destruction becomes, for the young Austrian artist, a constructive element that introduces a transformation process.

The performance video FRICTION shows two performers wearing masks made of sandpaper and nesting their faces against each other. A loving movement, which is contrasted by the sound of the rubbing sandpaper. and gains in intensity and destructive character in the course of the performance. The artist uses emotional vocabulary, as with her kinetic sculptures and other works of art, thereby awakening hidden sensations and forgotten memories.

Marko Marković

When eating flowers in his performance Southeast sadness in central Europe, the young performance artist Marko Marković from Croatia, explores changes in perception by bringing the body and mind into a state of intoxication with flower enzymes. Importing the substance of flowers in body organism and fusing one system within another by performing the embodiment of natural and artificial environment. Marko Marković is an artistic researcher who addresses collective engagement in self-organized societies that create autonomous models of coexistence with performative communication strategies.

Giovanni Morbin

Performance and post-conceptualist artist Morbin Giovanni always work with his body and does not even shy away from radical, destructive performances in order to point out political or social grievances. In his performances he does not shy away from even radical performative statements. He uses his body to tell stories about open resistance and inner conflicts, stories of an emotionally charged battle for power and subjugation

Giovanni Morbin’s new performance Il mio peso su di me (My weight on me) takes place during the opening. The artist is sitting on a wooden plinth-chair and a pink portuguese marble will sit on him. The marble has the same weight as the artist. Morbin explores a subtle and sensitive relationship between action, material, time and duration.

Slaven Tolj

The performance Nature & Society by the artist Slaven Tolj can be interpreted as an example of reflection of the painful process to entrench a new social identity responding the political changes in the post-totalitarian environment. The author destroyed a pair of deer antlers that he had inherited from his grandfather, and these were given as a present from the Fascist leader Benito Mussolini. Running into a wall, with stag’s antlers fixed onto his head, Tolj injured his spine.