Cover: “Pasifae V” by Elie Abou Samra photo by Gino Di Paolo
Jörg Christoph Grünert
Elie Abou Samra
Residual Automatisms Ex-Aurum, Pescara - Italy 16 April - 2 May 2010 Editor and critical text: Rolando Alfonso Photograph References: Gino Di Paolo Design and Publishing: Associazione Deposito Dei Segni Onlus Organization Supervisor: Cam Lecce Exhibition Fitting and Graphics: Jörg Christoph Grünert Translations: Giorgio Tomasi - Italian/English Aristidi Abou Samra – Arabic/English Yasser Odeh - Arabic/Italian Press Office: Rosaria Maresca, Cristina Mosca Printing: Publish, San Giovanni Teatino - Italy Publisher: Deposito Dei Segni Onlus, 2010
with the Patronage of:
Ministery of Culture of Lebanon
Regional Councillor for Development of Tourism and Cultural Policies Abruzzo Region
Department of Culture Aiccre Abruzzo Municipality of Spoltore Italian Section of the Council of European Municipalities and Regions
Councillor of Culture of Province Pescara
University of Pescara-Chieti Faculty of Social Science Faculty of Foreign Languages
Councillor of Culture Municipality of Pescara
University of Teramo Faculty of Political Science
Residual Automatisms
curated by Rolando Alfonso
Elie Abou Samra
It is not strange for an exhibition uniting a Lebanese artist and a German artist living in Italy to take place, given the existing close cultural and social, even historical and geographical ties that bind both countries together. What brings together the two artists Elie Abu Samra and Jörg Grünert is the inspiration radiating from the art works presented to the public, despite the difference in style and technique, which is a natural phenomenon. The common denominators revealed by these works have, if any, a major significance which is the continuous historical relations between the two countries marked by two-fold shared artistic influences: On one hand, it is due to the tradition of our great pioneers seeking education in this highly creative country, a tradition that was kept alive and ongoing within our new generation; on the other hand, it is due to the historic existence of Italian Orientalists in Lebanon. We extend our gratitude to all who contributed to the creation of this milieu in order to achieve the goal of cooperation amongst artists. The Lebanese Ministry of Culture will always be a supporter of any effort aiming at the promotion of noble works of art, on the private and public levels, hoping that this step will be followed by other steps in all fields especially the art field, which should be made well known to the Italian and Lebanese public, due to the common feeling and vision concerning life the two countries share. Dima Raad Director of Exhibitions Department Lebanese Ministry of Culture
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Mediterranean Memories: Residual Automatisms is not only an exhibition of the most beautiful and important works by the artists Jörg Christoph Grünert and Elie Abou Samra, but it is also a real double-fold exchange of art between two nations in painting and sculpture that these two authors intend to communicate to visitors. The union between the Lebanese and Italian culture offered to these two artists by the Italian academies is fully displayed and gives the spectators the opportunity to know more about a distant culture not only for its geographical but also and mostly its symbolic aspects. This exhibition gives us the opportunity to learn about the Mediterranean world, which is like an immense theatre: sometimes prolific, sometimes gloomy, sometimes dramatic, but in any case a theatre, where the scene depends on the actors’ will. For centuries, different cultures have met, talked to each other, and traded around the Mediterranean. The civilisations living around the Mediterranean shores have given significant contributions to the history, culture, and art not only of the Mediterranean region. The Mediterranean Sea unites, does not divide, people. So Jörg Grünert and Elie Abou Samra are artistically very different, but the same roots link them to Italy, a country they both love. The cooperation between Lebanon and Italy has always been based on the respect for different ideas, values, and habits. In fact, respect is the prerequisite for dialogue. This exhibition is a practical example of how two countries – although geographically distant – keep their political, artistic, and cultural exchanges alive through quality improvements on both sides. Mauro Di Dalmazio Regional Councillor for Development of Tourism and Cultural Policies, Abruzzo - Italy
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Elie Abou Samra Pasifae V
2010 mixed media on canvas 30 x 40 cm 8
RESIDUAL AUTOMATISMS
A Journey at the Base of a Necessary Exchange
by Rolando Alfonso Jörg Cristoph GRüNERT – ELIE ABOU SAMRA Works 2010 Zeitgeist of late modernity, between the value of “near things” in Elie Abou Samra and the use of metaphor of profundity in Jörg Cristoph Grünert Is it now possible to try and interpret the Zeitgeist of contemporary art differently, reconsidering the excessively resolutive resort – from the historical point of view – to the categories of ‘quotationism’ and epigonism – considered in their negative meaning as just a source of imitation? Is this possible, considering that through these characteristics, most of the critics have interpreted the diversified world of present formalism as a response to the end of potentials in modern and artistic avant-gardes of the 20th Century? Is it possible to restart from the deep track marked by late modernity to enucleate and work on the tasks before us, in spite of the final decree about the lack of a future and the end of philosophy and history, hence of art? How is it still necessary – to come out of a too long impasse – to follow Nietzsche’s first and then Simmel’s thinking about the recovery of a new meaning and value of near things after the pathos of search for the origin dissolves? How much longer are we forced to face a rebirth of the primacy of surface on one hand and the metaphor of profundity on the other hand, i.e. between a new advent of metaphysics and obsessive search for the fundamentals so cherished by scientific thinking? Certainly, we cope with relative non-exhaustive questions and answers in this juncture; in any case, we shall indicate any different and reconstructive proceeding. Postmodern as an “Affection” of Modern This proceeding should be detached from a rigid position on final epochal breaks of the narrative structures of modernity and probably reconsider with more care the focus on a second and more profound interpretation of postmodern handed down to us by its most popular promulgator, Jean Francois Lyotard. He reconsidered his initial formulation and defined postmodern as an “affection” of 9
modern and exposed the location of proceeding beyond to the reunion with the original matrix and heuristically characterise its surface effect still to be analysed. This affection – which should be considered, with more accuracy, with its meaning or indication of a disease condition – permeates and highlights the surface of modern body with the pocks of a viral infection of ‘déjà vu’ and compulsion of repetition. Through the use of metaphor, one could say that, like in the human body exposed to a disease, the body of art, in its continuous linguistic change, its organicity and physiology, shows its “affections”. These affections are structured into epigenetic dimensions at the level of history. This allows having a discerning eye over the body of art, which scans the appearance of an event deviating from the core of truth, for example, which founds Deleuze’s thinking he theorized in “Difference and Repetition”. This point of view is privileged here, though reversing its disposition of terms, so as to allow analysing the connection between epigenesist – which becomes historical on the occasion – and automatisms. Considerations on Automatism and Historical Epigenesis Focusing on the aesthetic dimension, the automatism – so cherished by surrealists, and not only them, suffice it to see its function in relation to the identification of fetish as a product in Duchamp’s ready made, as well as, originating from Duchamp, its presence in Robert Rauschenberg’s combinations and John Cage’s compositions – originates in both the drive region, which already has solid narrative structures, and in the instinct region, where it has a limited selection between two categorical statements, i.e. between conservation of life and determination of death. The hiatus of value between narration and statement sticks up for its rights when it is considered at the level of repetition and difference, as previously identified. The differentiation of narrative structures in repetition finds its justification in the expansive and never satisfied nature of narrator’s memory, whereas in statement there is an undifferentiated state of memory, which is forced to a limited repetition, similar to the imperative form. In the response modes of the various regions it originates from, automatism brings to evidence and operates at the level of reality what is hidden, and it is the case of the origin from the drive world, while it appears as a monosyllabic definition of oneself exposed to annihilation, as concerns the instinctual dimension. 10
At this point, to start analyzing the epiphanic aspect and nature of historical epigenesis – the other operational term in combination with automatism – it is necessary to try and extract it from the domain of an individual well structured response in a closed, in other words ideological, system. To succeed in this task, both the eternal return of Nietzsche’s equal and Deleuze’s different repetition shall be considered as reference coordinates. These coordinates are of a historical present, of a kind of “empty disappearance time” succeeded to that “present as history”: epistemic loads that can be hardly handled. To find a possible escape route, it is useful to scan the hidden meaning of the word ‘epigone’. This word has not always had its usual negative meaning. It appeared with a mainly genealogical meaning of “descending from”; subsequently, it was interpreted with a neutral meaning in the direction of a “historical epigenesis” (Liebmann). A significant task was assigned to epigones, which placed them in the morrow of major systemic perspectives. In fact, the idea that philosophy and philosophers, and everything originating from them also for the aesthetic domain, already established themselves as post-philosophy and postphilosophers was structured with epigones. Therefore, its appropriate meaning is in the history of ideas. The conscience of epigone is not identified with a general lament for the time or the conscience of decline. Is this the state of conscience hanging over the shaping of the linguistic expressions of the two epigones now being observed: Jörg Grünert and Elie Abou Samra? The answer given by this state of conscience opens up the view of incompleteness and uncertainty. It stays on a refining work of conceptual tools, resetting, and radical deconstruction of inherited syntheses, hermeneutic dialogue with the tradition of the past considered as an integral part of the internal task of late modernity perspective.
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Pasifae I
2010, mixed media on canvas 70 x 100 cm
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Pasifae II
2010 mixed media on canvas 100 x 100 cm 14
Pasifae III - IV
2010 mixed media on canvas 18 x 24 cm 18 x 24 cm 15
Pasifae VI
2010 mixed media on wood 25 x 86 cm 16
Pasifae VI
2010 mixed media on canvas 80 x 160 cm 17
Minotaurus and his Shadow 2010 mixed media on wood 20 x 33 cm on canvas 30 x 100 cm 18
Shadow I
2010 mixed media on canvas 18 x 24 cm
Minotaurus I - II 2010 mixed media on wood 13 x 16 cm on canvas 18 x 24 cm
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Studies I - V 2009 - 2010 mixed media on paper ca. 12 x 17 cm 20
Artistbook 2009 - 2010 mixed media on paper 15 x 22 cm 21
Studies VI - XII
2009 - 2010 mixed media on paper, ca. 12 x 17 cm 23
Taurus I
2010 mixed media on canvas 30 x 30 cm 24
Taurus II
2010 mixed media on canvas 30 x 30 cm
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Taurus IV - VI 2010 mixed media on canvas 30 x 100 cm on wood 20 x 40 cm 20 x 38 cm 26
Taurus VII - VIII 2010 mixed media on canvas 18 x 24 cm on wood 20 x 70 cm
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Shadow II
2010 mixed media on canvas 50 x 100 cm 28
Studies XIII - XVIII 2009 - 2010 mixed media on paper ca. 12 x 17 cm
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Shadow III
2010, mixed media on canvas 70 x 100 cm 30
Shadow IV - VI 2010 mixed media on wood 35 x 50 cm on canvas 10 x 15 cm on canvas 18 x 24 cm
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Elie Abou Samra Taurus III 2010 mixed media on wood 13 x 31 cm