From the welcoming light of an intimate encounter to the disquieting light of historical precipice, the Bonollo Foundation in Thiene presents an itinerary in two acts, Rendezvous and 3rd Light. Corresponding respectively to the works by Nino Kapanadze (Georgia – Paris, born in 1990) curated by Marta Papini and the video installation by Paul Chan (Hong Kong – New York, born in 1973) curated by Chiara Nuzzi, the two exhibitions mark the visual score of a former monastery in the Vicenza area, taking up and at the same time neutralising the sacredness of this space.
Nino Kapanadze, “Rendezvous”, installation view a cura di Marta Papini, courtesy l’artista e C L E A R I N G, New York e Los Angeles
Beyond the door of the Foundation, one finds oneself in a small deconsecrated church that has been a great challenge for the young Georgian artist. Thinking of a work that could bring respect for the context of its religious origins and at the same time propose an innovative vision is the principle that gave rise to Tanto gentile e tanto onesta, a creation that has emerged on the borderline between the original sacred roots and the artist’s original contribution to contemporary aesthetics. The installation recalls, through two long chiffon drapes lowered from the wooden windows of the women’s gallery and brought together on the chapel floor, the kiss of Joachim and Anne at the Golden Door, painted by Giotto (Scrovegni Chapel, 1303-1305) and considered the first kiss in the history of art. The draperies evoke the mars red and golden ochre with which the protagonists of the Christian story are dressed and, hand-dyed with natural pigments, inaugurate the dreamy and suspended atmosphere that will accompany the rest of the works on display. In fact, the tenderness of this encounter of fabrics and figures, crowned by a Giottesque blue tondo (in the apsidal position, softens the viewer’s gaze and prepares him/her for Kapanadze’s subsequent canvases, dominated by colours of a transparency typical of non-artificial pigmentations and by the free fading of the figurative into the abstract.
Nino Kapanadze, “Rendezvous”, installation view a cura di Marta Papini, courtesy l’artista e C L E A R I N G, New York e Los Angeles
After a first room in which, through a mosaic of selected colours, we are given the chromatic key to access the artist’s work, we enter into a dialogue with large paintings whose dimensions in turn converse in a game of exact mirroring with those of the Padua cycle (200 x 185 cm). Slender branches of a tree silhouetted against a blue that for us means ‘sky’, a bird so fragile in appearance that it seems to blend into an anonymous ‘landscape’, a clash in weightlessness between sparks of cold fire (the astronautical rendezvous), a sensual orchid that boldly emerges from what our eye recognises as a ‘swamp’. Nino’s brush stimulates spontaneous intuitions, immersing us in the evanescence of a sacred and soothing light and «confuses air with earth, fire with water, guiding us into an ancient world in which everything was one», as the curator writes.
Nino Kapanadze, “Rendezvous”, installation view a cura di Marta Papini, courtesy l’artista e C L E A R I N G, New York e Los Angeles
From the fatuous fire of the sweet and gentle art of the first exhibition, every spark is extinguished, the last room becomes dark and only 3rd Light remains to illuminate the path, a work in which light is no longer synonymous with romantic welcome but, on the contrary, with severe awareness. A chapter in a larger video series, the installation evokes apocalyptic but real scenarios, such as 9/11 or the war in Iraq. From the imagery of Kapanadze’s redutio ad Unum, one undergoes an estrangement towards Chan’s dark and distressing world. The Chinese artist stages a permanent catastrophe: the video runs on a loop through different shades of colour, whose light projected onto the ground is from time to time ‘cut’ by silhouettes of everyday objects or animals, struggling with a hostile force of gravity. The video is visually punctuated by three windows rendered with shadows, as immaterial as they are impactful, and by a wooden board (the only physical element in the series) that recalls, by subverting the atmosphere, that of the Last Supper by Da Vinci. The artist, therefore, creates according to selection and resemantisation: he extracts certain visual stimuli from the media flow from recent decades and reconverts them into a spectacle of death with fluctuating and dreamlike features – characters similar to those of Nino’s canvases, albeit with a decidedly opposite agency.
Paul Chan, “3rd Lightt” (from “The 7 Light”s, 2005–07), 2006, table and digital color video projection (silent, 14 min.), dimensions variable © Paul Chan Photo: Courtesy the artist and Greene Naftali Gallery, New York. Photo: Erika Barahona-Ede
As Nuzzi states, the repetition of the images makes them disturbing and at the same time reassuring, as if there were no real end but only an eternal beginning. The viewer who looks into the abyss of 3d Light at the culmination of the exhibition feels bewildered as if on the edge of a precipice and is called upon to reflect on the possible narratives of light – from the warmth of Nino’s draperies to the sidereal movements of Paul’s images – and of the related shadows that, according to Chan, are nothing but «erased light [light]».
Info:
Nino Kapanadze. Rendezvous | Paul Chan. 3d Light
08.03.25 – 24.05.25
Fondazione Sandra e Giancarlo Bonollo
Via dell’Eva, 1 – Thiene (VI)
www.fondazionebonollo.com
Graduate in Philosophy from the University of Milan, where she currently lives, she specialized in aesthetics and contemporary criticism. Passionate of the art world and devoted to research, she believes in the potential of the interdisciplinary gaze, which intertwines critical thinking, typical of philosophical backgroud, and the communicative power of art to shape the evolving identity of its time.
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