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Enrico Baj
Consolle, 1961
Olio, collage, impiallacciatura, specchio, stoffa su tavola
74 x 53 cm
Consolle, 1961
Olio, collage, impiallacciatura, specchio, stoffa su tavola
74 x 53 cm
Press Release
Enrico Baj
Mobili Animati
Opening: May 26, 2009
May 27 – July 24, 2009
Mobili Animati
Opening: May 26, 2009
May 27 – July 24, 2009
The Marconi Foundation is pleased to present the exhibition Enrico Baj. Mobili animati.
Organised in collaboration with Archivio Baj, it will display a selection of fifty works by Enrico Baj.
A volume, curated by Germano Celant, will be published by Skira; illustrated with the images of the works on show it will include a critical essay on the "furniture pieces" series which, executed at the beginning of the Sixties, is among the most astonishing and fascinating in Baj's production.
The surrealist assumption of mutability is for Baj the possibility that everything turns into something else through an ironic interpretation of reality: therefore, as the General has been generated from the Mountain, the Furniture pieces are a derivation from that archetypal symbol that the artist created in the Fifties: the Ultra-body.
And in fact, the first Furniture pieces, from 1960, or 1961, have been shaped with the same matter of the "characters" of those same years: wadding pressed and applied on collage mounted on tapestry fabric.
On the furniture pieces frames, knobs, passementerie and decorated keyholes are applied to replace facial features, thus keeping an ambiguity between an "animal" and a real “furniture piece”; in later works Baj will more exactly define their appearance by using materials like wood, veneer sheets enriched with friezes typical of craftsmen repertoire.
Organised in collaboration with Archivio Baj, it will display a selection of fifty works by Enrico Baj.
A volume, curated by Germano Celant, will be published by Skira; illustrated with the images of the works on show it will include a critical essay on the "furniture pieces" series which, executed at the beginning of the Sixties, is among the most astonishing and fascinating in Baj's production.
The surrealist assumption of mutability is for Baj the possibility that everything turns into something else through an ironic interpretation of reality: therefore, as the General has been generated from the Mountain, the Furniture pieces are a derivation from that archetypal symbol that the artist created in the Fifties: the Ultra-body.
And in fact, the first Furniture pieces, from 1960, or 1961, have been shaped with the same matter of the "characters" of those same years: wadding pressed and applied on collage mounted on tapestry fabric.
On the furniture pieces frames, knobs, passementerie and decorated keyholes are applied to replace facial features, thus keeping an ambiguity between an "animal" and a real “furniture piece”; in later works Baj will more exactly define their appearance by using materials like wood, veneer sheets enriched with friezes typical of craftsmen repertoire.
Also the material employed will follow a process of evolution becoming more and more direct and provocative, until the preciousness of kitsch that the "furniture pieces" reveal makes them become ironic and vain objects, strutting around with their inlays, knobs, frames and mirrors.
In all Baj's works there is an "anthropomorphic" attitude that is evident in the furniture pieces, as well: most of them suggest a personification of forms. This metamorphic process leads Baj to stop drawing doors and drawers in favour of figuration. This is how real characters are born, stylish, exuberant and far away from the aggressiveness of the artist's early ones. Made from very simple elements, they are an imaginative divertissement.
With these words Octavio Paz defined Baj's furniture: “They do not reflect us, they are not metaphores, symbols or ideas. They are just furniture pieces. Eternally free and alien, they have nothing behind. Pure exteriority. Baj gives us one of the most astonishing and healthy sensations: the identy of things for what they are, the surprise of being who we are."
In all Baj's works there is an "anthropomorphic" attitude that is evident in the furniture pieces, as well: most of them suggest a personification of forms. This metamorphic process leads Baj to stop drawing doors and drawers in favour of figuration. This is how real characters are born, stylish, exuberant and far away from the aggressiveness of the artist's early ones. Made from very simple elements, they are an imaginative divertissement.
With these words Octavio Paz defined Baj's furniture: “They do not reflect us, they are not metaphores, symbols or ideas. They are just furniture pieces. Eternally free and alien, they have nothing behind. Pure exteriority. Baj gives us one of the most astonishing and healthy sensations: the identy of things for what they are, the surprise of being who we are."