YELLOW PROJECT
Marta Papini
Modularity, color and concept are the three essential ingredients of the site specific intervention created by Kanako Noda for Il Posto. The work is inspired particularly by its dominant color, yellow, and enacts a non-homogeneous structure that is anything but anonymous. These elements, together, determine the project itself, to the point that we can no longer think of it as a personal show, but rather as a collaboration between the artist and the site.
"I find a thousand possibilities precisely in limiting myself to a simple module (modulus/standard/form/pattern/compartment.)" Noda's intervention takes up some of the cornerstones of the minimalist current of the 1960s: using a quintessentially formal lexicon that manifests itself through a limited color palate and pure forms stripped of decorative intent. Geometrically defined structures are rendered through repetition and (infinitesimal) variation of primary elements and simple shapes. But while minimalism set out to construct works using industrial processes, Kanako Noda reclaims a long negated artisanship, personally taking part in the production of her works. Their execution is reclaimed from the mechanical precision of instruments and entrusted instead to the artist's hand.
This installation is the result of a meticulously pre-defined project instantiated in an atmosphere of quietude that recalls and enables meditation: rhythmic and measured gestures fill this silent space, leaving behind only discrete traces on the wall. The primary colors favored by minimalism are set aside to make room to more sophisticated colors that weave themselves through a dominant yellow. The project, designed for the walls of Il Posto, comes to life only once it takes hold on these walls, inside a space that already has its own colors and forms.
The ultimate effect of these ritual movements is a work of sculptural weaving that, through its overlaps and transparencies, through the deliberate and playful intersection of light and shadow, overcomes the limits of bidimensionality, underlining the complex voluminosity of its own space with each line deliberately placed and every intersection arising out of a precise choice by the artist.
This work is willed to conclude with the end of the installation period, further emphasizing its own immateriality and, thereby, its conceptual core: in Kanako Noda's language, material objects are devoid of meaning, in contraposition to the personal relationship that a customer establishes with the transformed space.
Detachment from the material objects possessed is the essence of our era: our lives are those of modern nomads, able at any time to move away leaving all that belongs to us behind, all due to our immersion in a technological landscape that allows us to easily overcome spacial or temporal barriers. In the same way, the artist takes with her the possibility of recreating her own space...a space that - for a limited time - we can find on the walls of Il Posto.
2009
IT
YELLOW PROJECT
Marta Papini
Modulo, colore e concetto sono gli ingredienti essenziali dell’intervento site specific ideato da Kanako Noda per il nostro Posto, ispirato in particolare dal suo colore dominante, il giallo, e dalla sua struttura non omogenea e tutt’altro che anonima. Elementi che, insieme, determinano il progetto in sé, tanto da non poterla considerare una mostra personale, piuttosto una collaborazione tra l’artista e lo spazio.
Trovo mille possibilità proprio nel limitarmi ad utilizzare solo un modulo semplice. L’intervento di Noda riprende alcuni tra i capisaldi della corrente minimalista sviluppatasi negli anni Sessanta: l’utilizzo di un lessico formale essenziale che si manifesta attraverso forme pure prive di funzione decorativa e dal cromatismo limitato. Strutture geometricamente definite, scandite dalla ripetizione e vari- azione – minima – di elementi primari e forme semplici.
Mentre il Minimalismo prevede la realizzazione delle opere per lo più attraverso procedimenti industriali, Kanako Noda recupera l’artigianalità negata, intervenendo personalmente nella produzione dei suoi lavori. L’esecuzione, sottratta alla precisione dello strumento meccanico, è ora affidata alla mano dell’artista.
L’installazione è il risultato di un lavoro meticoloso e pre-definito che si svolge in un’atmosfera di quiete che ricorda e favorisce la meditazione: gesti ritmici e misurati riempiono lo spazio silenzioso, lasciando tracce discrete sulle pareti.
I colori primari scelti dal Minimalismo vengono qui abbandonati per dare spazio a colori sofisticati, che si intrecciano con la trama gialla dominante. Il progetto ideato per le pareti del Posto assume valore esclusivamente se riportato sui suoi muri, all’interno di uno spazio già connotato nei colori e nelle forme.
2009