MAGAZINE, Frieze Blog
MIKE WATSON — Postcard from Palermo, 31.08.2015

Having been selected host city for Manifesta in 2018, Palermo’s art scene is enjoying renewed interest. Whilst it is unlikely that Sicily’s capital will ever be restored to its former cultural prominence, the city still attracts a constant stream of artists and cultural practitioners who have continued to visit since the days of the Grand Tour. My second trip to Palermo coincided with a residency exhibition involving six young artists. Curated by Valentina Bruschi, the sixth edition of the biannual project ‘Viaggio in Sicilia’, initiated by Planeta winery, is entitled ‘When the Landscape Listens’, a line take from a poem by Emily Dickinson, and it was with poetry and landscape in mind that the curator chose the artists from Sicily, Iowa, New York and Dusseldorf. Last September the group – Adrianna Glaviano, Carlo and Fabio Ingrassia, Paula Karoline Kamps, John Kleckner and Ignazio Mortellaro – was taken on a week-long tour beginning in Catania before moving to Mount Etna, Milazzo, Messina, Noto, Modica and Palma di Montechiaro in Agrigento. They returned this June to Palermo to mount works based on their experiences of Sicily. Visiting the exhibition and, subsequently, talking to the artists, it became apparent that the landscape, culture and food of Sicily had left an indelible mark on those artists who had come from abroad. Even for those living permanently in Sicily (Ignazio Mortellaro in Palermo and Carlo and Fabio Ingrassia in Catania), the experience deepened their understanding of a region seemingly entwined with primordial natural forces, ripe with raw energy. The residency show is installed in the Cappella dell’ Incoronazione, a Norman Chapel used since the 12th Century for the coronation of successive Kings of Sicily. The Chapel includes an outside courtyard and a crypt as well as a main room formerly dedicated to prayer and ceremonies. The arches and high ceilings in that space create diffuse shadows while the courtyard features a set of columns running around its perimeter, yet these columns carry no roof. This has the effect of leading one’s eyes up to the sky, and the outline of one upper segment of Palermo’s Cathedral with its arabesque patterns. Such a complex interplay between the natural and the manmade – as light interacts with the particular architecture of a city and region with a complex cultural history – required a subtle response from the selected artists. The resulting exhibition suggests an accord being made between the individual artist and that environment via the artwork, attempting to identify through poiesis what cannot be truly represented. Whilst socio-political aspects relating to the ‘landscape’ were conspicuously absent, a wider narrative of beauty and the sublime was construed. The resulting exhibition demonstrates that sometimes, beyond all discussion on urbanisation, gentrification and man made climate change, there remains at times only a sense of awe. This is a point well expressed by Ignazio Mortellaro’s piece Ed è subito sera (And Suddenly It’s Evening, 2015), a brass rod measuring 3 metres in length representing the horizon and bearing an inscription of a hermetic poem written by the 20th Century Sicilian poet Salvatore Quasimodo (1901-1968):

Ognuno sta solo
sul cuor della terra
trafitto da un raggio di Sole:
ed è subito sera.

Each of us stands alone
at the heart of the Earth
Pierced by a ray of sunlight:
And suddenly it’s evening

The poem is a reflection on mortality, but also upon the entwinement of man and nature. The piece is positioned to reflect sunlight and is aligned perfectly across the East-West axis of the compass. Inside the chapel itself, the works of Adrianna Glaviano and the identical twins Carlo Fabio Ingrassia complement each other. Whilst the former printed photographs of fabrics which appear on first glance to be painted, the latter two artists presented miniature photo-realist pastel drawings. In both cases the depicted scenes represent fragments of landscapes or townscapes saturated in light, like glimpses caught through half-shut eyes, reflecting lines from Emily Dickinson’s poem which describes the oppressiveness of the midday sun in Sicily: When it comes, the Landscape listens –
Shadows – hold their breath
When it goes, ‘tis like the Distance
On the look of Death – The Ingrassia twins work obsessively on the same piece, drawing from the outside of an image towards the centre and meeting in the middle. Their laborious studio process results in effortless-looking harmonious compositions such as Frammenti di una Triologia (Fragments of a Trilogy, 2015), which was displayed in the main chapel. Here, the use of colour and shadow evoke the unsettling atmosphere of dusk, continuing the theme of light and shadow as absolutely crucial to an understanding of the island of Sicily. Paula Karoline Kamps’ trio of large scale ink paintings, also displayed in the main chapel, take a more personal approach to the landscape via an exploration of its effect on the body, both of human and animal. It’s Like no Tomorrow (2015) depicts a moonscape overlaid with a human torso and legs, and several newly hatched turtles. The work is based on the experience of a moonlit walk across the beach close to Menfi in the region of Agrigento, in which the artist witnessed turtles hatching and walking in file across the sand and directly to the sea. The suggested contortion of the human figure, which floats ethereally against a regal Prussian Blue backdrop, meets with the sensation of being blanketed by the depicted sky and moonlight. One senses less a domination of man by nature and more a wilful submission to its cycles.