Archivio degli eventi / Events archive
7 marzo – 10 maggio 2008: Alessandro Bazan,
Golden Circle
Mostra personale di
Alessandro Bazan, testo critico di
Jòraku Gianni Gebbia. Catalogo.
Inaugurazione venerdì 7 marzo 2008 alle ore 19
Luogo: Arte Boccanera Contemporanea, via Milano 128/130, Trento
Info: T/F +39 0461 984206 / M +39 340 5747013 /
arteboccanera@gmail.com
Comunicato Stampa / Press
Release
Venerdì 7 marzo 2008 alle ore 19 Arte Boccanera Contemporanea
inaugura la prima personale trentina di Alessandro Bazan, che si
protrarrà fino al 10 maggio 2008. Il titolo “Golden Circle” è
ispirato al celeberrimo album del gruppo jazz Ornette Coleman Trio
“At the Golden Circle”, registrazione del concerto al Gyllene
Cirkeln Club di Stoccolma del 1965. I dipinti presentati, tutti
inediti, si inseriscono in quel filone che Bazan realizza in
rapporto alla sua passione per la musica, in particolare in “Golden
Circle” si trova impegnato a restituire in pittura l’atmosfera del
jazz attraverso i suoi stessi principi, giungendo «quasi a suggerire
una dimensione fisica dell’ascolto come dell’esecuzione» (G.Romano).
Il jazz è, infatti, la musica prediletta da Bazan proprio per il suo
legame con l’improvvisazione, per la ricerca che da basi solide
muove alla conquista di soluzioni sempre differenti e per la forte
componente di ispirazione momentanea che lo caratterizza, elementi
che costituiscono il filo conduttore delle opere esposte. Il
catalogo offre un punto di vista inconsueto: il saggio critico è
infatti affidato al jazzista Gianni Gebbia che con il suo contributo
evidenzia i nessi tra i lavori di Bazan e questo genere musicale.
Every jazz player is an
icon, an archetype which -star like- sheds light on the huge creative
landscape where we can find gods/idols such as Ornette, Sphere Monk,
Miles, Lacy, Trane, Bird, and Diz: shapes, above all, shapes of
individuals whose features are framed by their music. Ornette, with
his self-made jackets, his weird hats, his saxophones, from the
early one made of white plastic, to his Selmer, complete with an
additional note: pure color and a unique form.
Wherever
the signifier Ornette appears, we are under his spell, an evident
proof that the jazz player (the real one, at least...) embodies the
tarots' "Magician". The music he plays doesn't only suggest a
history of sounds, but also a history of images: they are mythical,
archetypical, made by the artist himself with no appeals to the
fantastic or surreal imagery so typical of rock or pop. The images
produced by jazz belong to that “absurd” realism which, once heard
by human beings, becomes magic.
Painters such as Ben
Shan, first among many, were fascinated by jazz players and
dedicated to them several works; this is also the case with
Alessandro Bazan—whose work I have appreciated from the
beginning—who was in his turn hypnotized by the eternal idols. I
remember, for instance, a painting he made in the ‘80s where a
solitary trumpet player peered out of his room set amidst a
bewildered and nocturnal metropolitan landscape.
Jazz is
a cipher, a sign, a color set in a more or less immediate,
improvised key; the same happens with painting, as is demonstrated
by the “golden circle” which strictly connects the two worlds. Just
to quote a few examples Miles, Pee Wee Russell, Han Bennink, and
Daniel Humair painted and instead A.R. Penck, Alan Davies, and the
selfsame Alessandro Bazan play.
Alessandro composes a
variation on the great archetype represented by the cover of the
double album The Ornette Coleman Trio at the Golden Circle: set
against the background of a snow covered park in Stokholm a weird
triad stands out as a unity. In the middle, Ornette wearing a light
raincoat, with a beard and a top hat; on his right, almost stuck to
him, Charles Moffett wearing a brazen and self-satisfied expression;
on the left—the almost unconscious side—a disturbing David Izenzon,
decked with cloak and sunglasses. Yes, yes, we are dealing with the
unconscious (a few years later Izenzon became a psychoanalyst): as
with every religious icon, the Golden Circle trinity forms a unity
which in turn is a phallus which, as Lacan suggests, no one actually
possesses.
This leads us to Bazan’s favorite characters:
the phallus-men, loud, lanky, charismatic, at times a little
bullying, painted on the exact verge between caricature and serious
interior radiograph. The original Golden Circle photo is black and
white: Bazan reinterprets it with his typical Ornette-style colors,
often pure and unmediated, and via his recurring background trees,
dried up because of winter.
What else? Have a good
listening session.
Jòraku Gianni Gebbia (Palermo, February 2008) .
