5779. 12/12 – Marie Cool Fabio Balducci

Marie Cool Fabio Balducci
Untitled, 2018
video 59 secs

As often happens in the work of Marie Cool Fabio Balducci, the action is its protagonist. In the specific case of Untitled (2008) the action, or the gesture, derives from the function of the tape repairing/putting together two parts that were separated. In this case the person functions as tape in a political relationship with a common destiny. In the practice of Marie Cool Fabio Balducci both politics and economics, not to mention the idea of individual and her/his “role”, are notions particularly important; however, they aredeveloped between abstraction and “doing nothing,” in a placewhere the gesture is always contrived/reduced (not minimal) exactly by the issues at stake.

Marie Cool Fabio Balducci’s Untitled is the twelfth and last chapter of 5779, the exhibition project opening the first season of BUILDINGBOX, which is an independent space within the premises of BUILDING, characterized by its own unique program. The opening project, curated by Nicola Trezzi, opens on the week of Rosh HaShana, which is the beginning of the new year – the year 5779, as the title says – according to the Hebrew calendar.

Following these premises, a window gallery which is visible 24/7, and a calendar which consists, for this year, of 13 months (Nisan, Iyar, Sivan, Tammuz, Av, Elul, Tishrei, Marcheshvan, Kislev, Tevet, Shevat, Adar Aleph and its intercalary Adar Beth), 5779 is a group exhibition in which several artworks are not presented next to each other but rather one afterthe other. The structure of the calendar – day after day, month after month, year after year – becomes the guideline for the presentation of artworks by several artists; in doing so, this structure transforms the essence behind group exhibitions, from coexistence and juxtaposition to linearity and procession.

Furthermore, this specific format deconstructs the very core of the group exhibition format, which is, by definition, an exhibition in which several artworks, by several artists, are presented next to each other in a confined space and for a specific amount of time. With 5779 the idea of a group exhibition in which works of art by several artists appear, in the same space, one after the other – substituting one another, replacing one another – suggests an inversion in the equation at the base of exhibition making. Rather than rooting exhibition making into space, as it usually happens, this time the exhibition is rooted in time rather than space.

To reinforce the predominance of time over space, a complete overturning of exhibition making and of its premises, is the decision to display artworks that are not only on view 24/7 but also that are ‘fed’ by electricity – neon signs, works with light bulbs, videos, etc. –, works that are independent sources of light, “small suns” (although the Hebrew calendar is not purely solar but “lunisolar”) giving the rhythm of time.

Marie Cool Fabio Balducci’s Untitled will remain on view until September 29, during the last days of Elul.