GARBAGE, STARDUST AND CONTEMPORARY ART

 

 

For the collective imaginary the garbage and the stardust has probably no relation. For who lives the movie-business the combination is surely funny.

However it is a strange emotion to open a window of one’s own apartment and to find suddenly in front of the eyes the word “HOLLYWOOD” hanged on one of hills surrounding  Palermo, Sicily, Italy.

 

The contemporary art reveals outermost nature in its more recent and dissimilar display. Above all in the last years there have been artists who have focused the relation between environment and people. Each environment creates a conditioning, stating in this way the communication, the tight organic tie between the human being and the reality of today, between the public and the sociological context.

We had digested Christo (Javatcheff), the Bulgarian, who several years ago had wrapped up  the ancient Pincian walls in Rome – together with half-a-score of other international monuments around the world. Today instead we relish Maurizio Cattelan who gives us HOLLYWOOD to Palermo.

 

The HOLLYWOOD sign is a provocation sociological-cultural which carries the brand of the “Biennale di Venezia” (the 49^th International Exhibition of Art), first satellite-project in the history of the prestigious exhibition of contemporary art directed by Harald Szeemann.

This word, inspirer of many dreams “reincarnates” the Californian dream. Some years ago  this word has been transplanted to the other side of the world. A duplicate copy of the renowned sign, special project for the “Biennale di Venezia 2001”, has stood on the  Bellolampo hill – where there is the Municipal dump of Palermo and neighborhood. The sign was under the sponsorship of the Municipality of Palermo and the participation of the AMIA which was carrying on the project “Together for the Environment” for the integrated management of the garbage recycling. The lighting of the sign in fact was supplied by the bio-gas garbage implant managed by the AMIA AMBIENTE ITALIA s.p.a.

 

The HOLLYWOOD installation planned and designed by Maurizio Cattalan, artist from Padua, Italy, formerly guest of the Biennale of Venice, reproduces the famous original Hollywood’ sign, with the same size and shape – mt.170 in total wide with nine huge letters 23 meters high each.

 

 On the occasion of the Hollywood sign achievement, Maurizio Cattalan published a volume titled “HOLLYWOOD: Dreams that Money can Buy”, edited by the Rebaudengo Foundation, gathering photos and testimonies from the movie-business.

In the balance between artist’s  book and a full immersion in the American dream, the volume was a mirror – sometimes faithful, sometimes distorted – of our obsession for the images.

In less than ten years Cattelan has become popular as one of the most original “voice” of the international contemporary art. His sculpture “La Nona Ora” (the ninth hour), an image of the Pope Giovanni Paolo II  hit by a meteorite, has become an icon of the contemporary art and it is world-famous.

 

Cattelan living and working between London and New York says: “The reality is never in black and white: it is a complex of shades. And it is enough few to transform a dream in a nightmare. The images should reflect this complexity: they must be numerous . Hollywood is like the life of everyday: a mix  of joy and despair, garbage and stardust”…. “ Hollywood and the Sicily are closely related. After all, I think there is more violence in the streets of  Los Angeles than in Palermo. The American movie fed always on gangsters stories, transforming their reality in a show. In the best and in worst, the Sicily and Hollywood share the same destiny : they are places in balance between geography and legend. Therefore, to bring  Hollywood in Sicily can be also a little tribute: a way to give back whatever has been taken away”.

 

 

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