MIlano, Mar 27th. (askanews) – iL chaos and quiet; destruction and recomposition; Hell and the sky. Crossing the “Icarus” exhibition of the Japanese artist Yukinori Yanagi, hosted in the naves of Pirelli Hangarbicocca in Milan, is an experience that generates opposite sensations, apparently irreconcilable, yet harmonized by the great awareness of the works. There are nuclear explosions and large neon, there is the pop evocation of Godzilla and there are spaces of pure poetry, there are ants, which move through the sand flags in a famous work presented at the Venice Biennale. And of course there is Yanagi’s thought.
“The human being – the artist told us – has a more developed brain than ants And this means that it is always in a state of change. The problem is that sometimes this constant state of change creates contradictions, but hope is born from these contradictions, which is what leads us to go on ».
Hope, a decisive word if you want to try to “be” really in the exhibition, which is a space of continuous uncertainty, and therefore of possibilities, mindful of the often tragic past, but open to a reconsideration of the idea of the future. The project is curated by Vicente Todolì together on Fiammetta Griccioli. “He is an artist who works with several media-he explained the co-curarer to askanews-from sculpture to installation to drawing and who knows how to combine works on a greater, architectural scale we can say, with more intimate gestures such as drawings that follow the traces of the ants and has this unique ability to relate to the architectural space, to postindustrial spaces such as those of Hangarbicocca”.
Among the many works that capture attention and emotions, in our opinion, stands out the one that gives the exhibition to the exhibition. “Icarus – added Griccioli – refers to the Greek myth of Icaro, who for the artist becomes a metaphor on human arrogance, on excessive confidence in technology, in modernization, therefore it is almost a warning”.
Inside the containers, tangible symbol of a wild globalizationthe visitor lives a real suspension of time. As Icaro you can approach the sun, but the dark and uncertain corridors, with their mirrors and verses of Mishima, are also one way to the other and, despite the total horizontality of the work, even upwards, towards the sky. The same that Icaro went through looking for his form of happiness. It is an important job, which recalls, as an intensity, the best things seen in Hangar over the years, and we can mention Juan Munoz, Mike Kelley or Carsten Holler, so to speak.
“I want art – concluded Yukinori Yanagi – be a form of salvation, because in the end it allows us to get in touch with the other, with other people. And the imagination allows us to create stories that can afford to reach both those who are no longer there, and those who come in the future ». And the future becomes possible in here, even under a nuclear bomb that has never exploded, which makes us warning, of course, but at the same time offers a space of real possibilities.
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