Newsletter #19 by Angel Orensanz Foundation

#19 ANGEL ORENSANZ FOUNDATION

NEWSLETTER August 2012

NEWSLETTER #19 Contents

Instruments, goods, artifacts and objects. Semiology notes of ordinary life.......................................4 The legendary Black Panthers..........................................8 Angel Orensanz ruminates about Sir Roland Penrose in London..............................12 The Great Interplay of Presence and Absence..............................................16

INSTRUMENTS, GOODS, ARTIFACTS AND OBJECTS. SEMIOLOGY NOTES OF ORDINARY LIFE. By Derek Bentley

Our context is full of goods, instruments, artifacts, mementoes, souvenirs and of objects. The question has always been not just how to use objects and instruments in daily and ordinary life but in personal life and ordinary life. We could consider three levels of production and use of objects: Objects for personal enhancement and use such as rings, head ware and necklaces; objects for private group tasks and activities such as table serving and cooking; and objects of communal defense and development such arms and tools. We could safely say that half of our environment is filled up of instruments and another half of objects. Now, the undercurrent truth is that the difference between artifacts and objects is most of the time just usage. At the beginning it took hundreds of years for an object to become obsolete; now days it just takes months if not days for something to become superfluous. Things start as instruments or wares and end up as objects. It is the passage of time that transforms usefulness and practicability into reference mementos and reliquaries. Objects are related to our self, our bodies and activities. They are often charms that strengthen the look and self identity of the individual. They are usually perishable, fragile and ornamental. They complement the self image and persona of the owner asserting his or her presentation and identity in public

and the private spheres. They enter in disuse with the passage of the original owner. Artifacts refer us to the domain of purpose; they end up as artifacts that surrender us. With the passage of time they end up not reflecting just the individual user but the epoch and time of the owner. They well survive the biographical episode that initially caused their appearance to designate a time and a period. Not only individual objects and artifacts survive the owner. It is mostly the buildings, structures and constructions that carry on throughout the centuries and even millennia the prevailing identity of a time and its makeup. They retain the collective experience and the community vision, the Gemeinschaft spirit as no written document can do. Buildings are like tombs and internment sites. Few objects survive to narrate the individual biographies. It is the constructions what survives the individuals and groups. On a close up a building is always a text rich in detailed as narratives waiting to be decoded. Few people like Erwin Panofsky has established the ground work to navigate the time and meaning the communal quarters are the densest relics in which the living, gathering, working and worshipping quarters reveal themselves in objective terms to us. He firmly believed that a close attention to the structure of a building or a set of building could deliver to us a deeper narrative of what was going on at the time of their utilization and assignment in society.

The instrument, good, artifact and object collections

Every day we stop by our favorite local sidewalk markets. It happens in the Lower East Side of Manhattan and the East London sidewalk markets. A whole young generation of residents is renovating their apartments and moving into apartments that are refurbishes. First are the books and the records that moved mountains and controversies. Now fill the rows of improvised stalls. The merchandise is ample and attractive for my generation. The objects make an epoch of their own. There was the time of the books and the records (albums and singles), and of tapes. The record players. Then I happen to work many hours a day inside a building that is practically two hundred years old. Objects mean distance between them and us. They are not tools, furniture, utensils, and personal mementos any more. They cannot be used for daily tasks. Industry comes with daily inroads of the artisanal and the crafts traditions the deliver cheaper and more specific task achievements. Objects most probably change hands and most of them many times. The present owner does not remember or know their origin.

The object has to have broken their rapport and relationship with the original owners and manufacturers. They might have been done in the first place as a collective entity items or series of items destined for majorities but mostly they fulfilled the needs of minorities and small groups of significant individuals. The moment and time of appearance is not recorded or precise. Some come from a specific region or area, some from a specific time. They are always interwoven and give witness to the life of a period, the expression of a territory and the technological experience of a time. The name of the origin can give permanent denomination to series of objects such as toys, ornaments, tools and other devices. A wider reach. The objects maintain a past, and a section, cleavage of our past personality. We grow and mover but they testify to a time has been frozen. We deny, repel or reject the past but they are mute witnesses of that past.

Since we do not preserve the past experience that s gone with the past, we retain its relics. We invent relics constantly. It could well be that in the remote past, hundreds of years passed without innovation and that relics were transmitted from one to another generation. Things were extremely hard and durable. The strength of the object carried in itself a value of permanence and immutability; no need for individual identification or remembrance. With the passage of time, the individual personality grew and objects were more perishable, therefore the meaning was more uncertain and fragile. Over the centuries products more perishable have been used reinforcing the metaphorical quality of the individual item. The man of the Alps died and overcame the passage of 5,000 years equipped with a large series of tools and utensils that might have a seminal resemblance to memorabilia. The Egyptians used to accompany the embalmed bodies of the important members of their communities with whole treasuries of memorabilia. But the ordinary citizens did not retain any individual objects. Then those very objects did not retained any significant value over the centuries until the cultural revolutions of the 18th and 19th centuries endowed them with significance of very different kinds. The community life is less oriented to the individual story and memorialization; while in recent time the fear to disappear in the multitude or the change of venue come accompanied with the need to retain the shape, the name and the story. We are personal and we need personalized memorials. I visited the Museum of Naples and I was attracted for a few hours by the department of Roman and Greeks antiquities. I was utterly mesmerized by endless collections of practical objects; or of objects that might have significance and prestige to the various segment of the social scale of the population, mostly the women. I saw display after display of rings, earrings, pendants, bracelets, medallionsâ&#x20AC;Ś I could not silence the whisper of those verses of Horatius: Mulieres dunc communtur, dunc molliuntur annus est. It approximately translates: Women take for ever to make their hair and their facesâ&#x20AC;Ś. To me, the Naples Museum of Arts, Department of antiquities looked like a beauty parlor in Lower Manhattan.

The Naples National Archaeological Museum

The huge collection of Greek and Roman sculptures

ANGEL ORENSANZ ENTERS THE BOTTOM OF THE HIGGS BOSON A Conceptual Journey on the Sands of Costa Brava

ANGEL ORENSANZ ENTERS THE BOTTOM OF THE HIGGS BOSON New York, July 10th, 2012. This past weekend sculptor Angel Orensanz ran with a bevy of friends and coworkers from his studio in Barcelona to the seashore in the Costa Brava. They had a project in mind: to build creatively from their minds, a vision of a smash of particles colliding in the sand and mixing with the water and sun of the Mediterranean. In other words, an aesthetic interpretation of the developments at CERN under the Swiss Alps. Angel Orensanz has been carrying out experiments in the Costa Brava sands for many years. Many people still remember his reconstruction of the deep water bed of the Gulf of Mexico during the famous bp oil disaster. Angel has always been attracted by the light and horizon of the seashore of Catalunya, where the Phoenicians, Greeks, and Romans still seem to be ready to arrive at any minute. This time the experiment was a symbolic participation in the grand discovery of the Higgs Boson particle at Cern, where scientists are opening up new frontiers of how matter, space and time fuse and expand themselves toward the heart of everything in the universe. The seashore installation was made up of a series of twenty volumes of transparent silks in various colors in basic geometric shapes. These are the constant shapes and colors that form the vocabulary of Orensanzâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s aesthetic palette. This time, a special silk elastic fiber that was specially woven for him in El Cugat del Valles was used in the work. The images from the installation are being edited in New York for a comprehensive TV documentary program that is being produced for online distribution. This installation on the coast of Catalonia will also be the subject of an exhibition at the Angel Orensanz Museum. Exhibitions at the Foundation are open daily from 11 AM to 5 PM except Sundays.

Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts 172 Norfolk St. NY. NY 10002 Tel. (212) 529-7194

Huey P. Newton

The legendary Black Panthers

By Elisabeth Hammond

“And the people create what they call a leader. A leader is everything the people want to be but everything the people will never be. So when the leader fails, which he will every time, being just flesh and blood, then the whole construction of the concept of a leader becomes a matter of contempt.” -Huey P. Newton

oday we dedicate our blog to the recognition of a film producer who emerged on the movie scene during the 1980’s as an independent director and has transformed the way African-Americans were perceived in Hollywood films ever since. His artistic vision has even spread to our Foundation. Several years ago when Lee decided to shoot his famous short film at The Angel Orensanz Foundation, our building acted as a place of enrichment to spectators who were told the story of the Black Panthers, a movement that will never be forgotten. On that day in 2002, the Angel Orensanz Foundation introduced for the 1st time, director Spike Lee and Actor Roger Guenveur Smith’s 7th collaboration: a film production of the award-winning one-man off-broadway show “A Huey P.Newton Story” (AHPNS). Other collaborations between Lee and Smith’s include Lee’s films Do the Right Thing, School Daze, Malcolm X, Get on the Bus, He Got Game and Summer of Sam. In an intimate setting

with a live audience, Smith created, wrote and starred in a dramatized account of Huey P. Newton, the late co-founder of the Black Panther Party for Self Defense. His monologue manifested an intimate portrait of Newton with use of chain smoking as a prop and creating hues of green and yellow in the dimly lit atmosphere. Newton, portrayed as a rapid talking, slightly absurd revolutionary entertained the audience as they stood on the perimeter outside of a cage, which separated them from the speaker in symbolism of a jail cell. Creative genious Spike Lee employed a mixture of film and archival footages in both color and black & white to capture Newton’s “inner mind” on immense screens that covered the synagogue and surrounded Smith who was always in character. Lee and Smith, by way of a dramatized reenactment, brought to life the history and philosophies of the revolutionary icon Huey P. Newton. “And the people create what they call a leader. A leader is everything the people want to be but everything the people will never be. So when the

Director Spike Lee

leader fails, which he will every time, being just flesh and blood, then the whole construction of the concept of a leader becomes a matter of contempt.” A Huey P. Newton Story is an original production of Luna Ray Films and BLACK STARZ! in association with PBS and the African Heritage Network.

Coming Soon!

RUMINATES ABOUT SIR ROLAND PENROSE IN LONDON With occasion of the Olympic Games in London, sculptor Angel Orensanz has been invited to participate with a public display. He has opted for a project in which he moves an art work throughout several areas of the City. Angel Orensanz has opted to display it in for emblematic places where he met relevant people and in which he discussed art work and sculpture, specially with contemporary art thinker Sir Roland Penrose (14 October 1900 – 23 April 1984). First of all he plans to carry a sculpture display around Holland Park where they met often since both lived in Nottinhg Hill Gate. Sir Roland Penrore visited Orensanz exhibition “Environmental Sculpture” at the Park several times. From there was born the text by Sir Roland Penrose that appears in various anthologies among them the book “Escultura Total”, 2003 published by the Governent of Aragon (Zaragoza 2003). “The use that

Orensanz makes of natural, round forms has a lot in common with Antonio Gaudi did of the art Nouveau masterpieces; and with many elements of the Spanish Surrealism of Joan Miro. It is equally appropriate to remember that Orensanz comes from Aragon and that he has inherited Arabic and Romanesque concepts; while at the same time he shares with film Director Luis Bunuel, an Aragonese as well approaches and feelings. But above all, Orensanz returns to the public space for the adequate environment for creativity”; Mr. Penrose writes. Sir Roland Penrose was the first to recognize that Angel Orensanz had opened a strong new path with his exhibition in Holland park. Holland Park was just a mile away from the house of Sir Roland Penrose. With occasion of the London Olympic Games Orensanz plans a display around Holland Park where Orensanza and Penrose talked and reflected so many

Angel Orensanz Moving His Sphere Throughout Olympic London

July 25-August 12, 2012.

Sculptor Angel Orensanz has rolled his spherical sculpture through the Balkan war scarred cities, the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin, the Louvre esplanade Paris, the Senso-ji in Tokyo, on Fifth Avenue in New York after September 11, and now he is taking it to London. London has been part of Angel Orensanz’s mental landscape since the 1970’s, when he erected pieces in and around Holland Park. “The use that Angel Orensanz makes of round natural and sinuous spheres has a lot in common with the interpretation that Gaudi makes of the idiom of Art Nouveau forms in which one recognizes certain elements of Miro’s surrealism. It is appropriate to remember that Orensanz comes from Aragon and that he has inherited Romanesque and Arabic concepts. And at the same time he shares with film director Luis Bunuel, an Aragonese as well, for man’s complexity for nature’s phenomena and the capacity of intellectual response. Orensanz returns to the public space, to the traditional role of the creative artist, the role that he is meant to accomplish in the public sphere”. -Sir Roland Penrose. London, April, 1974

This exhibition and performance will take place at the 100 years Gallery, 13 Pearson St. London E2 8JD. Tel. 44 (0)020 3602 7973. Montse Gallego, Dr. The Angel Orensanz Foundation for the Arts 172 Norfolk St. NY. NY 10002 Tel. (212) 529-7194

Coming Soon!

THE GREAT INTERPLAY OF PRESENCE AND ABSENCE By Pierre Restany

he artwork of Angel Orensanz presents itself as a linguistic phenomenon, with different levels of reading; a “language of the ensemble,” to borrow the happy expression of Michel Tapie, who met the Aragonese sculptor at the time of the condensation and crystallization of his world view in the late sixties. The basic element, the visual vocabulary, belongs to the totemic. The sculpture of Orensanz comes from the spear end of the totem: vertical, cylindrical, threadlike, It is embedded in the ground like the banderillas in the flesh of the bull and rests erect like the trunk of a tree or a stake. The diameter of the elements vary. The largest and often the highest appear as metallic, pierced, hollow cylinders reminiscent of organ pipes or gigantic flutes. One can imagine the winds of Aragon blowing through these airy tubular structures. This adds to the hieratic quality of the totem, a reminiscence of the songs of the gods or the sirens. Every single element is autonomous in its interdependence: the problem of combining them — relating them to the space and to each other — is crucial. The totem becomes a tree trunk, a forest within a forest, as in Holland Park in London 1973. As Charles Spencer put it most perceptively: “The totem is retrieved by the tree, without doubt to express the physical roots of being and as well as the relentless decay of the living.” The arrays of tree-totems with pierced trunks delineate the space as much by their placement as by their colors (generally bright flesh colored, yellow, orange. vermillion and added blue) and by their non-

color (black) as by their perforations and scars. These metal trunks hold the space just as the spears of tribal warriors did in the prairie or the savanna. However, from the rhythmic arrangements that mark out the landscape or occupy it, no bud, no sprout, nor leaf will produce the first fruit or the flower of renewal, or of rebirth. As opposed to vegetation, and opposed to nature, this mimetic language conveys sterility and death, for in spite of this primitive or archaic appearance, this sculpture is humanistic and idealistic. It does not imitate nature, but rivals it at the level of ontological consciousness; its worth is that of any human enterprise conscious of its own boundaries and of its own potentialities. The treetotem sculptures of Orensanz forcefully establish their identity in the landscape. They root themselves into the soil and occupy it as a conquered realm. This conquest is a sign of man’s victory as well as of the precariousness of that very conquest. Through the subtle play of their interaction, the topological elements are organized and rearranged; a presence as precariously superimposed, as fragile as man’s interventions in the framework of nature. The topological groupings of Angel Orensanz give the impression of evanescence to the highest degree, and that is not their smallest virtue. Evanescent as denial of immobility: they are nomadic sculpture pieces, dedicated to displacement, to mobility and reinsertion somewhere else. They may or may not be linked to an architectural structure, a geographic sire, or an indoor space. In any case they evoke simultaneously their presence, and the presence of their absence. However solidly they may appear to be implanted in their environment, in belonging to

Angel Orensanz

another place. If the musical comparison is welcome once again, these symphonic pieces inscribe in the score of the terrain, or possibly “The notation of their loftiness” over their own pedal point. The dialectic of presence and absence creates the condition which gives rise to the language of Orensanz. He presents us with an objective verification and, at the sane time, a poetic commentary. The sculpture of Orensanz corresponds closely to a phenomenon of mental/visual language. This shower of stars which has fallen in front of us, these totem-poles rearranged as a cluster of trees are the interdependent elements of discourse on playfulness. We are confronted with a combinatory game — paradoxical to the highest degree — between life and death, spirit and matter, the rational and irrational, fetishism and semiology

Signs of meaning and signs of no meaning, signs of standard of existential relativity — and of the transcendent importance of human play, and of its gratuitousness. Orensanz makes use of the elements of his combinatory topology the way other people read or write between the lines. It’s a question of a play, certainly, but as Eugene Kink thinks, it could well be that this same play is the very essence of the world. Pierre Restany (1930 – 2003) was a preeminent historian and critic of contemporary European art. We joined Venice and the international art community in a tribute to him in the wake of his passing.

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