April 10 – June 5, 2010
Opening April 10, 6.30 pm

In ‘Uomini-statua-oggetto’ (Men-statue-object) the German artist Philip Wiegard turns the gallery space at Furini Arte Contemporanea in Rome into an interior, a private and intimate setting in the style of the early twentieth century, where original period drapes and wallpapers, superimposed by painted panels that emulate them, alternate with baroque touches in the form of damask armchairs, and framed photographs lined up on the walls. In this way the artist restores life to lost times through references to classical myth, an exploration of perspective and de Chirico-style metaphysics. Recalling the idea of the old ateliers, Wiegard’s installation draws the viewer into a private environment, where personal taste and desires are revealed and at the same time concealed under the rich, ornamented surfaces of bourgeoise decor.

However, the whole context is subject to a mechanism, in some respects obsessive, whereby Wiegard delights in deconstructing and taking apart ordinary objects like tables, chairs, armchairs, cupboards and entire sets of old furniture in order to give them a new life. This new dimension is neither flat nor three-dimensional, but rather a re-construction of perspective with parts of objects used as lines that restore proportions, depth and size. Wiegard applies to sculpture the optical laws of perspective that are typical of painting, and so empties objects of their volumes, removes their original function and makes them hybrids - part object, part outline - to the extent that the viewer’s sense of perception is confused.

With the same purpose of deceiving the eye and disturbing the mind’s automatic mechanism, which attempts to reconstruct and complete images, Philip Wiegard presents us with a space where what is inside is outside, what seems near is far, and what appears to have depth is actually flat. Thus the people in the photographs on the walls, taken in large format with an antiquated camera, are also outside the image: the composition-statues, the wallpapers and drapes are in this way all part of the same exhibition room.

All this bewitches the eye and was inspired by Wiegard’s recent visit to the home-museum of Giorgio de Chirico in Rome’s Piazza di Spagna, where he photographed rooms that were full of ornament but empty of life and their intended use. Some of the master’s paintings, that we see on the walls of his former apartment were  re-enacted in Wiegard’s photography.  But by giving us this highly subjective view of de Chirico’s work and by showing the original paintings in the context of the painter’s private home, he succeeds to underline the ambivalent status of art between personal expression and public statement.
Throughout his carreer de Chirico struggled with the representation of the human figure, that was often substituted in his paintings by the famous “manichino”, a hybrid between human, statue and object. Wiegard’s exhibition explores the relations and interchanges between these ideas: the object as representation of personality, the photographic pose as an attempt at immortality and the human body as object of desire.

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