|
We can say that everything here concerns movement: in each mode, that of physical motion, geographical displacement, the measuring of space and of mental journey, the idea of action runs like a thin red line through the work of Alicia Frankovich.
The privileged instrument in her work, marked through performance, installation, video and photography, is always the body. Perhaps this is due to the time the artist spent as a gymnast, but it is certainly a rich and complex referral to art history. In GPS, (2007- 2008) the act of walking becomes aesthetic and cognitive. With precise references to Situationism and in part to Land Art, Alicia Frankovich has started a long-term performative action in which her movements become permanently registered by a GPS device and then are visualised on a vector map by a program called – not unrelated – Motion Based. Visually this software extrapolates a minimal abstract drawing from the device, played out through coloured lines on white paper, in reality these are precise transcriptions of every single movement of the artist, also recording data like time, temperature, altitude and speed. The performance happens in the city, though is not directed by the guidelines of a map, but rather this work constructs a new space that reflects movement, atmosphere and instinct, that has taken place at that particular moment. Here more than a mere map it’s the process of mapping which is closely linked to the Situationist concept of the dérive, where one leaves oneself to move freely and spontaneously in the world, creating new situations that seek out new and more rich ways of engaging with and exploring territory. In GPS the artist arrives to connect in fact physically and psychologically with the space, first beginning in places she lives as in Melbourne. The idea of the relationship and reaction to objects and in general to our surrounding space, as well as the limitations that are suggested, encompass a large number of Alicia Frankovich’s works, where she has also used the the moving body interacting with objects – which are often mass produced like the products of IKEA – elements bound in our everyday lives along with construction site materials which surface ways in which we relate to objects and modules. In Pike, (2008), being a term used in gymnastics to describe a seized position, but also being significant in interrupting and negating an action, Alicia is confronted by an orange block of cement, a kind of urban piece of furniture or temporary guardrail. In the video Fly/ Lose (Volo/ Perdita, 2008) a chain is attached to the wall that restrains her, whilst she attempts repeatedly to defy gravity, falling from an upright position onto the ground, as if to be in the mode of a pendulum. Again, the limits of the body are tested in the performance The opposite of backwards, (2008) where the artist hangs head down in Via Santa Brigida in Naples in front of the 404 gallery, fastened by a bungee rope which starts from inside the exhibition space on the forth floor of the building, outside and over the balcony, and ending finally almost touching the ground. In all of the works of Alicia Frankovich, action and spontaneity are combined and confused with the notion of constriction and resistance – suggested by the chain in Fly/Lose, the elastic being stretched to the maximum extent in The opposite of backwards, and also in the physical limitations of space and the city outlined in GPS – in an open battle between the energy that the artist projects, and the probing investigation of the potential of the body in relation to its surrounds. Here the viewer is also invited to discover their own leeway. (Roberta Tenconi)
|
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)
)