Popcorning
Studio Tommaseo, Trieste
4. september > 8. november 2008
The Triestine artist, Massimo Premuda, presents his most recent photographic work for the 4th edition of the international festival “triestèfotografia“, organized by the Cultural Association Juliet. The exhibition curated by Vasja Nagy examines the possible relationships between guinea-pigs and popcorn. It investigates popcorn, interpreting it as an explosion of vitality and sexuality.
It’s a well known fact that a kernel of corn, when heated, generates an internal pressure which increases to the point of creating a sudden, mini explosion, pushing the endosperm of the seed towards the exterior, which becomes that light, white foam which gives popcorn its classic look; to the contrary, the kernels which do not explode are called “old maids”.
Curiously, a particular habit of guinea-pigs of jumping to express happiness, satisfaction and sexual excitement is also called “popcorning.” These small rodents, in fact, make a sharp movement – they arch their backs and stretch out their paws, as if they’re about to buck – very similar to the reaction of kernels of corn when they’re heated.
Hence the idea of the young artist, Premuda, of creating works which confront these two improbable and fascinating ambits, vegetable and animal, in his first important personal exhibition (curator: Vasja Nagy). In the exhibition in Trieste, which can be visited until the beginning of November, this unusual, “fantastical” pairing is explored through new works, photographic enlargements, video comments and bizarre and futuristic hypotheses for tenements for guinea-pigs in the form of “animal architecture”.
a production of L’Officina and Trieste Contemporanea
with the participation of Casa dell’Arte of Trieste
and the contribution of the Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia
opening: Thursday, September 4, at 6:30 p.m
Studio Tommaseo
Institute for the documentation and promotion of the arts
open from Monday to Saturday, 5 – 8 p.m., free entry
34121 Trieste, via del Monte 2/1
tel. 040 639187, <tscont@tin.it>
Text from the catalogue:
On guinnea pigs and microwave ovens
One of the main characteristics of the works of Massimo Premuda, both earlier and more recent, is certainly a feeling for theatricality. This does not of course mean dramaticising themes dealt with but the manner of telling stories that stress some aspect of modern society. But it is not just contemporaneity, thus the time of creation of what determines these stories but also the space in which the artist lives. Let me withdraw here a bit from directly commenting on the works set up in Studio Tommaseo, since I believe that designing micro stories is a very frequent phenomenon in contemporary art. It has already been said that all great themes have already been sung and that today they are banal, but I see things differently. At a time when there was a lower level of literacy and other formal education in society, this took place precisely through official great stories. The everyday was decoded mainly through archetypes within very personal narratives and everyday life. Artistic work is not necessarily thematicised with archetypes, but those that at least decisively alluded to them are less hermetic for understanding. Works are also often defined by the genius loci and perhaps this is a way of seeking their own identity in a decentred world. Some of the works of Massimo Premuda, such as Craquelé linguistico (2005), in which he compares onomatopoeic expressions in Slovene and Italian, deal with local themes, although they do not do this in a local manner.
However, we return to theatricality in Premuda’s works, which I understand in the sense of staging. Among techniques of the visual arts, this approach, apart from performance and perhaps also installations, is best suited to video and photography. Above all, the relation to physical reality is important here, which appears with the perception of the images. Both photography and video in their basic forms cannot exist without this reality. It represents for them the same as brush strokes for painting. In this approach, we can distinguish between a tendency to documentation and s tendency for staging. In the first case, physical reality is eloquent in its directness, but in the second it is clearly and above all a tool for executing fiction. The staging approach in video and photography is closest to the techniques of animation and puppet theatre. Missimo Premuda’s work Depongo (2005) is most reminiscent of the latter, which was executed on the basis of a theatre proposal entitled Colori by the futuristic artist Fortunato Depero.
Pop corning, too, a project for Studio Tommaseo is a unique staging. The difference with previous projects is mainly that instead of previously prepared objects, a living being on this occasion appears as a symbolic object – a guinea pig. In the work Picole grandi icone crescono (2007), which comments on certain forms of human sexual behaviour, he used figurines of ‘Smurfs’, which were taken over from a popular children’s animated series by the manufacturer of even more popular chocolate eggs. The situations that Premuda constructed with them and the stories that these situations evoked are only the clearest layer of meaning of these images. However, it is not there a matter of any figure, but figurines which have their own place in everyday life, or at least in the memory of life of a particular generation. In addition to other connotations, the figurines from these chocolate eggs represent individual examples or even whole collections of, so to speak, real household pets, which the owners jealously guard. In the photographic composition, instead of the objects this time appears an animal. The guinea pig is here a background figure which occupies a cell structure reminiscent of a specimen of the dwelling of urbanised man. The animals act naturally in coincidental positions. The positions are in themselves empty of meaning, but we can recognise in them situations from human everyday life.
Popcorning is an expression which characterises a peculiarity in the behaviour of a guinea pig that sometimes, when it feels good, suddenly leaps, which is supposed to be reminiscent of an explosion of popcorn in a hot pan. With simple word play and concealed humour, in the second part of the installation the author shifts the view to the interior of some life. Using analogies such as the explosion of popcorn, which is caused by the water in them and changes them into soft, tender flakes, and in the visual-conceptual link to a graceful animal from over the seas, he incites feelings which, through abstract concepts, lead to feelings of the physical. Even the view of a blown up pop corn paper bag detonating in a microwave oven can conjure up a gut feeling and major disquiet.
In this distortion from the external view of a scene to opening the inner world, the author’s relation to form and aesthetics also changes. The former, almost Disney-like, pop-animation aesthetic criterion is now replaced by directness. Hypertrophic corn flakes even function slightly crudely. In the organicness with which they address the viewer, it is even possible to perceive links with the erotic from Premuda’s previous projects. It is also present in this work in the form of teasing humour. Although not scientifically confirmed, some believe that popcorning with guinea pigs is connected with sexual maturity and is always a rarer phenomenon with an older animal. On the other hand, in industry, the expression »le vecchie zitelle« (old aunts) has come to be used for non-expanded grains of popcorn.
Massimo Premuda does not of course offer answers and solutions for everyday life in this work. In his already recognisable style he comments on some behavioural patterns in society and with convincing visual language sets before us charming images, which conceal under their sugary exterior also layers of other aromas and tastes.
Translated by Martin Cregeen
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