POKALYPSEA-APOKALYPSE-OKALYPSEAP by the Austrian collective Gelitin is the third instalment of “Slight Agitation”, the four-part exhibition project conceived by Fondazione Prada Thought Council.
Gelitin present three large sculptures which address classical architectural archetypes (the triumphal arch, the obelisk and the amphitheater), subverting their rhetoric and monumental components. Symbols as much as structures, these sculptures draw an arc from the insular and individual to the open-ended and collective, from the overtly erotic to the sublimated joy of togetherness: Gelitin’s collective work has anticipated the codes of relational aesthetics and invented a sculptural language and approach to installation that are anarchic and irreverent.
The central space of the Cisterna is occupied by Arc de Triomphe (2003 / 2017), the reproduction of an elephant-high male figure, bending over backwards, reminiscent of the roman arch, with the presence of a fully functioning water fountain, incorporated as a phallic element which transforms the exhibition space into a collective one, truly manifesting Gelatin’s liberating artistic approach.
In the left-hand space there is a giraffe-high sculpture, made up of polystyrene blocks, that could resemble a typical Inuit construction, a monumental obelisk or a cigar on top of a big table whereas the third of the three sculptures, a wooden upward spiral, is reminiscent of an antique amphitheater.
Not only can visitors enter the sculpture and sit on the bleachers, but they are also invited to smoke a cigarette in the center of the installation. Those who decide to share this banal action with the other members of the audience become the protagonists of a short, ephemeral act that, according to Gelitin, positions itself somewhere between Samuel Beckett’s Theater of the Absurd and a karaoke performance.
Fondazione Prada – Largo Isarco , Milano – from 20 October 2017 to 26 February 2018.