The American artist, who has been a resident of Pietrasanta for years, has conceived an exhibition tailored for the town of Versilia and its public spaces with a site-specific criterion symbolizing an increasingly close bond between the artist and the territory, also sealed by the creation of works in the city’s workshops and foundries.
This exhibition marks a new stage in Rachel Lee Hovnanian’s long and consistent poetic and stylistic research, focusing attention on the human being in its various forms and on human interactions and the threats of alterations to the concept of identity, relationship, and the very principle of reality and truth, exerted by pervasive contemporary technologies.
Even in the exhibition conceived for Pietrasanta, the various works that make up the exhibition path are devices that invite the visitor to reflect on the drifts of contemporary narcissism, an investigation in the form of artistic expression that the artist addresses to a historical conjuncture like ours, to a society based on communication that does not generate community, (digital) connections without relationships, proposing hypotheses and solutions that pass through the reconstruction of human relations and the rediscovery and acceptance of one’s deepest nature, freed from the censorship of social judgment. Lee Hovnanian reiterates and emphasizes the salvific role that art in all its forms can play, moving from a simple aesthetic element to a means of identity valorization, a cathartic tool, and a producer of human relations.
The exhibition path ideally begins in the historic Piazza del Duomo, where a monumental sculpture titled Poor Teddy in Repose is located. A 4.5-meter-long bronze sculpture, finely patinated by local craftsmen, represents a plush teddy bear pierced by a knife that, in the artist’s poetics, symbolically represents childhood interrupted and threatened not only by violence but also by the surrogate action of technology in place of affections, as well as the connected disappearance of innocence, the playful and creative approach to the world, and the dissolving of the drive and gratuitousness of relationships and the growth of aggressiveness in the hyper-technological contemporary society. A representation conceived by the artist with a noble material from the millenary artistic tradition, the result of a long and skilled artisanal process to generate a clear contrast between the productive dimension and the sentimental dimension of childhood.
The splendid setting of the Church of Sant’Agostino houses an articulated exhibition path made up of works set up in an installation dimension, aimed at respecting and enhancing the architectural and ritual identity of the 14th-century place of worship. Starting with the Seven busts of angels in white bronze, from the Angels Listening series, each with its mouth sealed by crossed adhesive tape, symbolizing at the same time the resistance to the truth opposed by social structures, the many forms of censorship now widespread in the world, and an encouragement to the willingness to listen.
In front of the seventeenth-century marble altar, there is a work conceived by the artist to make the visitor the protagonist, The Cathartic Box, with a cathartic expressive operation that crosses installation and performative instances, the observer is invited to reflection and individual introspection and to the expression of “blocked” or repressed thoughts, in written form by activating The Awakening Bell, a “bell of awakening” that emits a meditative sound that spreads through the spaces; the visitor thus leaves a trace, a small manuscript that immediately becomes part of the exhibition.
In the apse, juxtaposed with the precious wooden choir, there is an installation, Silver Confessional, resulting from the reworking of a confessional booth, symbolically reinforcing the dimension of rediscovery of intimate communication, the need for individual introspection, and the pressure exerted by widespread control and the need to confide. Embedded in the same space of the apse is a work made up of a luminous inscription, X Listening Neon, which alludes to the liquefaction of the concept of truth and the related pressures exerted by collective judgment (including via social media) and social judgment.
The exhibition continues in the Cloister where, in the Chapter House, visitors encounter an installation resembling a small house for children, named House of Poor Teddy, which captures the observer’s attention, inviting interaction by directing the gaze inside. This creates a voyeuristic dimension and invokes memory recovery that relates to childhood and its fundamental values in terms of pedagogy, identity formation, and creativity. The installation creates a dystopian atmosphere, generated by the dialectic between visual projections outside the small house and the hibernated teddy bear inside that alter the dynamics of the concept of “playroom” in collective memory.
On the opposite side of the cloister, in the Putti Room, we find a series of paintings and sculptures that once again testify to the profound artistic culture and design and execution expertise, both in the painterly execution marked by a saturated chromatic layer aimed at obtaining muffled and suspended atmospheres and in the plastic creation that skillfully reworks – like the paintings – relational and existential themes by blending millenary techniques and contemporary iconography. Among these is Shhh Angel, a marble bust sculpture of an angel, which once again reinforces the concept of obstruction to free individual expression, threatened truth, censorship, and widespread control, emphasizing once again the power of art and creativity.
Ideally concluding the exhibition path in the garden of the cloister of St. Augustine, we find the Garden of Hope, a space that takes on the characteristics of a sanctuary conceived for those undergoing small and large traumatic journeys, consisting of a collection of botanical elements with a healing function. An environmental installation where the visitor can take advantage to immerse themselves in an experiential dimension, involving not only sight but also smell, with the purpose of stimulating meditation and introspection.
Finally, in the natural space of the Lumaca Park, overlooking the Piazza del Duomo, in the heart of the historic center, near the historic Fortress, the exhibition path is completed in the spirit of reflection and reconnection with the public space, the agora as the hub of social relations and the most intimate individual dimension where the artist has conceived an environmental installation of a naturalistic character. An installation of botanical and floral elements composing the word “HOPE” in large letters, a work that simultaneously invites hope and a panicky fusion with the various elements of existence, starting with nature, to abandon the harmful drifts of the Anthropocene.
Alessandro Romanini