The visitors who enter with mask and solemn air seem to come straight out of the video that takes its name from the project of the artist Christian Fogarolli projected in loop on the wall. In the performance video Pneuma the works in the exhibition can be traced, but also objects, medical instruments and references to theories used in the treatment of mental illness during the last two centuries. A game of references to challenge the validity of techniques and objects considered valid at the time of their use.

Through the use of scientific devices Fogarolli reveals the processes inviting the visitor to question the truths and dogmas stimulating one’s own reflection on the concept of deviance, normal and abnormal, bringing our attention to the interstitial space that separates the gap between the two. The video alternates between pounding sounds and magnetic resonances with feelings of relief, but also moments of almost white-out in darkness. But «Mental illness is not only black or white” says director Nathan Hofstetter, and this seems to be demonstrated by the colorful glass works, an elegant symphony of bright colors, sometimes fluorescent, that stand out in the darkness of the dramatic lighting of the room, the windows darkened. Theatrical lighting projects the spectator in the centre of a stage that is apparently balanced but full of empathic tension.

Fogarolli tells stories of encounters behind the works, in each glass sculpture a different experience that in turn takes on a different form not only because lived each time in a different country, but also as the result of another reality, that of mental institutions. Stories about hospitalizations, therapies and medicines. The truthfulness and concreteness of forms forged by fire, but at the same time incredibly fragile. Forbidden to touch. Forbidden to judge. Although the mastery and quality of the works on the island of Murano is recognizable at first glance, the identity of the forms is difficult to understand, like the spectrum of subjectivity that hides behind a diagnosis. The encounters experienced in the journey of research by the artist take solid forms without becoming classifiable. Heart or brain? Lungs or dragons? Branch or hand outstreching for help? Surely deviated forms, at least applying methods of classification and description traditionally used by the man to reach an explanation. The intangibility of glass, which is not approached for fear of breaking it, unites the experience often lived against those suffering from mental illness, treated as fragile objects more for fear than respect.
Geist, Adem, Ziel, Esprit Soul testify to the trans-European approach of the project, in which each sculpture was given a significant title “Pneuma”, from the late Latin pneuma, gr. πνεῦμα, life breath, in the language of the country that inspired the work. Leaving the room, a last meeting with the artist who smiles at us mocking through the photograph Self Brain. The image, even if obtained through a scientific procedure of magnetic resonance, seems to assume with veiled irony the function of a memento mori of medieval origin, period marked by crisis and pandemics (very current!) making ourselves aware of the most delicate and ephemeral aspects of existence. Pneuma is a project which, by thematizing the interaction between art and mental condition in the European context, albeit unintentionally, has taken on a different meaning as the pandemic has changed our approach to everyday life, and consequently also to art, contemporary at its extreme.

After the first exhibition of the project in Berlin in the early days of lockdown and a remote exhibition in Bucharest, Fogarolli could finally be present in Zurich. Different situations that have given rise to different exhibition projects, dialogue telling every time chronicles of different historical-political contexts to equally different visitors.

G.B. How did the project interact with the Swiss social fabric in relation to the treatment of mental illness? And what are the activities and actions that have been developed?
Christian Fogarolli: In an attempt to bring the world of contemporary art closer to the themes of psychic discomfort, a characteristic aspect of the exhibition were the activities of the opening at the schwarzescafé held on October 10, World Mental Health Day. The public was presented with the diversified offer of activities on the territory aimed at the clearance of clinical taboos and social stigmas related to this phenomenon, with the example of Ensa, First aid program for the recognition of the mental illness of the foundation ‘Pro Mente Sana’ and the artistic collective ‘Living Museum’. The aim is to speak and make people talk about the role of mental illness in our society not only through the different actors involved, patients, doctors and hospital staff met during Pneuma’s travels, but also through different artistic forms of collateral events. In this sense, the environmental installation with the sculptures, the video and the photography of the exhibition is flanked by a program of films, performances, reading groups and art therapy.  The activities of the opening continue with an accompanying program aimed at neurotypics and not, so that the viewer is stimulated to participate throughout the duration of the exhibition.

Giulia Busetti

Info:

Christian Fogarolli. Pneuma
Löwenbräukunst art center and schwarzescafé, Zurigo
10.10 – 11.11, 2020