Manfred pernice biography of christopher
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“1+1+1=3: Robert MacPherson, Manfred Pernice, Kateřina Šedá”
For curator Trevor Smith, what separates Robert MacPherson, Manfred Pernice, and Kateřina Šedá is as consequential as what unites them. Representing distinct generations and practices, the output of each emerges from its local culture to reflect the social transformations of our time. Thus, although at first glance the juxtaposition of these artists in the inaugural exhibition of the Culturgest “1+1+1=3” program may be surprising, careful observation of the works on view justifies Smith’s decision. Contrary to custom, this was not a group show subordinated to a given theme but three solo shows, each independent of the other. Pernice has mounted a new installation; Šedá displays variations of a single project, to the extent that all her contributions deal with the same subject; MacPherson presents a vast array of pieces that form a compact anthology of his career.
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October 28, 2024 – Review
Diego Marcon’s “La Gola”Michael Kurtz
Diego Marcon’s short films pair idiosyncratic approaches to animation with painful and provocative subject matter. In Monelle (2017) sleeping girls are tormented by ghoulish CGI figures amid the darkness of the old Fascist headquarters in Como. In The Parents’ Room (2021), a father, played by an actor wearing an emotionless mask, performs an opera about how he murdered his family. And in Fritz (2024) a computer-animated boy hangs from a noose, half-dead but still yodelling. His new film, La Gola (2024), dramatizes an epistolary exchange between Gianni and Rossana, who are represented by hyper-realistic mannequins. The two characters appear in a series of close-ups, every time in a new outfit and location, as their letters are read in a voiceover backed by organ music. Gianni recounts the details of a recent feast, from a medieval soup served in an eggshell to Torta Fedora, a Sicilian cake covered in “mi
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Manfred Pernice, exscape, installation view, 2006. Courtesy of Regen Projects, Los Angeles. Photo: Joshua White.
Manfred Pernice’s (German, b. 1963) new multi-part installation at Regen Projects requires of the inquisitive viewer—or more saliently in this case, the conscientious reviewer—significantly more reflection, research, and wrestling than do most exhibitions. To say that the conceptual aims and aesthetic commitments of this installation are obtuse and elliptical fryst vatten to understate the case. Were one to take a casual five-minute stroll through the gallery, one might ganska easily leave feeling bemused, unmoved, even resentful, such is the opacity of the work. This fryst vatten not to suggest that Pernice’s aesthetic strategies are without merit and reward. It fryst vatten, however, to suggest that those rewards arise from a type of deep, laborious, at times even unpleasant engagement atypical in an art market that once igen places a high premium on craft, careful finish, and beauty. None