| In the church of San
Francesco in Montalcino the artist has installed 25 black and
white slides of shop windows in the towns involved in the Arte
all’Arte project. Coloured aluminium circles have been positioned
in groups in the adjacent cloister.
Looking at the pictures one is struck by the meticulous attention
to detail that goes into dressing the windows, which is further
underlined by the contrast with the neglected state of the church.
In this context the images become the new icons of secularized,
consumer-driven daily life. The circles in the cloister offer a
countermelody to this installation; they have the colours of the
Renaissance palette and coexist with other mirroring forms, their
outline evoking the classic iconography of the aureole of Christ
containing the cross. With this work, Lothar Baumgarten introduces
into what was conceived of as a place of worship the signs of the
contemporary city, emphasizing how its appearance is governed more
and more by the logic of trade.
After having for many years explored how the dynamics between colonizing
peoples and indigenous populations have evolved in the course of
history, he focuses in this work, as in others in recent years,
on what is very close to home, offering a subtly critical reflection
on two different ways of embodying the relations between history,
daily life, memory and the present. |
