SPAZIO PERDUTO SPAZIO RICOSTRUITO
The studio is located in a building in Milan, at Via Machiavelli no. 30. The entrance to the main building on the street is the one pictured on the cover of the book of poetry entitled Machiavelli 30, to remind us of the importance of the places. It is a small industrial building at the end of a road with an olive tree, a laurel and shade plants. On one side there is an enclosing wall and on the other a low ivy-covered wall that separates it from the garden where, in summer, Agnetti would open the large main door of his studio. Inside, the open space is divided vertically by two large iron lofts that afford an overall view. On the walls there are works that recall Agnetti’s artistic path. On the ground floor we find Spazio Perduto Spazio Ricostruito, Mass Media, two landscapes, several photos of the studio and a display case with the Libro Dimenticato a Memoria and his Quaderni Argentini. Above are the posters from some of his exhibitions, and a large work of the Amleto politico introduces us to the upper level, devoted entirely to the Macchina Drogata and its production. Spazio Perduto Spazio Ricostruito, the work that dominates the main wall, and that suggests the meaning behind the reopening of the studio, is also the title of a 1973 exhibition reflecting on the relationship linking space, time and culture. In his letter of presentation, Vincenzo wrote to the gallery owner Francoise Lambert: “The exhibition I am preparing aims to demonstrate that the desire to know and subjugate has made us lose contact with space: in short, it has taken away our privilege of being inhabitants and part of space.” With the reopening of the studio, the Archive aims to rediscover the original space in which culture created a memory of Vincenzo’s oeuvre, and it wants to continue his work. Agnetti was a leading figure in Conceptual Art. His intense artistic activity, concentrated in the fifteen-year period from 1966 to 1981, drew its lifeblood from his extraordinary work – started when he was very young – of research and experimentation in poetry, painting and technology. He travelled extensively, accumulating writings, projects, models and ideas, and setting down in his Quaderni argentini what he would express in his work, in order to “start from the end”, as he wrote. The exciting Seventies represented the ideal context to develop his ideas: his works emerged as critical instruments that were wedged into the search for the interval, the interspace, the margin. This was operative critique that encompassed aspects of politics, language and art. We need merely recall his Macchina drogata, an Olivetti Divisumma calculator in which he replaced the numbers with letters, and that then started to produce works, some of which with an immense visual and evocative impact. In Ciclostile1 Agnetti wrote about the work: “This machine that was born demystifying (abasing its use) has now commenced artistic production … in short, it has returned to being a domesticated instrument (yield and reversibility)”. In the search for the negative typical of that period, Agnetti proved to be a leading player and he would develop this throughout his career with expressive approaches and techniques that changed constantly, at the crossroads between technology, art and poetry. These were processes that were interrupted, reduced, reset to zero; translations from one code to another; voids and erasures as elements to be forgotten, as in the Libro Dimenticato a Memoria, which – uncoincidentally – we find in the same display case next to the Quaderni argentini. Agnetti was a master at the poetics of resetting everything to zero, beckoning the conceptual operation to enter paradoxically into contact with a visionary world profoundly rooted in emotion. His self-portrait, entitled Quando mi vidi non c’ero, is a clear example. This may be why his works oscillate between the exaggerated mental rigour of axioms and literary excess, as we can clearly see in his portraits and landscapes, juxtaposing the coldness of Bakelite with the warmth of felt. For Agnetti, the expressive medium is inherent in what he wants to represent, which is why his research into the different ways of creating art, into techniques and materials, is so important: words, the photographic image, manipulated technology, exposed and scratched photo paper, sculpture accompanying photographs as well as recordings and videos, installations and performances are always used as a support for the artistic project. Agnetti is a conceptual artist who does not expound concepts but builds them and makes them visible and perceptible to the observer’s eye. It is the observer who can decipher the conceptual meaning of his works. It is the observer who, entering into this space, is invited – through a rigorous conceptual operation – to enter into contact with a visionary world that is paradoxically anchored to emotion. The occasion of the reopening of his studio was the Milanese rendezvous of the art fair and the inauguration coincides with the agenda of MIArt, reflecting the Archive’s desire to offer the space of the great Milanese artist. The intention is that Vincenzo Agnetti’s studio will not only be a space of memory but also one of ideas, proposals, initiatives and research to be developed along the same wavelength as Agnetti’s thoughts and enlightened insight.
Germana Agnetti e Guido Barbato