NONA INESCU / CONVERSATION WITH A STONE
UNTIL : 13.01.17
SpazioA / project space
Via Amati 13, Pistoia 51100, Italy
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SpazioA is proud to present, Saturday November 19, 2016,
6pm, Conversation with a stone,
a solo exhibition by Nona Inescu
(1991, Bucharest, Romania) at the gallery project space.
Touch
defines the border between our self and the world. Being in “con-tact” means
“with touch”. Next to being in touch with objects, we are able to extend our
bodies through objects, to make them become part of us. Think of your
smartphone. We feel, experience the world through these objects and they become
tactually transparent. When interacting with us, objects exert a “body
language”, they become animated with skin, bones and muscles. And in touch, we
do not really make a difference whether the object we are in touch with is
actually alive or not: it is touching us and thereby has affective meaning.
The
hand is often the icon for touch, although touch is a full-body experience. The
hands represent the active touch, while the rest of our body is more passively
touched. In every physical interaction, both phenomena occur simultaneously: we
touch and by that, we are being touched. Touch makes real. It is often depicted
as the sense that cannot be deceived or fooled. Tactile sensations are the very
first to develop.
Conversation with a stone
is a poem written by Wisława Szymborska in 1962, where the author plays with
the idea of the self-confronting with the external world, through an imaginary
dialogue between the speaker of the poem and a stone. The speaker knocks on the
stone’s door, asks the stone to step inside of it and the stone refuses.
Essentially, the speaker represents the human desire to know each detail of the
world around us, and the stone the impossibility of knowing. For the stone, we
find, has no door. Through her works, Nona Inescu tries to continue the
conversation with the stone by opening new possibilities of interaction through
the tactile sense. Using photographs, objects, videos and installations Nona
Inescu directs her attention to the cultural phenomena surrounding the sense of
touch. By applying a poetic and often metaphorical language, Nona Inescu tries
to approach a wide range of subjects in a multi-layered way, likes to involve
the viewer in a way that is sometimes physical and challenges the idea of “form
following function” in a work.