O Mio MADRE

Interior courtyard of MADRE Museo

MADRE is an acronym for Museo D’Arte Contemoranea Donna Regina in Naples.  Madre is also the name for mother.  Should you be in Naples and not wanting to walk far from the historical centre with a few hours to fill in with something interesting, MADRE is your place.  The building on approach is bland comparatively to the Baroque and Rococo styles abounding in this city and is possibly classified as neo classical.  Once in the foyer of the building there is not a feeling being interior to the building itself but of an internal courtyard where a truck could easily be driven to deliver works, and possibly does, with the ticket office on one side and a museum store on the other.

MADRE houses permanent and temporary works of art.  Striking me as the most memorable and beautiful are works by Francisco Clemente and Mimmo Palatino.  Each work in the collection has its own room to possible avoid competition from other works as well as providing the viewer with a pure focus on the work.  The collection consists of artists from around the world such as Damien Hirst, Gilbert & George, Anselm Kiefer, Richard Serra and Jeff Koons, to name but a few.

To put this posting in context, I believe that art can be anything that has been created by someone with the intent to provide a message or statement.  It’s not necessarily found in a gallery and can be seen everyday on the streets.  It occurs in our day to day living, in our clothing, in our body language, in our choice of dinnerware, furniture, wall art and books.  All of us present ideas visually as alternate messages to language, consciously or unconsciously.  When I visit a gallery I enter curiously to see and hopefully feel what other people in the global community are saying through their visual statements.

Shlovsky’s 1917 essay, Art as Device said that art is thinking in images, I agree with this and I’m always interested to know what other people think or feel.  What they think and what I think about what they think are where lie some criticisms.  Unable to judge art on technical skill I believe that I intuitively know when something is well crafted and I found most of the works at MADRE to be visually appealing.  I also have a great appreciation for the years of technical training and study by artists of their art form as this too shines through work and can speak volumes.

The third floor of MADRE houses an exhibition titled Still Untitled by artist Sislej Xhafa, pronounced, sis-ly shay fa.  Each work had its own substantial room and the first one room presented a gaffer-taped microphone.  If I could insert a symbol for my eyebrows raising here I would.  The next room housed rubbish spread across the floor; the third, a bag of cement broken open; the fourth, a black bra hanging on a hook; the fifth, a toothpick on a plinth under a Perspex cover; and before exiting to see Xhafa’s final work, a watermelon on a pedestal.  I don’t know about you but I always think of the fable The Kings New Clothes at this point.  I can see a watermelon for its own beauty at the market or on a kitchen bench yet when it’s placed in a gallery I am not sure if someone is sharing their mutual appreciation of the fruit with me, or saying something altogether different and if they are all I can say is, I don’t get it.

Xhafa then held my attention with her final piece: that of a life size rowing boat made of all styles of used shoes titled Barka 2011.  Given the contentious topic of desperate refugees, this work held a powerful message for me despite what Xhafa’s own intention or message in the work may be.  It also evoked memories of images from World War II concentration camps where shoes, clothing, glasses, etc were taken from people who were taken into the gas chambers and sorted into piles.  A traveller who stayed at the hostel wore a pair of beaded sandals throughout her stay.  The day after she left I saw her shoes placed neatly on step of a resident a few doors down.  Perhaps she left them there for someone to take rather than putting them in a bin.  The sandals stayed there for days before they disappeared and each time I walked past them I was pleasantly reminded of the person and her possible good dead but there was also an eerie feeling for me of a departure of life, somewhat like a death.

Separated by a small laneway, the church of Santa Donna Regina Vecchia sits next to MADRE and sometimes houses temporary exhibiting works.  The earliest mention of this church was in 780, which is perhaps why I found such an atmosphere when I walked into its interior. English artist, Rachel Howard, a self-declared atheist, currently has her show of work in this church representing her versions of the Stations of the Cross.  Apart from one of the pieces hanging above the altar (see below) there was no message or pleasure derived from the remaining 12 works and this is where I may lose friendships.  The work looked like someone was deciding what floor stain to use.  The background colour of the works was a cold pale yellow.  I believe colours have their own messages and I couldn’t make a connection to the colour, the brush strokes or anything else that could possibly relate to the Stations of the Cross, apart from the one small work that was incredibly relevant to the exhibition’s theme.

Rachel Howard's Stations of The Cross

The church itself held way more interest for me. A shrine carved to represent Mary, wife of Charles I, resides in this space with seven of her sons below her each holding something different, great clues for the inquisitive mind to find out what they represent.  The openness, colouring and simplicity of the church appealed to me.  It looked and felt ancient and if I had seen in my peripheral vision a brown robe moving into a doorway I wouldn’t have doubted it.

Whilst quenching my thirst at the museum café, the attendant who served me was an artwork himself with the most interesting tattoos, hairstyle and body piercings.  Instead of being hung or photographed he served me, thus proving my point, that art is all around us and that all of us express ourselves in our artful lives mothered by our cultural influences. 

Ciao

hellsbells