"In the 1960s, I was designated as an 'artist' because no-one knew how to define a heap of coal. But I'm a painter, and I lay claim to my initiation in painting because painting is the construction of images, it doesn't indicate a manner, even less a technique. Each painter has his own way of seeing and methods of constructing an image.”
A captivating ensemble of abstracted material forms, Untitled is a superlative example of Jannis Kounellis’ metal wall reliefs, a body of work which ranks among the finest in the artist’s oeuvre and another example of which was prominently featured by the artist at the Italian Pavilion during the 1988 Venice Biennale. The present work is composed of a row of four metal sheets, each uniquely adorned with a diverse array of material, texture, color, and form, from asphalt discs to a golden block of wax. Mounted and arranged on the wall like a sequence of canvases, Untitled beguiles the viewer with its apparent symbolic coherence, yet abstains from conveying any functional or narrative significance beyond its elemental composition. Test.mes nt to the present work’s significance within the artist’s oeuvre, other examples of Kounellis’ metal wall reliefs reside in the permanent collects ions of esteemed institutions including the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.
A leading figure in the Arte Povera movement, Kounellis belonged to a generation of artists who valued the metaphysical potential of everyday materials. With their privileging of the ordinary, these artists sought to buck convention and break down the dichotomy between art and life – a driving force prophetically central within Kounellis’ metal wall reliefs of the 1980s. Influenced by Alberto Burri and Lucio Fontana, whose work provided an alternative to the expressive nature of Art Informel, Kounellis sought to redefine the boundaries of painting. In his own words: “'In the 1960s, I was designated as an 'artist' because no-one knew how to define a heap of coal. But I'm a painter, and I lay claim to my initiation in painting because painting is the construction of images, it doesn't indicate a manner, even less a technique. Each painter has his own way of seeing and methods of constructing an image” (J. Kounellis, quoted in L'Élémentaire, le vital, l'énergie: Arte Povera in Castello, exh. cat. Chateau de Villeneuve, Fondation Emile Hugues, Vence 2004, p. 57). In line with the philosophy of his Italian counterparts, the fusion of organic and non-organic materials in the present work offers a contrast of materials that suggests the perpetually evolving nature of the meaning of art. Through the manipulation of traditional artistic boundaries, Kounellis aims to highlight the inherent splendor found in the quotidian, dismantling the static understanding of painting and proposing that beauty and meaning exists in all aspects of human life.
