Marisa Merz
Merz was the only female protagonist associated with the radical Arte povera movement. literally poor art was an art movement that took place between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s in major cities throughout Italy and above all in Turin.
- Arte povera
- Refers to the movement’s signature exploration of a wide range of materials beyond the traditional ones of oil paint on canvas, bronze, or carved marble.
- Literally poor art was an art movement that took place between the end of the 1960s and the beginning of the 1970s in major cities throughout Italy and above all in Turin.
Nairy Baghramian
MEDIUM: Steel cot, steel shelving, rubber, 10 plastic dolls and pig intestine
This is one of several Untitled works that Salcedo created in 1985-9 using such discarded steel-frame furniture as hospital beds, trolleys and infants’ cribs in combination with animal fibres, steel shelving and elements made of plastic, wax and fabric. Untitled, 1987 was made from a steel shelving unit and the two ends of a hospital cot cut and welded to make a single object.
From a distance the sculpture is an abstract linear composition of scuffed and welded metal in three dimensions; only on careful examination at close quarters are the shadowy figures of the plastic babies visible, erupting like strange growths in the wounds of the severed steel.
The tortuously fused elements of Untitled suggest a painful attempt at collaboration between two different systems of support, forced together reluctantly and unable to split apart.
Susumu Koshimizu
Investigates the substance of wood by sawing planks into different shapes, exposing their surface qualities through different kinds of repetitive cuts.
Koshimizu was part of Mono Ha (‘School of Things’), which reacted against the embrace of technology and visual trickery in mid-1960s Japanese art. They sought to understand ‘the world as it is’ by exploring the essential properties of materials, often combining organic and industrial objects and processes.