Gallery A: Tim Rollins and K.O.S.
“Metamorphosen”
Opening Friday, 3 October from 19.00 pm to 21,30 pm. – From 3 October to 19 December 2008
The idea of metamorphosis has always fascinated and stimulated painters, poets and musicians. From Ovid’s mythology to the disarming Kafkaesque alienation, from the interpretations by Titian, to the harmonies of Richard Strauss. And it is the music from the “Metamorphosis for 23 solo strings” of the German composer that inspires the new exhibition in the Raucci/Santamaria gallery of Tim Rollins and K.O.S.
The Metamorphosis of Strauss, written in 1946, echoes through the density of the sound of the strings, the horrors and sufferings of World War II. For Tim Rollins and his Kids of Survivals transformation takes a cathartic meaning. The paintings on display (122×303 cm) resolve in a slow transfiguration, a crescendo of dark stains on music sheets stuck on the canvas, almost concealing with a layer of black what the composition of Strauss wants to recall. A symbolic darkness that transforms the white sound of the sheets in an ink black silence.
The harmony between music and colour results in a perfect formal balance, in the visual translation of an emotional content in which the concept of sharing replaces the idea of individuality. The collaborative and democratic work is in fact the basis of the research of Tim Rollins’ (Pittsfield 1955) since, a young professor, he showed his students, from the poor and violent Bronx, the way to social emancipation through art.
A revolutionary educational choice based on reading classic literature, on discussion groups and on the sensations brought by an unexpressed and suffocated imagination. The canvases, covered with the sheets of the works read in class or with the music scores, become in this way, the support on which the graphic and painted interventions are inserted.
A creative mode that has been going on for the past 30 years – during which many kids are grown and have supported the introduction of new generations of K.O.S. -, in which to the representation of metamorphosis are added the values of rebirth and redemption