Ian Cheng and Michael E. Smith: Work in progress

Six months haven’t passed yet since Edoardo Bonaspetti has been appointed curator of the Department of Visual Arts and New Media at the Triennale in Milan and the public is already experiencing a real and innovative breakthrough in the choices made by the museum. “Work in Progress” is an exhibition of contemporary art wanted by Bonaspetti and curated by Filipa Ramos, Simone Menegoi and Alexis Vaillant. The exhibition presents two young artists, Ian Cheng and Michael E. Smith, two expressions of the same contemporary look. Their work is very different, but in both cases we can feel (and perceive) a sense of awareness for our present time. The first part of the exhibition, dedicated to Michael Smith and curated by Simone Menegoi and Alexis Vaillant, diffusely invades one of the largest halls of the Triennale. The few works are positioned here and there, sometimes placed in corners and in the less central spaces, articulating an unconventional and discontinuous path, in direct dialogue with the exhibition environment and visitors.

Michael E. Smith, Work in progress, Triennale, Milan

Michael Smith reflects on the degrading value of the human life. His imagery draws its references (its reference elements) from the society slag, rummaging through the scraps of its anthropogenic products. His works go from videos that depict animals in captivity and urban landscapes and desolate peripheral areas to the small canvases that evoke images of troubled surfaces, up to the sculptures that blend together in gruesome clutches artificial objects and animal relics. Like its work “Untitled”, dated 2013, which consists in a melted plastic bottle with blood and pigeon feathers, and then “Garage”, a work of 2014, consisting in a ball made up of embalmed chicken feathers and cables plastic, hanging from the ceiling.

Michael E. Smith, Work in progress, Triennale, Milan

If the Michael Smith searching maintains a link with the material reality, Ian Cheng reflects on the human relationship with virtuality and simulation. The digital rendering reaches the user proposing him credible forms and definite pictures, so that their assimilation by the public may be perceived as an unconditional reflex. But the rendering uses a discontinuous language that makes the virtuality a deficient dimension looking smooth and real only in appearance. In the middle of the second room, the exhibition part dedicated to Ian Cheng and curated by Filipa Ramos, there is a large platform on which projectors, cables, plugs and tubes VCRs are placed in a mess just to recall us the permanent presence of the device, the hardware that is hidden behind the software and behind the three videos.

Ian Cheng, Work in progress, Triennale, Milan

A vertical panel on which is projected the animation video “This papaya tastes perfect” is placed in an angle, like a picture of which to discard. This first video shows a digital simulation of the paradoxical struggle between a man, a woman and a car. The second one, titled “Wragler Entropy”, is a live simulation where common and realistic (real) objects breed and multiply. At the end we find “Metis Suns”, another live simulation and 2014more recently work, where the potential of the digital plasticity is exploited to its highest level of manipulation and distortion: an androgynous character walks and then strips fatigue, his face and his body as well shrink and expand violently like in a virtual nightmare in which it is to lose the sense of proportion.