{"id":388,"date":"2024-06-19T19:14:45","date_gmt":"2024-06-19T19:14:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/byvision.de\/?p=388"},"modified":"2025-05-30T23:00:11","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T23:00:11","slug":"art-basel-2024-unlimited-jannis-kounellis-senza-titolo-vele-1993","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/byvision.de\/index.php\/2024\/06\/19\/art-basel-2024-unlimited-jannis-kounellis-senza-titolo-vele-1993\/","title":{"rendered":"Art Basel 2024 Unlimited – Jannis Kounellis, Senza titolo (vele) 1993"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Iron, Wind, and Memory<\/h2>\n\n\n\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In the practice of Jannis Kounellis, materials are never just matter. They are signifiers of labor, history, exile, and silence. Presented by Kewenig Galerie at Art Basel 2024, the pairing of two major works\u2014Senza titolo (vele)<\/em> (1993) and Albatros<\/em> (2001)\u2014unfolded as a poetic dialectic on displacement, fragmentation, and the metaphysical memory of ships<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

These are not works about boats. They are works in which the idea of the boat is dismantled<\/strong>, exposed<\/strong>, and turned inside out<\/strong>, becoming a medium through which loss and persistence are negotiated in spatial terms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Sail as Floating Signifier<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

In Senza titolo (vele)<\/em>, nine Venetian sails\u2014some from the 17th century\u2014are suspended in space like a procession of ghosts. Each piece of cloth, weathered and symbolically painted, resists interpretation as a unified image. The sails are not illustrative; they do not depict sailing. Rather, they retain the aura of former functionality<\/strong>, hanging like tattered witnesses to histories of navigation, migration, and imperial expansion. Their vertical orientation recalls both religious banners and tombstones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s most striking is their emptiness<\/strong>. There is no mast, no hull. These sails are disembodied skins, responding only to light and air. Kounellis creates an almost liturgical space, where the absence of wind becomes the wind, and the void beneath the sails becomes a kind of sacred architecture of longing.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Critically, this installation defies the white cube. It builds a corridor of breath\u2014a material choreography of what once moved<\/strong>, but now hovers between symbolic elevation and historical fatigue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fragments and Iron: The Broken Logic of Albatros<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

If vele<\/em> is about weightlessness, Albatros<\/em> is its counterweight. Here, the artist returns to the boat not as image, but as relic<\/strong>. The segments of the vessel\u2014originally shown whole in 1991\u2014are now ruptured, mounted on walls like anatomical specimens. Each piece, weather-beaten and salt-stained, is clamped to industrial steel panels that tilt awkwardly, suggesting instability or collapse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unlike the ethereal composition of the sails, Albatros<\/em> is brutally physical. The works lean, groan, and sag. Rust, grain, and fracture are not details but protagonists. Kounellis\u2019 refusal to \u201crestore\u201d the vessel is central to the work\u2019s power: what we witness is not the ruin of a ship, but the ship as ruin<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In its name, Albatros<\/em> carries the burden of Baudelaire\u2019s great metaphor\u2014the poetic figure who, once aloft and majestic, is now grounded and mocked. In Kounellis\u2019 interpretation, the ship becomes the albatross: once a symbol of direction and commerce, now a decomposing symbol of forgotten labor and arrested movement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A Sculptural Language of Loss<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

These works do not ask to be read in narrative terms, yet they are profoundly historical. The poetics of decay<\/strong> are inscribed into each surface: the cracked wood, the unpatched holes, the iron oxidized to the color of dried blood. Time here is not metaphorical; it is literal and violent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In both installations, Kounellis abandons conventional sculpture. He does not shape mass, but assembles remnants. His language is not formal, but forensic. He offers no monument, but rather a field of semiotic residue<\/strong>\u2014each element speaking of displacement, exhaustion, and suspension.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Importantly, Kounellis eschews nostalgia. The past is not revered, but interrogated. The sail is not hoisted; it is displayed. The boat is not mended; it is dismembered. This is sculpture as archaeology.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Material, Gravity, and Metaphysical Space<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

What ties these installations together is a metaphysical sense of gravity. One work floats. One sinks. Both evoke the invisible architecture of memory<\/strong>\u2014not what is remembered, but how things are held, suspended, and finally let go.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kounellis\u2019 genius lies in his material dramaturgy<\/strong>: how sailcloth becomes elegy, how rust becomes testimony, how void becomes form. In this way, he moves beyond Arte Povera into a sculptural mysticism that remains utterly grounded\u2014one that understands that a piece of wood may hold more truth than any symbol.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To Drift and To Break<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

There is no romanticism in Kounellis\u2019 vision of the vessel. The sea is never seen, but its erosion is everywhere. The ship never moves, but its displacement defines the work. These are not maritime works\u2014they are existential architectures<\/strong>, vessels of grief and resilience.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Art Basel 2024, the artist’s voice, long silent since his death, continued to sound\u2014not with volume, but with weight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n

\u201cI have always believed in the truth of materials,\u201d <\/p>\nKounellis once said.<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

These works whisper that truth, in salt, in iron, and in windless sail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Iron, Wind, and Memory In the practice of Jannis Kounellis, materials are never just matter. They are signifiers of labor, history, exile, and silence. Presented by Kewenig Galerie at Art Basel 2024, the pairing of two major works\u2014Senza titolo (vele) (1993) and Albatros (2001)\u2014unfolded as a poetic dialectic on displacement,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":389,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,16],"tags":[7,2],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/byvision.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/byvision.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/byvision.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byvision.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byvision.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=388"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/byvision.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":397,"href":"https:\/\/byvision.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/388\/revisions\/397"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byvision.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/389"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/byvision.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=388"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byvision.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=388"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/byvision.de\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=388"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}