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Indepth Arts News:
"Carla Accardi: Triplice Tenda"
2001-05-20 until 2001-09-03
PS1 Contemporary Art Center
Long Island City, NY,
USA United States of America
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center presents the first U.S. solo exhibition of the work
of Italian artist Carla Accardi (b. 1924). A primary artist of the post-war period in
Europe, Accardi contributed to the forging of a new Italian culture by creating a
personal style of abstract painting, and co-founding the Forma 1 movement in
1947. Triplice Tenda (1969) is a full-size circular tent of clear plastic marked in
patterns of pale-pink paint. This work, one of the first artist’s tents, brings
evocations of nomadism and domesticity into the realm of sculpture. The
presentation of this work brings to the fore one of the best-known older artists
from the Italian post-war period, whose work continued to be influential through
the 1960s.
Born in Sicily in 1924, Carla Accardi moved to Rome in 1945. In the late fifties,
she exhibited in Paris and Turin. Her painting is joyful and colorful, focusing on
organic growth and change. It is also strongly feminist in its investigation of the
tent as a form in transition between the domestic sphere and the public sphere.
Her first Tenda, made in 1965, is a small home-made tent of clear plastic on
which painted marks seem to float. It incorporates the audience both into its
image and its physical space. The Tenda may be an important precedent to
many works that focus on domesticity and ‘place’ rather than on an abstract
notion of space. It is also one of the primary early artworks that involve the idea
that architecture and experience can be nomadic or provisional.
This exhibition is organized by P.S.1 Senior Curator Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev
and is made possible through the generous support of the Dena Foundation,
Paris, The Italian Consulate, NY, and The Italian Cultural Institute. Additional
thanks to the Castello di Rivoli, Turin.
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