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Istituto Svizzero in Rome presents Stockage, a solo show by John M Armleder (photo: Marco Buemi). The exhibition, march-july 2017, in the spaces of the piano nobile of Villa Maraini contained a series of works crossing the long career of the Swiss artist, as well as several site-specific pieces.

In the Neo-Renaissance reception rooms of Villa Maraini, home of the Swiss Institute in Rome, I had the pleasure to collaborate with one of the most preminent worldwide artist John M Armleder. With amused detachment, he interprets a series of motifs in the spaces left free of the colorful architectural overstatement of the late 1800s. Viewers will have no difficulty identifying two still lifes, a memento mori, a genre scene with ballerinas, an image of stellar constellations, a chandelier fallen to the ground, the suggestion of a decorative covering and a series of mirrors, while two brazenly fake partitions act as counterpoint to the rhythm of the architecture, displaying two murals and two enormous black and bronze canvases. The exhibition conveys the sense of the continuous acrobatics of John M Armleder, who while expressing a desire to “be done with daubs” nevertheless continues to be absorbed by questions regarding painting. Through Fluxus, he has attempted a supreme activation of the protocols of the tradition of painting, the amplification of the modern dream, revealing it in its most widespread and domestic forms. The artist who has connected classical awe to radical abstraction, with delicacy and humor, transports us once again into a rollicking remix of genres. Through accumulation, Armleder reminds us that everything exists in the history of forms, like a vast warehouse available to us, and that this space is also ours

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