Anton's Memory - Yoko Ono
Due to unforeseen circumstances, Yoko Ono has to cancel her performance which was planned for September 11 at the Fenice Theater in Venice.
A prison is made of ice
It melts in the spring
A castle is made of clay
It crumbles in time
Welcome to time
The great equalizer
of all things.
Yoko Ono ‘09
The Bevilacqua la Masa Foundation is proud to host the solo exhibition,
Yoko Ono’s “ANTON’S MEMORY,” by an artist who on 6th June will be presented with the Golden Lion for Career Achievement at the Venice Biennale.
Ono, known since the first half of the 1960s a conceptual artist and one of the founders of Fluxus, as well as an avant-garde performer, has created an exhibition that sets out to provide a vast “fresco” of her artistic practices. The title of the show, ANTON’S MEMORY, reflects “a woman’s life we see only through her son’s eyes - his faded memory.”as Yoko Ono herself says.
The exhibition has been designed especially for the rooms of Palazzetto Tito and is a series of new installations that incorporate some earlier works as points of reference. It includes films, sound compositions, sculptures, and drawings, as well as a number of interactive installations. There will also be elements to do with the corporeal and the sense of touch: for example, Ono’s sculpture Touch me III, containing fragments of the female body, as if crammed into a simple chest of drawers.
At the centre of the display, two filmed versions of her 1964 performance work Cut Piece, from 1965 and 2003, will be shown. In this work, the artist lets the public cut away parts of her clothing little by little. In the first version Yoko Ono is thirty-two years old, and in the second version she is seventy, giving a sense of the marks left on us by the passing of time. Military helmets from the Second World War with pieces of sky inside; the film of a woman desperately attempting to free herself from her bra (a metaphor for women’s liberation); an insistent coughing sound; tables, pens and paper for whoever wants to write their own thoughts and leave a trace of them; the book of recipes for artistic actions, Grapefruit (1964), left lying around like a generative element for all the rest; tables for playing all-white chess in peace and quiet, in the main chamber of a Venetian chamber between lancet windows opening onto nature or closed with coloured glass...
all this and much more, along with a moving soundtrack, will complete the
exhibition, punctuated also by the hand of the artist, who will write new pieces directly on the walls.
The entire exposition in the rooms of Palazzetto Tito will constitute a unitary whole evoking “ANTON’ MEMORY”; something that may be looked on as a codified memory, i.e. the story of an adult son rethinking through the existential vicissitudes of his mother through symbols and objects.
In the words of the curator of the project, Nora Halpern: “ANTON’S MEMORYreflects Yoko Ono’s ideas of universal inter-connectedness and the temporal realm that we all inhabit. Through her installation at the Palazzetto Tito, as well as related works throughout Venice and in the main performance hall of the Teatro La Fenice (11th of September) Yoko Ono seeks to evoke memories that are simultaneously overtly
personal yet evocative of collective desire and a communal connection.”
An artist’s book, Other Rooms, will be published on the occasion of “ANTON’S MEMORY,” serving as a lasting extension of the exhibition. There will also be a brochure with texts by the curator Nora Halpern as well as Angela Vettese, President of the Foundation.
About the artist: Born in 1933 in Tokyo, Yoko Ono was one of the pioneers
of Conceptual Art, and one of the most influential artists of the 20th century.
In 1952 she was among the first women in Japan to study philosophy.
In the mid ‘50s she moved to New York, where she took part in the vibrant artistic scene which included the composer John Cage and artists of the likes of La Monte Young, among others. And it was with Young that in 1960 Yoko Ono set up a series of concerts and events in her loft near Canal Street, which were frequented not only by young artists and musicians like Jasper Johns, George Maciunas (who went on to found the Fluxus movement), and Robert Rauschenberg, but also icons of the art world like Marcel Duchamp, Max Ernst, Peggy Guggenheim and Isamu Noguchi.
From the beginning of her career right up to the present day, the works of Yoko Ono have never stopped influencing generation after generation of artists.
Her commitment to peace, which continued together with her husband John
Lennon, has never ceased, not even after his death.
On the occasion of the 53rd Biennial of Visual Arts, Yoko Ono will be presented with the Golden Lion for Career Achievement.
For the Press:
The artist will be available for a press conference on 28th May at 11 am, before the opening of her solo exhibition at the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation on June 3.
She will then return to Venice to receive her Golden Lion on 6th June 2009.
Yoko Ono’s solo exhibition is the result of the collaboration between the president of the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation, Angela Vettese, the project curator, Nora Halpern, together with Jon Hendricks, curator of the works of Yoko Ono, and Anita Sieff, Venice coordinator, while the performance at the Teatro La Fenice is curated by Francesca Pasini.
The exhibition has been made possible thanks to the generous support of:
the Bevilacqua La Masa Foundation and The Peter Norton Family Foundation; The Bell Family Foundation; The Broad Art Foundtion;
Fondazione Bonotto ; Galerie Lelong, New York ; Provisions Library and anonymous donors
