Niele Toroni

"Niele Toroni proceeds with his highly personal and disciplined art with a degree of consistency and clarity going all the way back to 1967, when he started using a size 50 (50mm) brush to make this gesture of pictorial "impressions" at a regular distance of thirty centimetres from each other, both in height and in width. The support he uses for his action may be a canvas, a wall, a sheet of paper, or the ground. In its marking and defining, his time image feeds on the movement of a visual progression and multiplication. In Toroni's art, the module/impression is the sequential freeze frame of a continuous narrative. It is the equal that is only apparently identical to itself in its repetition: the component of the painter's gesture brings about a variable pressure in the force applied by hand, which is enough to make each individual impression unique in its seriality. In its apparent reduction to the essentials, in terms of instrument-colour-image, Toroni is actually bringing about his greatest ambition, which is to give material form in pure painting to the synecdoche of the entire Universe.

What might appear as a purely conceptual and aesthetic act, as a cold, detached work by the artist actually means for Toroni the greatest possible emotional involvement. It means a feeling of pietas for the human world."

- Francesco Castellani

"Repetition forms the basis of life, our heart always beats the same way and it is precisely its repetitive beat that ensures our life."

- Niele Toroni

Photographs of a permanent installation at 
A Arte Invernizze, Milan

Lee Lozano

In 1969, the American artist Lee Lozano (1930-99) initiated her
General Strike Piece in which she withdrew from the New York
art world:

"Gradually but determinedly avoid being present at official or
public 'uptown' functions or gatherings related to the 'art world'
in order to pursue investigations of total personal and public
revolution. Exhibit in public only pieces which further sharing
of ideas & information related to total personal and public
revolution."

Two years later, in 1971, Lozano began an even more extreme
work of withdrawal, the notorious, Decide to Boycott Women.
Initially intended to last for a month, she continued this work
for the rest of her life, refusing to speak to or deal with women.

Inevitably controversial in a high period of the feminist movement,
this work, while causing constant inconvenience, confusion and
offence, was intended to "improve communication" with women,
presumably at a more intimate or intense level than the verbal
or conventional.

Cecilia Vissers, Beyond

Just seven days remaining in order to pledge support for Cecilia Vissers' Kickstarter project to publish a volume on her work. Please help out if you can.




Further information about the publication is available via Peter Foolen's blogspot.

Specialism

The latest edition of OPEN Editions has just been published, edited by David Blamey.

This volume focuses on 'specialism' and includes an essay by Alistair Rider, titled 'The Routine Art'.