(GR) ΤΑ ΝΕΑ
26 Νοεμβρίου 1990
Χάρης Καμπουρίδης
Φυσιογνωστικά τεχνήματα
Πόσο φυσικό ή πόσο τεχνητό μπορεί να είναι ένα καλλιτέχνημα που θέλει να ανακατασκευάσει τη φύση; Στα έργα της Βούλας Μασούρα (Μέδουσα) βλέπουμε φυσικές ύλες να πλέκονται σ’ ένα πρωτογονικής υφής πλαστικό αποτέλεσμα και να μοιάζουν με ιστούς ή φωλιές παράδοξων ζωικών οργανισμών.
Η Μασούρα αφομοιώνει στις υφαντικές κατασκευές της κάθε τι που θα μπορούσε να πλεχτεί – σχοινί, κάνναβη, βαμβάκι κ..ο.κ.
Ό,τι προκύπτει, είναι δέσμιο του ηθικού της διλήμματος: πόσο κονστρουκστιβιστικό και πόσο απροσδιόριστο; Η υποδομή είναι περιοριστικά λογοκεντρική, αφού διακρίνονται οι παλιότερες διασυνδέσεις της με το πνεύμα του Μπάουχαουζ και το αίτημα για συνδυασμό του φυσιολογικού με το αρχιτεκτονημένο.
Στην απ’ εδώ πλευρά του έργου, οι απολήξεις των ενυφασμένων υλών φθάνουν συχνά σε μια «φασική» όψη, με την έννοια ότι πείθουν πως δεν μπορούσε παρά να είναι μόνον έτσι.
Ωστόσο, είναι φορές που η διάθεση της Μασούρα να «δέσει όλους τους κόμπους» πνίγει την εκρηκτική δύναμη που έχει το καλλιτεχνικό της αίτημα στην πηγή του.
«Τα ζώα ως αρχιτέκτονας» λέγεται ένα περίφημα σύγγραμμα που εξετάζει τις φωλιές ως αρχιτεκτονήματα «το ένστικτο του αρχιτεκτονείν τις ύλες» θα μπορούσε να ειπωθεί γι’ αυτήν την σημαντική έκθεση. Μένω με την εντύπωση ότι η πλάστιγγα θα μπορούσε να κλίνει πιο πολύ απ’ την πλευρά του ενστίκτου και της απροσδιόριστης περιπέτειας.
Excerpts from the text by Giuliano Serafini - Art Historian.
...Voula Massoura worked openly, and once more grasped with a well-known gesture the thread of her own memory and that of all of us - and the semeiolo¬gical coincidence stands ουt unavoidably. Το weave, to tie knots, to braid, means to re-enter the great current of historical and, at the same time, transcen¬dent being. Α gesture, extremely symbolic alluding to an interior ethnography, in the name of which con¬sciousness finds itself again in terms of an absolute, primary moment: that one of the mysterious maternal source. Is this perhaps a return without a motive? Has the aim disappeared, the function of custom and the previous formulations of the exorcism been forgotten? How can one explain this syndrome surrounding a return to the roots which has dominated, in large part, the recent artistic quests in Europe and of which Massoura proves, reviving archaic technics and the full manual skill? The passage of each century is the launching point for the question of the mass unconscious and the atavic fears which are bound to the destiny of man¬kind. We are dealing with superstition which art interprets through «liturgical» tools, re-inventing its sacred and propitiatory image, replacing the need for metaphysical, the decline of which, according to Hegel, would mean the disappearance of art itself from the human horizon. But it appears that the prophecy has not been fulfilled. Thus the artist imitates the conjurer without having his power any longer: what he can do, the only thing that is left for him to do, is to remember. That is, to attune himself to the cosmic rhythms, to read in the stars the destiny of humanity, to question them and to receive the same answers, those known to his predecessors. Because «under the heavenly vault ev¬erything changes and returns» as Marguerite Yource¬nar has written. ...One of the artist's intents - since her unguided progress has permitted her to draw up a program - is to confirm the organic and, Ι would say, biological being of the object, in whatever material class it may belong and to submit it to the estatic confrontation of the eye. In this way, the vision of the artist becomes our own complementary vision, it helps us to discover a reality, which we have been ignorant of, it reveals to us the miracles of the minimal and the undifferenti¬ated. But this perception is not only a visual one: the evocative weight of the material immerses us in the origins, amid the «forgotten memories», ίη the deep unconscious where we again palpably find, between symbol and need, our own archetypal weaving nature, our DNA of fibers. Equally surprising is how Massoura, from the original stage of choosing her fibers up to the realiza¬tion of the work, manages to preserve inviolate the Dionysian behavior of it, its ability to provoke and emotionally move the eye; as if the warp could forever block the dynamics of invention and idea (which here have become sign of the aesthetic language) and recall the fevered moment of quest. This moment is also a (fundamental denial of the surrealistic methodology of the objet trouvé: the recognition, to a degree which is dependent on alternating sequences of thought, was developed through the instigation of archaic know¬ledge and the direct but not fetishistic contact with the material. The density, the weight, the luster, the warmth, the transparency, the reflections of the mate¬rial define the creative process and certainly the touch has determinated this choice. The preference for natural colors is a further proof of her poetic world. The artist works in the void between the natural and the human, between the phenomenon and anthropology, where everything can still be confused and appears under a common creative denominator. Tribal emblems, magnificent outfits of barbarian kings, totems, skins of mythical animals? Massoura's heraldry does not aspire to credibility, nor could it, because it lives by itself an autonomous existence parallel to reality and the myth: here we have the existence of imagination. Today, the warp and the weft, still continuing to be the basic structure of her work, have become the support of elements which are prominent, and grow¬ing ever more complex. Frequently, the substratum contains extensions which go beyond the defined boundaries of conventional aesthetics and are arranged, according a structural plan, into prodigious architectural conceptions. Certainly this outward pouring of the work under¬lines the way out from the mould of art. But it also constitutes a further verification of the transforming and reproductive power that Massoura can give to matter - as a living entity - the extreme development of which is now much nearer to an absolute, plastic idea where the space of art and the space of reality can at last merge.