kaufmann repetto

Via di Porta Tenaglia, 7, 20121 Milan

MON CLOSED
TUE - SAT 11 A.M. / 7:30 P.M.
SUN CLOSED

ARTISTS:
Lily Van Der Stokker
Vincenzo Agnetti (Collezione Ramo)

Lily van der Stokker answers questions from
Irina Zucca Alessandrelli, curator of the Ramo Collection 

Give a definition of what drawing is for you.

Drawing is at the center of my creative process. Everything starts with a drawing, it becomes the form for my wall paintings. First I develop the concepts, then I create the drawings, and then these are transformed into large wall paintings. I really enjoy the time I spend drawing, it is valuable and fun. I make hundreds of drawings, many do not become wall paintings - but they remain complete, self-contained works of art in their own right. I am not an artist making my own works: my wall paintings are done by a group of trusted assistants (all of whom are artists themselves), who have been working with me for a long time. It works similarly for drawings: I make the shapes, the outlines, then I choose the colors and pencils, and finally my assistants help me fill them in.

What is your relationship with drawing? And with the history of Italian art of the last century?

In the early 1980s, at the beginning of my artistic career, I read some books about Branzi, the architect of the Memphis Group in Milan. He, they, predicted that in the future we would no longer be inside nature, but would only look at it through high-quality digital screens. At that time I only knew the television screen. You didn't see many computers at that time. He may have had an exaggerated view. But in spite of that, the digital screen revolution has now overwhelmed us. Inspired by his thinking, I had made several drawings in 1989 under the title Televisiongarden. Because I liked to combine nature and technology. Blue grass and a chair to sit on, representing heaven, in an oval television screen.

Why did you choose this work from Collezione Ramo?

I find it very interesting that Vincenzo Agnetti was a poet before he became a visual artist and that in his practice he continued to constantly reflect on language, communication and social-political critique. He was a key figure in the fertile Milanese art scene of the 1960s-a friend of Manzoni, Castellani etc-and so he was very involved in the reception and development of conceptual art in Italy. The drawing I have chosen from the Ramo Collection is a perfect example of his approach to the critique of language. The axiom that is illustrated on this drawing also shows-at least in my opinion-his love for the absurdity and irony of linguistic paradoxes. That is why his work seems somehow familiar to me. Moreover, the last work he was working on, before his sudden death, included a poem entitled Flower Player. Perhaps this is just a coincidence, but somehow it seems to recall my artistic practice....