bonami'yle interview(2006 september)

- My question is... Your latest show focuses on painting from the 90s until today, from the figurative to the abstract, from the canvas to the mural, presenting an overview of the contemporary scene with recent and new works as well as, in some cases, works specifically realised for this exhibition. What is a painting, then? More than a “TV screen”? More than a medium, a choice made from dozens of options?
- Painting is an idea , or better an archetype , it is , speaking like an analyst, the subconscious of art, any form of art



-61 artists from 22 countries... Infinite Painting painters, what do you think they have in common?
Nothing really , beside the fact that they are all on the same saving raft, painting


-You said “ painting as the ultimate virtual space that in the last four decades has been challenged, attacked, dismissed and subverted, but never abandoned or forgotten"...Does the title infite come from this point view?
Yes , infinite , because it does not have a beginning neither an end . Painting it’s like an exploding galaxy with no end in sight.


-How can an infinite painting relate to the definition of Baudelaire’s artist seeking eternal in the temporary? What does your glomanticism say about this relationship?
Sure , painting is both ethernal and temporary. Glomanticism has very little to do with this show, but the idea of a painter and his or her painting is quite obsolete and romantic but also a very global idea by now.


-“Infinite Painting, indeed, during the age of Global Realism, a term coined to reflect today’s vision of reality and how the real is influenced by a world universally shared.‘Infinite’ painting, understood as mirror of a single reality and vision of a contemporary condition which, for good or for worse, is globalised and massified but yet fully open and, always, truly free”. What kind of an adventure realism has been through? The pluralistic ways of reproducing the reality by handies/cameras/mobiles... vs. has given us a chance to define reality over and over again. So what happens to the old debate of realism/abstraction the old duo? It is too late to expect realism to save the world or to criticise the abstraction because it is hot politically involved?Look the world today is fighting about a world rooted in realism , the western world , and another one rooted in abstraction the muslim world, so painting it’ s perfect as a symbol of this division , this crack in our civilization.


-You said again “Painting, as an encounter with reality, a way of establishing a relationship between ourselves and the world around us in the western culture...” For example, coming from a different modernity experience and eastern culture, painting is a symbol of modernity, being western in my geography, abondining traditional arts and learning to build up a transfered beauty from another a priori universal culture, West... At the end, what is the significance of painting in terms of modernity/modernities?
I am extremely tired to hear about modernity and modernities, there is only one kind of modernity and many failed attempt to modernity . This does not mean that modernity it has to be always a positive concept , but the western modernity is the model , bad or good does not matter , it is the model.


-Once again, what is contemporary art?
An experiment about the present

-Can you explain us also your previous exhibition “sweet crisis”?
In chinese the word crisis does niot exist , it exist wei ji which means danger /opportunity. In Italy does too concept are not very familiar , we like to be in crisis but because our life is very sweet , we indulge into a sweet crisis , far from danger but even further from opportunities.

-Did you have a chance to visit İstanbul Biennale and İstanbul Modern museum? If yes, what are your impressions? Not yet I hope soon