Giulia Cenci – field (2018)

Giulia Cenci (b. Cortona, Italy, 1988, lives and works in Amsterdam) generally makes alienating, erratic landscapes featuring indefinable objects. These protrude from the white walls and lie on the floors of art spaces, looking organic, yet synthetic and industrial. Sometimes a length of electrical wire can be seen, or part of a plug or another element of a device. All the objects are the same semi-transparent white-grey colour because of the multiple resinous layers that have been applied.

Cenci adapts and combines the objects in many different ways, by hand and mechanically, constantly adding and removing elements, so that what Cenci refers to as an indefinable unity develops, which both embraces and undermines classical sculpture. Looking organic yet artificial, amorphous yet familiar, traditionally crafted yet industrial, Cenci’s work is multi-hybrid.

While a white cube provides all the necessary space for the art, precisely the opposite occurs at De Oude Warande. The work has to fit into the wooded space. The work that Cenci has made for Hybrids enters into an interaction with that space. The erratic shapes seem to be branches of the trees. Some of these go around the trunks, effectively embracing the trees. These objects are based on parts of cars, trains and other machines and devices, which have been treated with the light material urethane foam, which has no impact on the trees, and then coated with several layers of silicone rubber.

Cenci deliberately selected a piece of land with a relatively high density of trees. The artist herself talks about crowded verticality. She allowed these custom-made objects to occupy the available space, just as branches, mosses and fungi do. In an organic way, the installation followed the lines of the branches while, paradoxically, a unique, elusive and artificial panorama simultaneously came into being.