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A LEAF-SHAPED ANIMAL DRAWS THE HAND (2020)
A LEAF-SHAPED ANIMAL
DRAWS THE HAND
MILAN
PIRELLI HANGARBICOCCA
SEP 12 2019 - JAN 19 2020
Pirelli Hangarbiocca hosted the Catalan born Rio de Janiero based Daniel Steegmann Mangrané’s first solo show in Italy. The conceptual artist, conscience of the environment and all that it brings to the world and eco-system, pondered the relationship between culture and nature. The artists’ interest in biology has led him to analyse complex ecological systems and introduce the natural world into hi works. In Steegmann Mangrané’s practice there are various references to the rain forest in Brazil, for example, branches, leaves and insects, which interwoven with geomatic forms and abstract motifs engender a reflection on the complex dynamics between the elements that surround us.
"The conceptual artist, conscience of the environment and all that it brings to the world and eco-system, pondered the relationship between culture and nature"
The artist’s first show on Italian soil, presents more than twenty works made from 1998 to the present time, ranging from short film including virtual reality, holograms, sculptures and various installation. Mangrané absorbs the viewer into a physical and sensory experience.
The exhibition is characterized by a shift between material and immaterial experiences. This was extenuated further through the site-specific intervention that was made of white transparent fabric partitions that redefined the industrial aspect of Pirelli HangarBicocca, whilst both concealing and revealing the exhibited works. These screens gave shape to the different areas of the show while allowing, by means of their transparency, an immediate overview of the entire exhibition.
Daniel Steegmann Mangrané (b. 1977 Barcelona) is a Catalan artist living and working in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. His body of work encompasses different formats based on subtle and poetic experimentation that questions the relationship between language and the world. As a child, Mangrané aspired to be a biologist or botanist. His fascination with the natural sciences motivated his 2004 installation near the tropical forest in Rio Janeiro.
In the 1990s, Mangrané was drawn to the works of Hélio Oiticica and Lygia Clark, one of the founders of neo-concretism. Clark's work intended to unite the "participant" to work, forming an organic continuity. Her work was inspired by Merleau-Ponty, for whom "the world is made of the very fabric of the body".
He was similarly influenced by the collective group of artists working in the UK, who became known as the YBA's or Young British Artist. Following their trajectory, Mangrané's artwork, mainly conceptual, shows concern with existence and the specific characteristics of objects. He uses deconstructed materials as a means to question his work.
The artist said, "if there are no longer subjects or objects, there are no longer spectators or works of art, but processes of relations of mutual transformation. Combinations of agents that influence each other". His encounter with an insect twig in 2008 has been decisive and essential to his trajectory. This camouflaged creature, also called stick insect (from the Greek "ghost"), haunts several works by Steegmann Mangrané, filmed in plant settings or released in large glass vivariums. As its appearance is as motionless as a plant, this metic insect merges with its environment to the point of disappearing.
A further example of his confrontation with "objectness" was the work he presented at the New Museum's 2015 Triennial: Surround Audience. He exhibited Phantom (2015), a virtual reality environment scanned from the Brazilian Mata Atlántica rainforest and accessed through a pair of Oculus. He also created several pieces that explore the semiotic structure of the projection-lacking the narrative of a picture. The projections hover between drawings, abstract, structural cinema, and sculpture. Mangrané's works articulate a sense of space and time, building up a structure as the constellation of elements enters into action.
He has presented solo shows at CRAX Alsace in Altkrich, Mendes Wood DM in Sao Paulo, House France Brazil in Rio de Janeiro, Halfhouse in Barcelona, Centro Cultural Sergio Port in Rio de Janeiro, and Fundació La Caixa in Barcelona. He has also been featured in group exhibitions at the New Museum in New York, the Renaissance Society in Chicago, Experimental Museo El Eco in Mexico, among others.