It's Elemental

The 4 elements.  They are basic, and well, elemental, and often overlooked today.  But sometimes its fun just to wander and watch them in action.  Here they are as I viewed them over a couple of afternoons - roman style.

Roman Laundry (the video)

Sometimes, it's good to see things in motion. The installation 'Roman Laundry (bucato alla romana)' took place on a sunny afternoon in May, 2011.  Still photography by Susan Kammerer, Kara Arterburn and Katie Morgan.  I shot the video footage.  You can hear my (barely)supressed voice saying "this is soo cool".

Roman Laundry (bucato alla romana)

Myth and Memory, History and Nostalgia, Dreams and Disappointments, I have hung them all up to dry in the afternoon Italian sun.

A temporary installation of Roman Laundry  (bucato alla romana), a group of large scale charcoal drawings that reference classical sculpture, which I have been working on over  past several months, took place on Sunday May 1, 2011 in Via de' Delfini, Roma. 


By its nature, intruding into public space invites public comment.  Without permission, I took over a street and asserted myself.  The comments were many.  The one that struck me the most was made by an Italian artist who said that in the work he can see my affection for the City.  Si, e vero.  I have great affection for this chaotic, frustrating, romantic, amazing, impeneterable and impossible place.

And a special THANKS to all who helped make this project happen!

Christopher Pelley with assistants Amanda Pratt, Katie Morgan, Kara Arterburn and Codi Lyn Harrington

  

Fade to Pale

I first ventured to Rome in the waning days of the 1970's.  The city then was awash with a riot of warm colors. The burnt oranges and ochres, rich and worn, glowed and amplified the late afternoon sun until it seemed that for a few magical moments before sunset, heaven and earth were ablaze in tandem. The maze of medieval streets in the centro storico flowed like liquid amber pouring into renaissance piazzas.  But even then I noticed that change was afoot.  The backround beat of the chip chip chip of cold steel chiseling against soft stucco and hard stone that makes up the baso continuo of the city was slowly peeling away the color and replacing it with a different historical palette.  The renaissance palazzos were being re-invisioned with a more correct color scheme.  Creams, soft whites and even limestone blues were thrusting themselves into the streetscape.

The pace has quickened in the past few years as the City continues its relentless shift from warm to cool.  Color, which once stitched together the City is now defining and seperating the social strata.  Palazzi and cheisi increasingly boast the new renaissance hues, the medieval jumble for the most part sits in begnine neglect, plaster more often than not crumbling to expose the brick and rubble construction.  The massive number of 19th century buildings which sprung into existence when the City was recreated as the capital of a unified Italy, along with the monumental public works executed to define the City as such, linger in a chromatic no-man's land.  Too young to qualify for the renaissance option, but not wanting to remain old school, a variety of solutions have developed.  Pale has become the new saturated color.  And even worse, pastel.   

Sometimes a cheap version of sponge painting popular in suburban McMansions of the late 1980's is applied to disguise that momentary regret and sense that something has been lost as the past is scraped away from these edifices and they lurch into the future.

Every once in awhile, though, you will find that rare Palazzetto, which like Miss Havisham's, proudly wears the remains of a fully saturated red ochre as a badge of honor from some ancienne regime.

More Drawing, More Laundry

Somewhere in that space between myth and memory, history and nostalgia lies the potential of the ordinary.  My work in general, and these large scale drawings in specific, explore the possibilities of the quotidien.  What could be more persistent than laundry put out to dry?  So I hung them out the window alla romana.

2764



view of the Palatine hill from the Circus Maximus

Thursday, April 21 marked the 2764th anniversary of the founding of Roma (if your not quick at math, that makes it 753 BC),  so over the weekend I made a pilgrimage to the supposed spot of the Romulean hut on the Palatine.  It isnt much to look at now, just a few tufa blocks scattered about which belong to the infrastructure of a temple of the 2nd century BC that partially obscure a bit of bedrock with a few holes in it from the 8th century BC.  But a  simple reed hut stood for over a thousand years, anchored in those holes, tended by priests who patched and repaired with care the reeds as the city expanded from the modest pomerium of Romulus to the marble faced concrete heart of empire.
 
Pomerium.  The sacred boundary of the City laid out by Romulus, original dimensions marked by cippi, or boundary stones, circumnavigated the Palatine.  Romulus killed his twin Remus for violating the pomerium.  The pomerium is not the same as the city walls, which are military in function, though they may have run in tandem.  The pomerium is sacred and religious in function.  It is a reflection of the divine cosmos on earth, laid out through augury and divination.  I stood there for a good bit staring at those little holes, thinking about the sacred and the divine, and how today our urban planning is strictly financial (and political).  Tourist came and went, believing there wasnt anything to see (the little sign that says house of Romulus in fake latin script is obsured by dirt)


8th century BC holes upper center 

The hut dissapeared sometime in the late 4th century AD, like so many other things ancient and vulnerable.  The last games in the Colosseum were held in 404 AD.  The past was  replaced by a new order and a newish concept of the divine which was not associated with the earth, but resided in its entirety elsewhere.

Walls

A wall in Roma is never just a wall - life here isnt that simple. A wall is so much more than a wall - it is a conversation between the centuries.  The brown grey volcanic tufa favored during the republican period, brick and marble of the imperial epoch, the rubble of the late antique and middle ages, the applied fantasies of the baroque and then brick again with travertine from the Fascist era form a sort of haphazard stratigraphy .  The scars of hopes, desires, tastes and trends are etched on the surface for all to see - if you choose to look.  Doorways and windows have come and gone.  A fragment of a gothic arch, traced only by an outline of brick, pushed aside for a more modern intervention sits on top of a truly robust roman arch.  The walls endure and adapt like so much aluvium piled high.  Here, the erasure of time hasnt fully succeded. 

Sometimes I stand silently nearby and try to listen to the conversation.