82
Mark Kostabi (Los Angeles, 1960)Enrico Baj (Italian, 1924 - 2003)
Exit from Paradise, 1992
Mixed media: oil on canvas with inclusions of mirrors and cords
h cm 183X150
Contaminations is the global title of the experimental collaboration between Mark Kostabi and Enrico Baj in the summer of 1992. The encounter-clash between the then young American artist and the almost seventy-year-old Italian master resulted in the production of over twenty large canvases and a varied series of collages and drawings of great artistic and cultural interest:
“In the case of the Baj-Kostabi encounter […] the two do not work together to blend into each other […]. In the major works, in the paintings, the encounter tends towards a clash between opposing modes and behaviors. Kostabi's works are descriptive, legible, very smooth […]. In Baj [instead] thickness prevails, the material that scratches to the point of irritation, the expression and a lively chromaticism.” (AA.VV, Baj&Kostabi, Fabbri Editori, p. 8)
“[Yet] the result is a perfect amalgam. Even if there are stark contrasts between Baj's brutal, menacing, and decorated generals and Kostabi's estranged, anonymous, mechanically mixed-up everyman, [they] are philosophically related.” (Mark Kostabi, The Everyman and the General in AA.VV, Baj&Kostabi, Fabbri Editori, p. 16)
The whole experience, moreover, will be summarized as follows by the critic Pierre Restany:
"Placed at two different points in their lives, Baj and Kostabi recognized each other as brothers in thought. They sensed that together they could adopt a clear and lucid attitude towards today's world: a smile charged with enough human warmth to allow themselves the luxury of occasionally grinding our teeth. And so they give us a remarkable lesson in aesthetic morality." (Pierre Restany, A Moral Lesson in Aesthetics, in AA.VV, Baj&Kostabi, Fabbri Editori, p. 49)
The following work is published on page 90 of the "Baj & Kostabi" catalog published by Fabbri Editore in 1992 (card 20, Exit from Paradise) . Label on the back. Signed lower left.
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