CONVERSATION IN PIECES | JANI RUSCICA

Jani Ruscica brings thier research through different languages, passing from photography to video, from sculpture to drawing. Following this multidisciplinarity, the artist constructs their work Conversation in Pieces (2016) consisting of a set of objects positioned on a stage that come to life thanks to a series of programmed performances.

The five objects, echoes of Luigi Pirandello’s play Six characters in search of an author, somehow replace the actors and position themselves as new protagonists of a possible play with their own autonomy and identity. In fact, on this stage the objects find their space to be themselves in a suspended time that generates the doubt whether the performance has already taken place or whether the objects are silently waiting to be activated. The installation, in fact, lives in different moments in which performers activate the various components. This activation creates a new type of dialogue between the different elements on the stage. The characters / objects have been carefully chosen by the artist: the objects, that Ruscica has made in collaboration with artisans, are referring to particular stories and anecdotes from different contexts and eras. On the stage is possible to see the materialization of the imaginary instrument, the Parlamonium, described by Walter Benjamin, or the puppets made in the likeness of paleoartists, the twins Adrie and Alfons Kennis, a carillon taken from the Soviet cartoon Shkatulka s sekretom and also a ventriloquist’s head that takes the form of the artist themself.

Conversation in Pieces is a work that aims to focus on the different relational degrees that exist between people as well as between objects. The title itself refers to the pictorial tradition in which the figures within the image were represented in conversations or collective attitudes. Ruscica’s interesting action is the shift created by thier installation: at the center there are no longer people but objects, which manage to live independently and become the center of conversation as well as activators of space. Objects, like humans, are not just existing but they found their realization in a continuous interchange with the surrounding elements and with the hosting space: playing between the different forms of representation and the different degrees of relationship between image, object, symbol and role, the artist demonstrates the complexity of interaction and definition of the self.

Jani Ruscica, Conversation in Pieces, 2016
Installation with five sculptures, performances
Different sizes

© Jani Ruscica Conversation in Pieces, courtesy of Galerie Anhava, Helsinki, photos: Pirje Mykkänen / National Gallery of Finland

18/02/2022