(born Piräus in 1936) Untitled, 2005, iron, steel, jute bag, tar, paper,200 x 180 x 45 cm, (PP)

Photo certificate issued by the artist

Provenance:
Private Collection, Italy

Exhibition
:Jannis Kounellis, Hôtel des Arts, Toulon, September/December 2005, exhibition catalogue page 51 with ill.

In the summer of 2004, Kounellis undertakes in his Umbrian studio, a new cycle of works on large, white paper sheets fixed on metal plates. In each surface, Kounellis performed a large black macular using tar. The blot observed, revealed a velocity of an unrepeatable gesture, emphasized by the pouring of the warm tar that spread so rapidly that it could not permit retouches. Kounellis would leave the dripping tar to spread in order to expand the spot within a few days. During the elaboration of those patches, Kounellis realized that his “one gesture” methology (although with a different effect), resembling that of Pollock and Fontana. On one hand there is the tendency of pouring the tar from a container from an inclined position, leaving it wet without elaborating brushstrokes of any kind, and on the other hand there is the mental concentration before that unique gesture of the pouring out the liquid. Pollock and Fontana therefore became the synthesis of his plastic language, since the discovery in the sixties of a ton of carbon discharged on the floor of his studio and sucked up by a canvas, which became his qualified linguistic and special device. Every time a strong tension seemed to precede the gesture of pouring the tar from the bucket on the white paper, and as apparent on the spots, the act of liberating that emotion is present. In autumn, the actions of those works, lasted only a few weeks, were exposed in the exhibition of Karsten Greve in Cologne, arising surprise and disquietude for their dramatic appeal. As with other circumstances, it was clear that Kounellis thematic obsession was generated by a state of increasing anxiety. This was later confirmed after the exhibition in Oxford (2004), where the various works presented included the black stains behind metal bars. In 2005 in Toulon in the Hotel des Arts, Kounellis builds his whole special platform of the exhibition with a shocking display of black stains, often behind metal bars and sacks filled with carbon hanging on the surface of the plates with butcher hooks. This experience was one of Kounellis most intense emotional exhibitions. Bruno Cora