Artist's Statement

Enjoy goldiechiari! - Letizia Ragaglia

“A playful and merry spirit”; this expression, used by the two artists to define their new research Enjoy, resumes the features that thread through the whole of goldiechiari’s artistic production. Beyond the first impact, immediately accessible and favour winning, the works of this consolidated couple grow out of solid social and political principles and aim to be important means of inter-cultural communication. Their joyful spirit is immutably linked with a very serious component, a mix that can be conceptually endorsed by reading again a “classic” like Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens. Published in German in Amsterdam in 1939, Homo Ludens still fascinates us with its analysis of “play” as a cultural phenomenon where the concept of “play” in itself becomes an extension of the concept of “culture” in all its possible forms. The great Dutch historian runs an indepth analysis of the term “play” etymology and studies its several declinations in various cultural environments with a fascinating taste for inter-disciplinary approach. And it is from Huizinga’s unprejudiced approach that an expanded interpretation of some of his findings can be derived and be used as a critical starting point.

Following Huizinga “play” is a very serious matter, and above all an act of freedom; play goes beyond the limits of a purely biological activity: it is a function which embodies a sense “Something taking part in the ‘play’ goes beyond the immediate instinct to preserve life, something that gives sense to the act of playing”1. “Each play is above all an act of freedom […]. The need for it becomes urgent because desire makes it so. Play can be transferred to any moment in time or not take place”2. “Within the spaces which are assigned to play a specific and absolute order dominates”3. Huizinga’s considerations gain new life in the heterogeneous works of goldiechiari, who display western icons establishing clear rules of the game for the observer to respect in order to be able to fully enjoy their works. The audience is free to choose whether to accept or not these rules often consisting of displacements, extrange-ments, changes in the original functions, but once it has entered the playful dimension and spirit it is invited to “play” seriously and without fear.

goldiechiari‘s works are “relational” by definition, with a strong tension towards a communication between subjects more than a contemplation of the object. The choice itself of working as a couple questions the artwork’s authorship and shifts the focus of interest towards a permanent ri-definition of betrayed parameters. The dialectics of creating with more than two hands - that does not stop at the dialogue within the couple but involves others in the making of some of the projects - translates in an unstoppable enquiry into the stereotypes of western image universe. Be it artistic or historical iconographies, be it “visions” to be linked with the urban or any other landscape context, be it commonplaces rooted into everyday socio-politcs, or even symbols to be associated with female identity, the two artists operate in a de-stabilizing and deconstructionist manner through a multiple set of media of expression that include performance and installations, video and photography. In this approach the images of a uncontaminated nature belonging to the idyllic impressionist compositions become staged sets where the Dejeurner sur l’herbe by Manet transforms into a picnic on a dump and the famous ponds by Monet are inhabited by plastic bags nympheas floating among many kinds of rubbish. Nevertheless it is not just a simple parody but a learned pretence trying to find a new untamed way of looking at reality.

Reading goldiechiari’s works is always a multilayered, non-univocal exercise. In this respect the 2004 Welcome installation is emblematic. The public moves within a series of lined up structures made of cement on whose higher than normal tops broken glasses and bottlenecks can be seen. Only by watching from above it is possible to identify the “Welcome” inscription, and consequently understand its implicit formal denial which refers to the difficult dynamics of accepting the others in all its declinations.

The two artists wearing two crochet-needled balaclavas -an orange-one with goldie written on and a rose-one with chiari written on which anybody can wear in so becoming goldiechiari – develop into a living metaphor of a tireless fight against habits and expectations. The two artists “guerrilla” moves against gangrenous codifications, passively accepted norms, or against a general dullness of the senses. Their fresh, apparently light yet trenchant poetics is willingly conveyed through means that lie outside the traditional idea of artistic creation and join in a trend toward relation-ality which is more and more frequently found in the international art scene. Two women who have chosen to collaborate and consequently to give up the myth of individual inspiration – something they ironically synthesize in the ”100% no-genius” motto – to produce art works that shock and go beyond pure contemplation. Two friends who love to face contemporary obsessions and taboos well aware that enjoying a work of art within the exhibiting space of a gallery or a public place does not allow to hide emotions or embarrassment as easily as it may happen in the darkness of a movie-theatre or a theatre or while reading in intimate surroundings.

Their recent project Enjoy revolves around an object of craving, something causing pleasure, but above all aims at recreating a strongly visual and tactile atmosphere of attraction around it with constant hints but without concretely exposing them. Such strategies belong to goldiechiari’s, but in this case they also challenge the stereotype of artistic creation that wants to identify at all costs the feminine side in a woman’s art work. This does not generally apply to a man’s work, while such a question almost spontaneously emerges in front of a woman-artist’s work.

goldiechiari wisely avoid the question by playing with the fact that their works are not immediately recognizable, such as the model of the vagina-neck or the giant-sized prototype of the sexual stimulation object, to the point that in the video the presence of both the object of desire and the sexual element are just conjured up and can be apprehended, but are never really exposed. Intimate gestures and representations of intimate parts become once again the stage of an ambiguous pretence aiming at throwing a new eye over a reality that in the end has never freed itself from an aura of perversion and unsinkable taboo.
1 Huizinga Johan, Homo ludens, Torino: Einaudi, 1973, p. 3.
2 Ibidem, pag. 11.
3 Ibidem, pag. 14.



ENJOY - Elaine Levy

From the very beginning of their collaboration in 1997, Sara “goldie” Goldschmied and Eleonora Chiari have questioned us through irony and derision. Maybe it is the play on perception and the effect of identification embodied by their work, or maybe just the positive and claim-less message that touches us? Making fun of the institutional art system and of the idea of the artist itself, goldiechiari finally brandish the “100% no genius” expression as a motto. Through multi-field creation, action and performance are fed from fictional and ironic scenarii while other transitory installations are tinctured with the pure emotion of individual experience.

With the vulgar issues of the “Enjoy” project, goldiechiari move to a brand new aesthetic. The apparent lightness of the topic leads to the choice of a fresh minimalist twist, which makes the originality of this current project. Although it is in the direct line of their work, the recurrent sarcasm displays the sex toy photo series, the red resin sculpture and vagina’s lollypops as fantasizing, unusable pleasure gears.

The sense of decadence and play, humor and a moving irony are the means of action of a radical criticism formulated by goldiechiari. It is difficult to resist the charm of their artistic creation “disarmingly ludic”, which inevitably hangs the smile. Beside the video installation of the Objects of desire one will be astonished almost to hear the laughter of Sara and Eleonora, softened under the sound of the frictions, explaining they had to give it a few tries before “succeeding” with it.

Explicitly feminist, but certainly not in a traditional way, goldiechiari chose their own form of militancy. Basing their thought on contemplation and a certain form of artistic activism, they propose a simple but advanced work, visual but not mannered. Far from the commitment of an artist such as Valie Export in the 70’s and 80’s, goldiechiari are closer to someone like Pipilotti Rist for her funny side and freshness.

Sharp and direct, inventive and original the "Enjoy" project cannot disturb or offend. And it is not its purpose! Far from the new porno-chic or glam-trash esthetics displayed by various contemporary artists and acclaimed by many collectors, goldiechiari do not show "sex" but develop their thought about and around it. Their art is a new form of cleansed provocation, ribbing of the mind. The frankness of the presented pieces, from the lollypops to the acidulous resin prototype plunges us in an ever-derisory dreamlike and enjoyable universe.