The Mover – an Outsider

Year 1986
Text by Laszlo Glozer

There he stands, slightly bent over, with his arms stretched out, holding a gigantic sphere above his head. The blue object seemingly weighs down on him, his posture becoming a heroic gesture turned towards us. Atlas with the globe? Far from it. In a playfully serious pose, the artist and the work unite: a modern sculpture with its creator now taking the world upon himself.
I saw the photo often, and often forgot about it. It hung for years in the Regensburg apartment, from whose windows you could see the Romanesque sculpture portal of the Schottenkirche. Long since, probably since moving to the old school building near Regensburg, the photo, along with many other works, adorns the staircase. A display of artworks casually hangs here; from the early Plexiglas constructions to the repeatedly processed Arte Utile panels, to the most recent sculptural figure fragments. In winter, the two monumental rosemary pots from the courtyard are added. All of this bears a single signature. And a trace of life.
The colour photo is beginning to fade. Yet, it catches the eye every time. With the growing temporal distance from the time of its capture, the posture gains symbolic value: there stands the artist as a young man, set out to seize and change the world.
Ever since I began contemplating a tribute to Pino Poggi, not only do memories of our many, many encounters surface, but repeatedly, this very photo. What a daring gesture: The sculptor confronts the photographer, interprets, and changes his own work. He exposes himself to the gaze, as if before a camera with a self-timer. He presents the work. He positions himself alongside, in front of it. He stands between the work and the audience. What is important now?
Indeed, it was only when I became more familiar with Poggi’s commitment to “useful art” that the photo really caught my attention. The idea that in today’s world, the disrupted, and largely destroyed communication needs urgent repair, was a significant impetus for the artist to transform the conventional form of the artistic work into something different, expanded, extending directly from the work to the audience. No longer just making sculptures, but stepping out of the studio and creating in the open air: that was the new task. To also involve the public, and make them into co-creators. To influence people, to include them in the process and activate them – that was the practical utopia of the arist, who in the early years of our acquaintance had transformed himself from a conventional sculptor to an emancipation facilitator; a position that sparked our many lively discussions.
Looking back at the 1970s, Pino Poggi’s Arte Utile emerges as a sovereign part of a movement that began and expanded euphorically in the footsteps of 1968, yet narrowed quite abruptly after. Poggi did not follow the turn away from socially engaged art. Only in the crisis of this great opening did it become clear to everyone how comprehensive and consistent Poggi’s work was as an artistic life plan. He didn’t need to retreat back into the studio because he never renounced the manual, formative work of the artist. Conversely, the strategy of the fundamentally conceptual Arte Utile continues in the new models. The actions and animations are now given in a fixed architectural framework. Instead of the mobility of the emancipatory street vendor, Pino Poggi now advertises with static images and transparent spatial concepts. The artist still approaches his audience, leads them by hand, and confronts them with his own, albeit pre-staged, experiences. This is, of course, figuratively speaking. Physically, the artist remains outside the operational spaces.
This is what makes the old photo so relevant: When the young artist, who after traditional training in Genoa set out on his journey to become a modern sculptor, steps in front of his monumental work, in this moment of display, Pino Poggi suddenly ceases to be a conventional sculptor: He himself is the actor here, and the work becomes an accesory. Or rather, the work expands into a singular act of argumentation; it is complete self-realization, a mission of absorbing and conveying, of creating connections. In this process of attempting interpersonal relationship, the learned profession and its outcome, the sculpture, is brought in with its full weight.
The old photo, I remain convinced, is a key image for me. There is the readiness to communicate, the sense of a mission, mixed with theatrical bombast, the self-questioning egocentric world of the outsider in its purest form. Noi altri (1982) was the defiant title of an exhibition four years ago, which summarized once more the “artistic activity and self-awareness in social space” that had almost vanished from the art scene at the time. Instead of the title questioning a new thematization of the artist’s profession as a “social worker, researcher, hermit” (as in 1979 in Hamburg), it seemed appropriate to manifest ourselves as the persisting ones: noi altri – we others.
Just as in these two cross-regional events, Poggi was already active as an inspirer, contact agent, and productive agitator right in the midst of things: He awakened not the worst of his colleagues when, in Munich, the presence, care, and promotion of contemporary art were noticeably lacking (1979: “On the Freedom of the Dependent Artist or the Dependence of the Free Artist”). But the mover always remains an outsider. Whether pushed aside or remaining on the fringe out of pride is another matter.
The implications of the color photo from the Sturm und Drang period do not contradict Poggi’s current work. He is a Gesamtkunstwerker, a one-man-total-theater, an irredeemable manipulator who stages the big and final questions in the face of life’s increasing dangers. No, the model builder Poggi does not lapse into pessimistic self-reflection. He prepares stages and backdrops, tries to strike the necessary atmosphere, and create mentally effective zones for an audience in need of emancipation. He is a director who is not too proud to hammer out warnings in capital letters. In his walk-in teaching pieces, he insists on the unmissable, the unmistakable. Or will, perhaps, the crucial nuances and unforeseen experiences arise when one day the spatial models, currently only traversable in thought, are to be executed?
When that time comes, we will find Pino, who has understood how to mix tradition and progression, already engaged in another new project. The missionary is simply an old-fashioned avant-gardist to whom the future, if there is one, opens up.

Laszlo Glozer et al.: Pino Poggi. Publishing-house Silke Schreiber, Munich, 1986, p. 16–19

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