Click here to view the Art & Society Final Project by Mytro Patramani.
Below is an archive of Mytro Patramani‘s Preliminary Work from the Spring 2020 Art & Society Course:
Inspiration for Final Project:
Mid-Term Project: Io sto a casa
Pastels:
Inks:
Sculptures:
During those last few weeks my life changed a lot. It’s a strange time we are going through and we are all alarmed. We stay home to keep the world safe. So what happens when you have to stay inside the house ALL DAY? I started drawing some everyday habbits or scenes of my life through covid-19 outbreak, however while days passed by everything became more fluid and surreal.
Wake up, have a coffee , take pyjamas off, write , think , paint ,sculpt, eat, have an other coffee , a nap , skype,
read, drink, eat again, have a shower , wear pyjamas, have a wine , Netflix, sleep.
So after some time, if this word makes any sense anymore, things get upside down. Wake a, eat a coffee, skype nap , sculpt pyjamas, drink, wear a wine , Netflix, an other coffee, write a nap , eat , and so on.
Mid-Term Work-in-Progress
Reading Response, Jerry Saltz “What Art Is and What Artists Do”:
Jerry Saltz ”What art is and what artists do” is a text I wish I had ”met” before. It’s enlightining, even though I might not embrace everything in it, specifically the part about how art is always based in a theory. But again I can’t cancel it or disagree with it.
My favourite part that touched me right into the soul was the Cat/Dog example. It was so good and I related so much I actually read the paragraph four times and one more to read it to somebody else. Simulating the artist as a Cat and art as a Dog is such a simple even minimal example anyone can read and understand. But it’s such an integrated view and that’s the magic of it. All of us should really choose our couch wisely and work really hard for it.
In conclusion Saltz is right because art won’t save the world, but it’s hard to even remember times without art. Because indeed art is a desire from within.
I’m closing with a David Hockney’s quote I find to be related…
”If any artists tells you he is not having fun in his studio, there’s something wrong with him.”
Covid-19 Reflection:
A few weeks ago before the quarantine was the situation of our daily life, we were asked to respond to Rebecca Solnit’s The Blue of Distance. And I did respond.
I wrote about blue as a colour and what this could maybe symbolize;
Now some weeks later, I find this to be an extremely weird coincidence: reflecting on Solnit’s text, I think of all those other things about blue… that make me think and actually make me sympathize.
Other than isolation, the national mandate “Io resto a casa” brought distance into my life. I’m sitting every day on the balcony of my aunt’s house, and every day I see the same buildings. They are pretty I’m not judging them… I’m frustrated that I can’t see the sky the way I want to. I can’t even see the horizon or at least further than the buildings. It seems I’m stuck like a statue. And I’m blue.
Because I’m distant from all those things I wanted to do and see and experience.
So now I’m a bit closer to understanding: “The Blue of Distance explores the colour’s role as a metaphor of longing, weaving together a larger narrative about the distance between us and the object of our desire…” .
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Mid-Term Project Work-in-progress;
“Guidebook” Project:
In 2020 Myrto Patramani came upon “Siena Il Palazzo Publico” published in 1913. The book was intended as a historic resource and guide about the city of Siena. Myrto began to intervene in the book, with artistic and illustrational methods “writing” her own personal little stories and experiences in this already-written , old book. A try to make past and present to co-exist. Giving the book the chance to take another form and dimension and to have the chance to “reenact” 107 years later.
Reading response “Blue of Distance” by Rebecca Solnit:
Blue .
It’s all around us yet somehow it feels forever out of reach.
Rebecca Solnit in a few words describes in a very mellow way this feeling of craving the atmospheric blue and what this represents.
Picasso , Yves Klein ,Van Gogh, and many more countless artists, from the 18th century even , craved to find the perfect blue and the dreamy dimension of it. Symbolises fantasy world. Dispear. Loyalty. Night. Dreams. DIvine grace.
But then also it’s not about what it represents. It’s about the blue itself.
As the sky and as the ocean..infinite.
Intro Unit “Tempo Zulu” Project:
My Tempo Zulu project focuses on the response to Eva Marisaldi ‘s installation stone “ Come Alone” (Vieni da solo) . To me it was very interesting the feeling this stone made me feel. It’s in the city center, however unnoticeable and in the same time so meaningful. A phrase you can translate in different ways and make countless assumptions about it. One of mine was to continue the “Installation-phrase” and assume somebody came indeed. So I chose the amphitheatre in Fortezza to place my own actually golden stone writing “ You came” (E arrivato).
So as that was my first option then I thought as long as this project is imagination based I could go as far as possible. Having already respond to an artist I thought I could make an other piece this time Inspired by an other artist. Talking about Christo and Jan Claire.
Both of them known for their huge landscape installations and Land Art projects based in architectural means. Especially known for their “packing” monuments lying long sheets in natural places. In 1970 they “packed” two monuments of Milan : King Vittorio Emanuele II and the monument of Leonardo Da Vinci Piazza della Scala. It’s interesting because in this installation there’s no political or social intent. But only the desire to arouse emotion and provoke a strong feeling of estrangement.
It’s well known Sienese people adore tradition and love the way their city has stopped in time. The Tower in Piazza del Campo “ Torre del Mangia” is the ensign of the city so It’d be fascinating to hide this symbol (in the city of the symbols) that it’s main purpose was to be seen from every corner of the city.
Intro Unit “Walk of Destiny” Project:
“Walking as art calls attention to the simplest aspects of the act: the way rural walking measures the body and the earth against each other the way urban walking elicits unpredictable social encounters..[ the way one person’s act can be invitation to another’s imagination the way every gesture can be imagined as a brief and invisible sculpture..] “
Rebecca Solnit in this chapter focuses on the way “walking”, as a physical action can take a conceptual form and be a huge inspiration in the Artistic tradition. Many artists experience walking as a spiritual moment and others as a physical performance. My favourite example in Solnit’s excerpt is Marina Abramovic’s and Ulay’s Performance ”The Lovers” . Abramovic and Ulay start walking the Great Wall from east and west. It took 3 months of walking in order to meet in the middle, where they would break up and then walk seperate ways. It’s a symbolic and poetic Performance, analyzing people’s bond and relationships and also the literal use of walking , as going forward.
My personal experience on walking in the streets of Siena , made me realise that I see and sense things based on the things I have already seen. And the things I had not yet seen pointed out to me. I walked up and I walked down, I saw bricks and fountains all around.