Wednesday 7 March 2012

Alighiero Boetti- Game Plan- Tate Modern

The Boetti exhibition currently showing at the Tate Modern is a must see. Boetti's skill and prowess are shown through a diverse range of works- from sculpture, to drawing, to painting, to tapestry. Not only are the works interesting aesthetically and from a material point of view, they are also backed by intriguing thoughts of the artist.

Boetti uses a huge range of materials, I enjoyed the range of building materials used in some of the earlier sculptures. In "Lo che prendo il sole a Torino il 19 gennaio 1969" [Me Sunbathing in Turin on 19 January 1969] there was something very captivating and personal about the manner in which the small cement pieces were moulded- reminiscent of Anthony Gormley's army of clay figures. Such organic shapes were juxtaposed with man-made building materials. This room led on fluidly to "Order and disorder" which I particularly enjoyed and found I could draw parallels with my own work. Boetti's work struck a cord, the simplicity yet effectiveness of works such as a checkerboard pattern of square stones placed over a ruffled tracing paper was inspiring.

As I continued into the exhibition the quantity of work Boetti produced in his lifetime struck me. The larger Biro works showed admirable labour and tedium, and although he did not in fact draw every line to the page the ideas and the interspersion of white letters and commas gave the viewer something to 'decode' so to speak.

An excellent drawer and painter their were several rooms with further paintings, and humour came across throughout, but somehow worked alongside his more serious map tapestries. These tapestries engage with the continual alteration of borders and boundaries that were seen throughout the cold war, and again the amount of work and skill is impressive and breathtaking. Such beautiful traditional works seem quite rare in the contemporary art world so the textiles were very refreshing.

Game Plan is an exhibition with something to please everyone, from traditional to the conceptual, but never without thought and meaning.

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