Cuckoo – (Nico Jungman) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Nico Jungman

Museum: Viafarini (Milan, Italy)

Technique: Plaster

Clothes, amplification, frame, wool, light, platoon, origin, ritual, scripta, icon, percussions, rhythmics, temple, earth, uniform, sacrality, burnished branches are the components which characterise Cuckoo, an Alpine procession that could also be a South African esoteric ritual; or a carnival parade, or maybe even a sabbat in which black figures, rhythmically co-opted, point huge tree-trunks by hitting them with axes and prepare a sacrifice altar on which Nico Vascellari, together with Stephen O’Malley and John Wiese (members respectively of Sunn O))) and Bastard Noise), perform. The performance event represents a climax, which informs the environment in order to return it into a catatonic state of quiescence. On a forge erected on burnished trunk trees, among roughed out stands and hanging beams of wood and metal, Vascellari and the two musicians play and sing along with the rhythmic scanned by the carpenters who in another seat (in the gallery’s courtyard) keeps on pointing tree-trunks. The performance guides the spectator to distinguish and alternatively fuse the elements that make up this titillating absence and demure search for a shape within a unitary environment, consisting of the crossing of wooden sculptures and layers of melted plastic with the impressions of the performers; animated by the mobile light glares and by cadenced and obsessive rhythms; enriched by elements taken from our folklore and from an animistic religious feeling. All rigorously orchestrated and organised by the artist, who designed the logos and the clothes, defines the actions and sounds and finally realises the sculptures that determine the whole environment.