Gianfranco Gorgoni with kind permission of Archivio Merz
CRITICAL – The Turin-born Arte Povera artist used simple materials to express innovative ideas. The LaM is dedicating a retrospective to him, the first in France in thirty years.
Marisa Merz, these are two small slippers made of Vair, copper wire, knitted in 1975 like two small breaths of air, sometimes pierced with nails that have turned green like the nails of the crucifixion, precious, modest, symbolic. The representation of female identity, fragile and strong at the same time? About the trace of human existence in the infinity of time? Or of the individual, a small dust of matter that stands opposite the multitude of living beings? The field of interpretation is open, because this radically pure artist, who was long described as the only woman of Arte Povera, speaks of poetry through forms even in the shadow of her – more famous – husband Mario Merz.
These two copper slippers, a kind of magic trophy or witch stigmata, were highlighted by the British daily newspaper The guard following his death on July 20, 2019 at the age of 93. Placed like the passage of a ghost on a simple wooden chair, they are the sculptural signature of this Turin-born artist…
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