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P.S.1 Newspaper

2008 Fall

Gino De Dominicis: Invisibility and Immortality

Gino De Dominicis and I met not in the art world, but in a casino in Lido, Italy. I was conducting research for Casino Fantasma, a show which would later take place during the 1990 Venice Biennale. I was at a pre-Biennale meeting with officials (different times, different jobs) where I kept seeing the same figure—a cloaked, Dali-esque, mustachioed, grand gambler. I only play blackjack, but rather well. He came over to watch me play, and we quickly became friends. Gino loved everything about cards, everything about casinos, and everything about the night.

Gino was a visible force at the Biennale. His usual headquarters were a palazzo supposedly owned by his family. He was known to intentionally mythologize his past to a point beyond lying, to a level where fantasy became confused with reality, by not only himself, but also those around him. Someone who is very secretive about his friends and contacts, Gino spun tales and myths about himself without any corrective mechanism or inhibition. He would invite people to the palazzo after hours where he served drinks and performed card tricks. 

It was at one of these events that we planned a show of his works in New York City. These ideas, however, were stalled by his extreme fear of flying and compounded by his insistence for a special suite aboard the Queen Elizabeth II—a request that put the exhibition beyond the reach of P.S.1 (and other institutions). Yet we proceeded to organize the show. Whenever I was in Europe, we would met in Rome and look over floor plans. We decided to present Gino’s Invisible Wall series, which incorporated skulls, other ominous objects, and false walls and mirrors that made visitors seem to disappear. 

Though Gino intentionally delayed the exhibition, a date was finally set. This was then cancelled when Gino accepted an invitation extended by the Murray and Isabella Rayburn Foundation to come to New York for an exhibition in 1989. He agreed because he was under the impression the Concorde was a fast ship. Gino only realized he would be airborne after lift off. 

His work was legendary and many New York artists looked forward with great anticipation to the show. Gino later complained the exhibition did not introduce his work properly to new audiences. This was not unusual; he was typically critical of his own exhibitions.

Gino’s death (?) occurred in 1998 and in the following year I organized a small testimonial exhibition, The Game Room, with Egidio Marzona. This installation included a painting, a clock without any hands, a video, as well as a poker table for the use of museum visitors, in memory of his love of gambling and his brilliant strategies.

Planned for several years, this long-awaited exhibition of Gino’s work is not a retrospective but a survey that focuses on his major paintings and other masterpieces. The show is organized by Andrea Bellini, a curator who brings with him the energy of youth, Laura Cherubini, an expert scholar on the works of the artist, and myself with the advantage of a network of friends who have long supported Gino. Especially valuable to this exhibition have been the long time P.S.1 trustees Rosa and Gilberto Sandretto, who have encouraged the prospects of this show from the very beginning.

Alanna Heiss, P.S.1 Director  

Gino De Dominicis can be considered one of the most emblematic and mysterious figures in the history of Italian art in the post-WWII period. He is still in many ways something of a mystery, surrounded by a legendary aura. Like a prince out of a distant past, elegant and remote, Gino De Dominicis was surrounded throughout his life by a kind of court, in true Renaissance style, which included beautiful and virginal vestals, artists and scholars, merchants and saltimbanques. 

In Rome—a city he loved above all others because it was eternal and impossible—Gino De Dominicis enjoyed entertaining this odd assemblage with extraordinary magic tricks. These tricks exalted the image of the artist—benevolent, and at times ferocious—and with them he hypnotized his adoring public. In return he demanded, and received, absolute devotion, unconditional love. Everyone, even people who were in his presence for only half an hour, has a story about Gino De Dominicis, an endless series of anecdotes and myths, of court intrigues and betrayals. Speaking to those who knew him, one will hear that Gino was a legendary and formidable lover, that he lived only at night like a Gothic count, that he was able to predict with precision the exact day of his own death, and that perhaps he is not dead at all, but rather spends his days basking in the sun on a beautiful island in the South Pacific.

Andrea Bellini 

At a certain point in our friendship, I learned that Gino would be in New York for a show at the Murray and Isabella Rayburn Foundation. Since he didn’t like to fly, he scouted out the possibility of arriving by sea but because of time factors, he decided on the Concorde. 

Baron Franchetti, a very important Italian collector and a close friend of both Gino’s and mine, was also in New York. It was a glorious time for Italian art: that morning we visited Piero Manzoni’s show at Hirschl & Adler, which was really magnificent, and then the next day, we were going to have the privilege of seeing a De Dominicis show. Wow! 

That evening, Gino invited us for dinner and we made plans to meet in front of the Plaza Hotel at 8 p.m. sharp. At 8:05 p.m. an extra-extra stretch white limo appeared in front of the Plaza. Baron Franchetti and I started to get nervous when a fully dressed driver with proper cap climbed out, and then proceeded to open the limo door in front of us. We looked inside and at the very end of the car we saw Gino waving at us with a lovely young girl at his side. He invited us to join him, offering us glasses of champagne while the driver took us to an amazing seafood restaurant under Grand Central Station, where Gino ordered the entire meal for us even though he didn’t speak any English. He really made us feel at home in a city we’d visited for decades, although for him, it was the very first night of his life in the Big Apple. 

Giulio Figarolo, Count of Gropello

We are very pleased to loan P.S.1 our Untitled work by Gino De Dominicis for a long overdue exhibition of this unique Italian artist. In fact, over forty years have passed since Gino printed his own obituary in a manifesto to promote his first solo show at Galleria l’Attico in Rome. 

As we investigated the world of Italian art, Nancy and I learned about Gino’s genius and we have been mesmerized by his work ever since. One of the early performance artists, he supposedly made a person disappear during a performance in 1977. Gino’s fascination with the mythological Goddess of Beauty, Urvasi, and her love affair with the Sumerian King Gilgamesh lends a spiritual and otherworldly quality to his work which we find extremely moving.

Our interest in his life was further enhanced when we learned that our home in Rome is located in the same building, on via San Pantaleo, where Gino had also lived and worked.

His death, at the age of 51 on November 29, 1998, arrived despite his many protestations and “refusal of death.” His spirit continues to live in the same way as the love affair between King Gilgamesh and Urvasi: invisible, but eternal. 

Nancy Olnick and Giorgio Spanu

A long time ago Pio Monti came to us with three works by the young artist Gino De Domincis. He showed them and we bought them. He recently confessed to us, that upon returning to his house he told this story: “I went to Bari and I sold three of Gino’s works to two crazy collectors.” In reality, the three works were only three pieces of signed paper, each one with the name of a work. “They paid me without any hesitation and without even a contract.” The two crazies were us, the three works are today pieces of history.

Marilena and Lorenzo Bonomo

Our friendship lasted more than 30 years: from the end of the ‘60s until his passing. Many long nights together in bars frequented by artists and by women; surreal and pleasant discussions until sunrise. Vodka and cigarettes. Many dialogues on art, on critics, and on cinema in his studios. In his last atelier, he used a soccer referee whistle to summon an extraordinarily beautiful assistant. 

During those long periods, I hung out with some of the best Avant-garde Roman artists: painters, sculptors, writers. Gino was very different from everyone else and absolutely unique: extremely intelligent, curious, kind, sarcastic, simple, surprising, elegant, always dressed in black. His talk, his thought, his criticisms didn’t resemble anyone else’s either, much like his work: eclectic, unpredictable, emotional, always profoundly stimulating for Avant-garde’s minds and eyes. 

I remember that during the funeral procession for our friend Alighiero Boetti, he showed me the time, pointing to his hand-less watch while he subtly lit a cigarette inside the Chiesa Nuova (church), not far from the late artist’s casket.

Gianni Barcelloni Corte

The following conversation between co-curator Laura Cherubini and author Robert Lumley took place at the Istituto Italiano di Cultura, London, September 2003. Courtesy Sauro Bocchi.

Robert Lumley: Gino De Dominicis was an artist who found himself by confronting artists in his immediate environment, specifically the ones within the context of Arte Povera at the end of the 1960s and 70s. Arte Povera has a strong conceptual basis but differs from American conceptualism. His reaction to Arte Povera can be seen in a couple of ways.

Laura Cherubini: Many critics have erroneously labelled Gino De Dominicis as a Conceptual artist, but he contested this and denied anything of the sort. He considered himself to be outside the art context. He was distinct from his contemporaries. In the 1970s work Mozzarella in Carrozza*, Gino De Dominicis placed a mozzarella cheese on the seat of a very fine antique carriage. With this work he meant to show that context did not define art. In other words, the mozzarella remains the same, no matter what the context is. This was also meant to take a stance against the system of Art, a concept derived from Duchamp’s work, in which context defines the meaning of an artwork. 

In 1982 when Gino showed the painting In principio era l’immagine at the Sperone Gallery in Rome, now in the collection at MoMA, he placed a toilet seat (an object reminiscent of Duchamp’s “ready-made” tradition) next to the painting to demonstrate that the painting was a work of art while the object, although shown in the same context, remained simply an object.

RL: Works of this kind are subtly critical of Conceptual art. In the 1970 work The Zodiac, Gino De Dominicis showcased real animals; a lion, two fish, etc… In this way he was adapting the language already developed by other artists within the context of Arte Povera, but using it in a different way. He chose to make a presentation rather than a representation.

LC: Gino thought that the zodiac opposed Conceptual art, because rather than dematerializing things and reducing them to a language, it transformed concepts into matter. The materials Gino used were the same as Conceptual artists, but the process was inverted. He considered this work “homeopathic,” and actually used this word to express a way to cure the disease of Conceptual art.

RL: An important feature of Arte Povera is that some of these artists began moving away from painting.

LC: When the Istituto Italiano di Cultura asked me to curate a tribute to Gino De Dominicis in London in 2003, I decided to concentrate on his paintings. The reasons for this choice was that I felt that the spaces of the Istituto leant itself better to painting and was actually reminiscent of the artist’s own home. Also, Gino valued and believed in his painting much more than he did in his other works. He was an extraordinarily skilled painter, which can be seen in his works, but also an incredible draughtsman, choosing his materials with care and usually using only pencil or tempera on board. In painting Gino found what he had been searching for: a way to suspend time. He was fascinated by the idea of a time machine and to him, painting was something that took place beyond time and beyond even the existence of the artist himself.

RL: In this case we return to a more ancient idea of art and of the artist; art as mystery with a very special and almost religious role. In this way, he was responding to Conceptual art, a collective moment that sought to replace this type of spiritual art with works that were more in touch with everyday life and commonplace aspects of existence.

LC: Gino was essential. He used few figures in his paintings and worked with only a few basic themes—eternal themes such as gravity, infinity, and immortality—that were continuously used in his works. He had a complete and unwavering faith in the absolute centrality of art.

Laura Cherubini and Robert Lumley

Throughout my home, the ceilings are covered with Sixteenth-century frescoes of the Mannerist school. Around 1995, I invited Gino to come see where I had installed his Untitled (Portrait of Johanna B.). Upon seeing the frescoes, he immediately said that they did not hold up next to his work and proposed to send one of his assistants to paint over them. I explained that this was impossible because the frescoes were protected by Italy’s cultural heritage laws. Gino then proposed that I should cover them with white fabric, insisting that they lacked respect for his drawing.

I never did what he suggested but that’s not to say that one day I won’t.

Giovanni Giuliani

I met Gino De Dominicis in my hometown of Pescara, where important exhibitions of contemporary art have been hosted since the 1970s.

We were very young at that time and Gino was a real mystery to us. We felt his greatness and listened carefully when he spoke about art and life, but hardly about his work; it was impossible to have a close relationship with him.

He was a mystery, even physically: a good-looking young man, but nobody knew what his body looked like; he would arrive at the beach fully clothed, wearing a dark suit and a white shirt.

My husband and I, having been art collectors since we were young, have always followed his work, visited many of his exhibitions and bought some of his small works, but the artwork we are loaning for the exhibition is the one we had always longed for and it was such a great joy to finally be able to own it.

Federica Coen

In 1997 I went to Rome to meet Gino to discuss a show for P.S.1. I rang his bell and after a few minutes, the shutter of the first floor window opened slightly. I announced myself, Gino acknowledged me, but he didn’t open the door until he explained how I had to enter the palazzo. He said, “When you go in, you’ll see a white line. Please don’t cross it. Stay between the door, the wall, and the white line until you get to the step and wait there.” This white line was only 50 cm wide so I put my back against the wall, hunched over, very careful not to touch the line. And this was a big hall! It was so strange because beyond the line, there was just empty space. 

Gino insisted on communicating through a translator but in a strange way—he whispering everything into her ear, then she into mine. Back and forth for two hours! At the end of the meeting, he stopped whispering, turned to me and said in perfect French, “So, what do we drink now?”

Antoine Guerrero

Gino De Dominicis, the artist, revealed himself in intervals: in those moments of inspiration and reserve, those often alone and at night in which Gino felt like Gilgamesh—the Sumerian king who looked to attain immortality by challenging fate. De Dominicis, the man, as I remember him at least, was instead surprisingly “normal”: honest, sincere, and festive. He didn’t love to display any exceptionality as compared to other people. He didn’t like showing off. He made you accept what would have appeared extraordinary or extravagant as “evidently” ordinary. It is difficult to say whether, and in what measure, there were parities between the artist’s ambitions and the existence of De Domincis, the man. But maybe by keeping that balance a secret, Gino was able to combine both the absolutely generic and the absolutely peculiar in his work, as in his life.

I’ve often asked myself what Gino meant when he stated that his artworks were examples or models for attaining immortality. His works do not contain magic formulas, or even instructions on how to stop aging. However the more you view Gino’s works, the more you try to translate the sense of novelty and the unknown that they communicate to you into something known, and the more they escape your grasp. You realize that paradoxically the works “look at you”: posing certain questions and not others, triggering certain emotions and thoughts. Gino’s works are “watching you”; they can almost foretell what happens when encountering them because there’s nothing complacent or obliging with respect to the outside world. They present images and truths are refractory to predetermined patterns, not only formally and art historically but also in terms of knowledge and experience. Thus the works suggest that life is continual self-production: there are elements of life in the matter recreated by art. Gino was convinced that a work, once completed, should surprise him: give him more energy than the amount it took to create the piece. In a certain sense, for him the creation of a new work appeared unable to untangle itself from the desire to resist entropy and death. The work conveyed and perpetuated that desire.

Creation for Gino implied subtraction. It meant removing himself from the clarity of a determined here and now, and enhancing the awareness of a universe oblivious of an irreversible concatenation of cause and effect—a universe chaotic and yet immobile in its self-generative permanence. Gino reached that universe as an artist through his works, not as a man; however, that doesn’t mean that the artist was a dreamer alienated by man. On the contrary, there was symmetry and this symmetry needed to remain secret so to permit the artist to enter where man did not dare go. It’s not by chance that, as an artist, Gino addressed and expounded themes—like death, creation, and love—that were neither abstract nor esoteric. These are themes that not only must have profoundly touched him but that arguably affect humankind.

Still too little is known about nature, the mind, and the ties between mind and body, which encumbers confidence not only in scientific discoveries, theories of consciousness, and the spiritual revelations but also in art works that contemplate human life. De Dominicis’ work pursues and prompts this type of meditation. An important message that can be drawn is that a work of art is an event capable of transforming in much deeper ways than what was often thought by those who created it and by those who come into contact with it; the existence of art in the world isn’t proof  that the hands of time will stop but probably offers an opportunity to feel less and less inhibited in front of the thought of eternity.

Lia Rumma

1989 Roma, Viale Giulio Cesare: Tommaso and I have just installed ourselves in our renovated apartment in Rome, finally settling down and recovering from the move from the United States after ten memorable years in New York. Alanna Heiss has announced her visit to Rome with the purpose of interviewing Gino De Dominicis. For Gino, she is envisioning the show Casino Fantasma at the winter casino on the Lido di Venezia during the 44th Venice Biennial. Alanna has asked me to be the translator for the interview. I am very proud; this is a sign of her esteem.

I am aware of the responsibility she is entrusting me with. I had met Gino De Dominincis a few times—in New York we met only twice, and then during some short stays in Rome for his exhibition openings. Our admiration for his work had materialized itself in the acquisition of The Zodiac from Galleria Pieroni, a very beautiful piece. In fact, the blue painting on photographic paper is the result of a famous performance he had made at the Gallery L’Attico in 1970. The work fascinated us, with its figurines immerged in the blue of the sky, plus the mystery of the laws underlining the celestial bodies whose trajectories I used to consult in monthly horoscopes. The Zodiac won its place in our collection and in every home we have since lived in, the painting could be found above the fireplace.

The day of the interview arrives. Alanna and I head to the artist’s studio. Was it the one in Piazza San Pantaleo? Most probably. This is the first uncertainty about an encounter that did occur but whose memory remains unveiled between curtains of shadows and mist. The stairs were quite monumental; a true Roman scaleo. The entrance door a true portal accessing another world, where darkness had a compact substance, occasionally enlightened by the golden flashes emanating from the huge canvas of golden leaves depicting hermetic profiles of divine nature: a Sumerian temple perhaps.

The artist was sitting down in what seemed to be a throne, at the center of the main room. Alanna and I could have been the subjects of his ancient kingdom, or the adepts of his own religion. Instead was he a magician, exercising his astute tricks at the backstage of the theater?

I can’t recall that conversation. I was amazed by the surroundings, so attentive to translate the right words that the sense of the conversation is gone. But what is not gone and what stays in my memory is the enchanted atmosphere that totally absorbed us. Once we were back in the daylight, the fresh air we were breathing was the medium that brought us back to earth. I’ve never been able to find more information about the famous Casino Fantasma exhibition. Perhaps it is the artist himself who has performed a disappearing trick with his magic wand.

1999 Napoli: The scene changes: We’re now in Naples, at Lia Rumma’s place for a reception following Joseph Kosuth’s exhibition. A nice group of people, artists, critics, collectors, and friends gather together around the artist, most of them on the terrace, savoring the tasty Neapolitan meal. Tommaso and I are sitting in the living room where Gino De Dominicis is the center of the attention. I have been, and still am, shy in addressing the artist but I won’t miss the opportunity to remind him of our encounter during Alanna’s interview. He remembers it, and he knows me: “Are you not the lady who has undertaken and is following the project of my friend Vettor Pisani in Tuscany?”

From there on, he starts to recall the ancient friendship that had linked the two artists in Rome, to the point of sharing lives, apartments, women. He holds Vettor very much in esteem, even if they do not meet regularly anymore. I tell him about the Museo della Catastrofe, the Virginia Art Theatrum that Pisani had envisioned in his mind for a long time, until he founded it for real on the edge of this marble quarry in Serre di Rapolano, the abyss of the human consciousness. 

“I would like to come and see it and meet Vettor again, but I do not want to come for the opening or presentations with other people. You’ll come to pick me up in Rome and bring me there. Let’s do it this way.” Well, as strange it may appear, I never did this and I will regret it forever.

One day I call Laura from Milano for some unknown reason and she is there, crying, in front of Gino De Dominicis’ studio. He is dead; gone from our world, accomplishing his final disappearing act. His departure is inscribed amongst those of Alighiero Boetti, Mario Merz, Luciano Fabro, Sol LeWitt, friends that left us too early and of whom we have all become orphans. 

Giuliana Setari Carusi

I met Gino De Dominicis as a myth. A living myth. I saw him wandering in the night in the city where I had decided to live: Rome. I first met the character (without knowing who he was) and then I knew his art. The character, in fact, was a work of art—so was his face, his clothes, and his posture. When I began to study him, he wasn’t here anymore. As soon as I could, I became a collector of his works. And today I look for the answers that I wanted from this philosopher inside the perimeter of his frames.

Luca Josi

Between 1970 and 1972 Gino De Dominicis realized three videos with Gerry Schum: Quadrati cerchi, 3a soluzione di immortalità, De Dominicis vi vede, and Tentativo di volo, which is present in the exhibition at P.S.1. In Quadrati cerchi, as in Tentativo di volo, De Dominicis stands at the edge of a lake. He throws rocks in the water, waiting for the moment when the falling stone would form squares instead of concentric circles. 

3a soluzione di immortalità, De Dominicis vi vede is maybe the most explicit and the most direct involvement of the specific expressive possibilities of the video image aimed at the artist’s personal poetic. The desire to surpass time and the inability to escape death that accompanies De Dominicis’ entire line of artistic research is achieved through the use of technical devices such as video, as video records a fragment of life. Through the video image, even still today, at a distance of many years, De Dominicis looks directly into the eyes of his spectators and survives as such in his death. 

In Tentativo di volo, De Dominicis is standing with his back to the viewer, on a small balcony, framed by a brownish, watery landscape that from up-close is reminiscent of one of those typical pictorial compositions from the Romantic age. In this traditional landscape, the video image reminds, in a tight and limited way, the unavoidability of the laws of nature. For De Dominicis, the natural landscape is the frame in which the laws that he wants to subvert are forever inscribed and for this, the landscape is the primary place where his creative act, his utopia of immortality, must end in order to defeat the unrelenting quality of nature. 

The artist’s voice-over exemplifies the exercise that he intends accomplish: “Maybe because I was never able to swim, I decided to learn to fly. In fact, for three years I have repeated this same exercise. I will probably never learn to fly, but if I have my son exercise this, and the sons of my sons, then maybe one of my descendents will discover how to fly.” 

By saying this, De Dominicis proposes another solution to immortality; by passing on a task and a utopia, from generation in generation, imagining children, nephews, and descendents, on that balcony forever, on the edge of the lake. 

Elena Volpato

After a few years of hoping, I was able to join my friend Giulio di Gropello on a visit to Gino De Dominicis’ studio. I was extremely anxious to meet this strange and wonderful artist.

We arrived and finding the door open, we wandered in. No Gino. He had to be in a back room. Giulio called out that were there at the indicated time. No answer.

For the next hour I studied the finished pieces and works-in-progress. I fell in love with a painting of a size that I might have been able to afford. More shouts and knocks on doors still produced no sight of Gino. We resigned ourselves to the situation and left.

Happily I was allowed to have the painting I wanted. 

I never did meet Gino.

Robert Denison