Tags: Archivio Bonotto, Fluxus, Play It By Trust, Sognare, Wish Tree, Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono is no doubt one of the most outstanding figures in contemporary culture. An eclectic artist, in the ‘60s she joined the movement Fluxus and shared the social and artistic engagement of those days’ generations. Yoko Ono is now the protagonist of ‘Sognare’, a personal exhibition at Treviso Santa Caterina Museum, open till January 7, 2008. Sponsored by Comune di Treviso, Lazzari Cultural Association and Archivio Bonotto, the exhibition offers a rich and varied selection of her works and underscores the features that illustrate at best the American artist’s creative power. A heartfelt attempt to start a dialogue with the Museum’s framework is the motif underlying works like ‘Blue Room Event’, which Yoko Ono created during her stay in Treviso. A set of extremely suggestive captions, hanging on the walls of the Museum’s cloister, convey highly conceptual values in sentences containing instructions that cannot be physically carried out, but are meant to be materialised in the mind of readers. With the new version of ‘My Mummy Was Very Beautiful’ the artist offers viewers an opportunity to interact with the work of art by asking them to leave a photo of their mother. The historically relevant ‘Wish Tree’ is a work in which the combination of sensibility and thought seems to bridge the Western and the Eastern World. In this case people are asked to write their deepest wishes on slips of paper and hang them on a tree’s branches. The exhibition ends with the suggestive marble version of ‘Play It by Trust’, in which a large, imposing, bright and pure chessboard has both marble squares and pawns in the same shade of white. Black has disappeared, and, as a consequence, the rules of the game appear subverted, the game itself, virtually endless, is the metaphor of an encounter leading to a meaningful relationship rather than to a conflicting one. The artist’s strong personality conveys a world of values and messages through an exhibition meant to give visitors clues for reflection, to invite them to establish a relationship with the works on display, and to actively take part in a great creative event rather than be merely spectators.