Mycenae-wave

Fresco on wooden panel

cm 80 x 110 x 3

2013

There are two ways in which the grid paintings by Fabrizio Ruggiero assert to be central to Contemporary Art .
One is spatial; the other is temporal.
In the spatial sense, the grid states the autonomy of the realm of art. Flattened, geometricized, ordered, it is antinatural, antimimetic, antireal. In the flatness that results from its coordinates, the grid is the means of crowding out the dimensions of the real and replacing them with the lateral spread of a single surface. In the overall regularity of its organization, it is the result not of imitation, but of aesthetic decree. Insofar as its order is that of pure relationship, the grid is a way of abrogating the claims of natural objects to have an order particular to themselves; the relationships in the aesthetic field are shown by the grid to be in a world apart and, with respect to natural objects, to be both prior and final. The grid declares the space of art to be at once autonomous and autotelic, having an end or purpose in itself.

In the temporal dimension, the grid is an emblem of Contemporary by being just that: the form that is ubiquitous, combined to precipitate the grid into a position of aesthetic preeminence. But once the grid appears it seems quite resistant to change, by depriving its world of development, one is obviously not depriving it of quality.
There is no necessary connection between good art and change, no matter how conditioned we may be to think that there is. Indeed, as we have a more and more extended experience of the grid, we have discovered its capacity to serve as a paradigm or model for the antidevelopmental, the antinarrative, the antihistorical.
 By "discovering" the grid, FR.. landed in a place that was out of reach of everything that went before. Which is to say, he landed in the present.

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