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Maurice Agis has dedicated his artistic life to creating space and light experiences. His latest work, Dreamspace, will be opening at the end of April and will remain in Bologna for a month. Ella Carpenter delves deeper into the dream.
"Space is not something you contemplate, it is something you experience. Time is not something you experience, it is something you contemplate." A space experience is arriving in Bologna. An opportunity to enter into an enclosed world of colour and light, imbued with music and creativity, and escape from the hum-drum pattern of our lives. This experience is open to all; no prejudices accepted, no degree required, simply immerse yourself in Dreamspace and let the sensations take over.
Dreamspace is an inflatable, brightly coloured walk-in sculpture created by English artist Maurice Agis. This huge installation made of 106 different plastic cells, all joined together to create an entire body of colour, forms an interactive experience for all those who enter it. Blues, reds, greys and greens undulate and meld together under the play of light, creating waves of ever-changing colour that infuse the area. The entire structure is supported by currents of air that flow through the sculpture, encouraging a living, breathing effect. Agis is a sculptor, but a sculptor of air and space, and has managed to capture these ephemeral elements with his work.
The entire sculpture covers 2000m² and is totally cut-off from the outside world. There are no corridors, just unfolding space with forest-like columns dividing the different cells, through which air and music flow. Contemporary composer Stephen Montague has collaborated with Agis creating Bright Interiors, a soundtrack of 16 loops that endlessly repeat and interact, as the light and colour interacts within the space. Montague has taken sounds from natural sources and reworked them on computer, combining nature and technology to fill space as Agis has used light and coloured plastic.
There is a crucial element in Agis' work that fuses together the light, sound and continual movement: people. Without the human presence, Dreamspace is devoid of thought and experience. On entering, you take off your shoes, don a coloured robe and head in to wander round at your pleasure. There is no time limit. There are no limits whatsoever. You can dance or sing; lie down or read; watch the ripples of colours on your robe and on the people around you. Enter into Red and feel its energy; float away in Blue; languish in cool Green…. Agis has created this space to free our minds and let us escape and dream. People are in fact a prime part of the sculpture and accentuate the feeling of movement and energy. "The human presence in my work has been fundamental to its meaning," explains Agis, and he encourages people to directly participate in his work.
Dreamspace is entirely personal. At the entrance of Dreamspace is a book, in which the public can write their feelings, and where the full emotion of Dreamspace can be witnessed: "To see children skipping and grown men twirling was a sight that made me cry. I don't know whether they were tears for a world forgotten or a world remembered and brought back to life again." "A marvellous explosion of colours, a psychedelic experience." "Unbelievable, UNIQUE, peaceful - felt that if there were to be a heaven, walking in your artwork would be an approximation". Reactions range from sensual to sexual; memories of the womb to church tranquillity; ancient Greece to a future utopia. Agis feeds these responses back into the continual evolution of his Dreamspace project, delighting in people's reactions: "My greatest pleasure is when visitors express their thanks, joy, doubts, fears and wonder that this work is seriously meant for all people including themselves".
Maurice Agis first started working on interactive public art in the 1960s in London, after having graduated at St. Martins. He had become disillusioned with the established art world and wanted to liberate his work and express his idealistic vision of the universality of art. His work was to be interactive and accessible to everyone, with no discrimination of age, sex, gender, race or education. Agis made his first coloured plastic installation in 1970 and has since developed and expanded his project, creating the first Dreamspace for Copenhagen as European Cultural Capital 1996. The Dreamspace that will descend on Bologna is the biggest and most elaborate sculpture yet.
Agis sees his work as part of a Public art project: "My art, my dialogue, my communication is part of an urban art culture, part of the urban environment. It's about finding a way into the social fabric of everyday life so as to breathe and blossom." Dreamspace is not found in the classical structures of the art world, but is located in an urban space to bring art to the largest number of people; it breaks down the barriers between the public and art, reworking the grey, dull areas in which we live and work.
Although no previous knowledge of art history is needed to appreciate and experience Dreamspace to the full, the influence of certain early twentieth century artists can be detected. Mondrian's fascination for colour and relationship of form and line is taken up by Agis, as is the De Stijl movement's geometric exploration. The choice of materials - air, plastic, light, space - also reflected the modern and fresh approach to art, once again flinging away any preconceptions of "art" and opening up Dreamspace to a wider audience. The result of Agis' 30 year continual quest for universal communication is a sculpture of incredible visual and emotional impact that needs to be experienced to be understood.
Behind those billowing, coloured sheets of plastic and the changing light effect from dawn to dusk, is there a philosophy that Agis wants to convey?
"If Dreamspace has any significance, it is the attempt to establish a work that gives a meaning to the word unification. Human beings have so many things in common. My work is an action where citizens can meet and interact to develop a consciousness of this reality."
Dreamspace - Centro Borgo, via M. E. Lepido, 186 - 40132 Bologna
28th April - 28th May
Every day from 11am - 7pm (or sunset)
Tickets: L10.000; L8.000 reduced (students, groups of more than 10 people); L5.000 school groups (one teacher every 5 children); under 5s free.
Artistic groups are invited to get in contact if they wish to be involved in the Dreamspace project
For more information contact Rub & Dub tel: 051 302 036 fax: 051 345 254
www.dreamspaceitalia.com
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