Half of a Long Story
Theatre began with Dionysus. Theatre -or the feast- was the vivid pulse of life, a bearer of hope. Humans and theatre alike discovered tragedy later. Yet tragedy had always lived in humans, for we have lived from the beginning with the knowledge of death. The feast was a response to this mortality: a desire to keep living, even beyond the shadow of death.
Theatre was the taut string stretched between life and death. The actor is the acrobat upon that string. The actor takes the stage and inhabits the moment. We imagine him present in this world, yet in performing, he descends into the underworld of Hades, crossing the river Styx. Only when the play ends, does he return to the earth above. To act is to die, which is why the actor wears a mask.
Life is brief. Plays are brief. Yet a play truly begins when it ends, extending its own life, and ours. In that course every human becomes an actor.
Kounellis, the earth-bound wizard, father of Arte Povera, a universal name of the 20th century, understood that acting was the essence of life. For the poors conjured mythology. They were poor, and turned little into much. The poors are great actors. Acting is not the matter of the rich people. Acting itself is an act of poorness. Because the stage isolates the matter from the life and conceals it.
Kounellis observed actors on stage, and painted them. Kounellis was into the heart of the matter, the poorness and acting.
These paintings, exhibited here for the first time, under the sun, were born in and of the underworld. The figures in them were drawn beside Hades, for humans themselves are the beings of the mask, and the mask has always symbolized the other world. Life was fleeting, and yet the play endured. Acting is always present.
Kounellis captured half of the long story, and in his paintings, he rendered it: the play and life. Play is the half of the long story.
Hasan Bülent Kahraman
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