‘This is a ’light poem’ dedicated to winter and the solstice to mark the transition from 2020 to 2021. With this transition from darkness to light, I hope we can rise up after all the challenges of 2020, and seize in 2021 the chance to change the world for the better, to put ecology and equality first, and to build a new world, founded on kindness.” – Robert Montgomery
Starting on 12 November 2020 and for the following six months, the unprecedented site-specific installation by Scottish artist and poet Robert Montgomery inaugurated BASE’s new art programming for public space: In-Between.
‘The Future Is A Risk of Our Hearts’ is the title of the work that speaks of the future in a present that appears frozen. Facing the threshold of the former Ansaldo, the luminous inscription ‘The future is an invisible playground’ is a poem that speaks of future and challenge and represents at the same time the connection between a city and an ecosystem, that of BASE, which from the threshold dialogues with the piazza and looks out to the world.
“BASE and its uses step out of their limits and occupy public space. We propose a shift of meaning and attention from space to frame, from the house to the threshold, which triggers a question about art as an exceptionality that admits what would not otherwise be admissible, and always produces, by way of a backlash, something in the public dimension.The threshold of BASE becomes porous. A porositythat is inhabited; a porosity that does not have the subtle clarity of a demarcation boundary, but is an expanded space that creates a zone BETWEEN that is able to neutralise the division between what is inside and what is outside, and intercepts a question often asked in recent years about the role of art in society: art outside its own space and in its relationship with the real.” – Linda Di Pietro
ROBERT MONTGOMERY
Born in 1972 in Scotland, Robert Montgomery is an artist, sculptor and poet known for his site-specific installations of light, text, fire and for bringing the poetic voice to text art. He follows a tradition of conceptual art and distinguishes himself by bringing a poetic voice to text art. He works for and with public space, mixing form, light and languages, disseminating neon words, fire poems and posters. His work involves and activates urban places, giving the city food for thought on contemporaneity.
Montgomery was the British artist selected for Kochi-Muziris Biennale 2012, the first biennial in India, and has had solo exhibitions in Europe, Asia and the United States, including most recently at Madison Gallery, San Diego, and Oklahoma Center for Contemporary Arts, Oklahoma City. Some of his works are found in the permanent collections of the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Texas and in the Anna Jill Lupertz Gallery in Berlin. Among his most important outdoor light installations is the one at the former Tempelhof US Air Force base in Berlin.
