Gregor Muir may be recently returned from the travails of a monsoon-drenched Hong Kong, but the ICA’s supremo was firing on all verbal cylinders at the Italian Cultural Institute in London last night (30 March). Muir sang the praises of “Asian dematerialization and decentralization”, before declaring, “it’s discombobulating, I love it!” In the process he also coined the new term of “Post-Art,” which he declared to be the potential product of a global mid-twentieth century “where art will dissolve and meet other areas of production.”
The occasion for this animated outpouring was a panel discussion in the stately surroundings of the Italian Cultural Institute in Belgrave Square, which is currently housing an exhibition of the richly enigmatic paintings of Turin artist Manuele Cerutti. Fellow Torinese Eugenio Re Rebaudengo, founder of the online art platform Artuner, organised the show. And Signore Cerutti showed himself to be no slouch in the vocabulary department either, introducing the audience—or this member at least—to the term “Proprioception”, which is both the title of the show and also describes the body’s innate ability to perceive movement and sense its placement within space without having consciously to look. A quality that was apparently much explored by column-dwelling Syrian hermits of old, and will no doubt come in very handy when experiencing Muir’s frenetic Post-Art sensory meltdown.