Fabrizio Moretti with _KUBE_ at Sotheby's Los Angeles. Courtesy Sotheby's.
_“The visual arts have always existed within a certain preserve: originally this preserve was magical or sacred. But it was also physical; it was the place, the cave or the building for which the work was made. \[…\] If the new language of images were used differently, it would, through its use, confer a new kind of power.” John Berger, Ways of Seeing, 1972._
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Fabrizio Moretti with collaborators Gabi Corey and Franco V. Courtesy Sotheby's.
Fabrizio Moretti's _KUBE_ at Sotheby's Los Angeles. Courtesy Sotheby's.
One step through the door, and you can’t miss it. Slap bang in the middle of the Sotheby’s Beverly Hills’ gallery floor, glowing with the power of a thousand neon tube suns, stands Fabrizio Moretti’s “Kube.” The nine-foot-tall structure is a cloister of trapezoid mirror panels angled with haphazard precision to generate a vortex of fractal reflections echoing into exponential infinity. It’s truly hypnotizing, and almost ready to take its place as the centerpiece of the extensive _Light and Space_ group show carefully installed around it. Moretti is clearly pleased to see his creation in action. “I’m pretty excited about this. We tested it and everything, but you can’t be totally sure that a design works until you see it, and it works.”
De Wain Valentine, _Blue Circle_, 1970. Courtesy Sotheby’s.
I enter the portal for a moment, and, multiplied into a myriad of selves, it feels like I’m being whirled through space and time. It’s a _trip._ (And so bright, I could easily have left my shades on.) The curly-topped, custom-Converse sporting Moretti gets in next. “One thing that I wanted to show you, too—if you could walk around while I’m inside. The crux of this is that you become part of the art work when you’re in it, as you just experienced. When you’re inside, you can’t see out. It’s almost like the viewer becomes this nebulous being—but outside the box, you can be seen very clearly.” He waves his arms expansively: “I can’t see you at all. But then you can see me doing this:” and mimes popping an imaginary zit in the all-over mirrored interior.
Helen Pashgian, _Untitled_, 1988. Courtesy Sotheby's.
Fabrizio Moretti—simply ‘Fab’ to his friends, and from the first moment you meet him, you really want that to include you—is just cool as I would expect. But not ‘cool’ cool. Warm cool. _Nice_ cool. “How long did it take to put this together?” I enquire. “Ah, all my life I think,” the artist half-jokes before a sincere response: “We’ve been working on it for going on two years now.” And when he says ‘we,’ he means it. The musician has been decidedly hands-on in the work’s construction, and while it might be surprising to some, he’s more than qualified: Moretti studied sculpture at SUNY just before The Strokes blew up in the early 2000s. In the 20 years since then, it’s difficult to overstate the influence the band have had, musically, and stylistically defining the attitude of their generation, and inspiring future ones to follow, with their raw, sexy, smart sound and look. Nonchalantly, effortlessly just your friendly local neighborhood _international rockstars_. And while their 2001 debut album was existentially titled _Is This It,_ they’ve never stopped; this year winning the Grammy for Best Rock Album for their latest _The New Abnormal_, if that’s any measure of an immeasurable impact.
Laddie John Dill, _Light Sentence_, 1971. Courtesy Sotheby's.
When the young Moretti’s possible artistic trajectory was interrupted by global fame and the ensuing non-stop tour schedule, he wasn’t complaining. But now the accomplished drummer has circled back around to pick up where he left off in the art world for what is actually his second collaboration with Sotheby’s. In 2019, Moretti curated acquisitions belonging to his name-doppelgänger for _Fabrizio Moretti x Fabrizio Moretti: In Passing,_ re-presenting a selection of the Italian art collector’s 14th to 18th century inventory in New York. “I think the biggest difference is that with the Old Masters we were trying to reorient the viewer, trying to get them to refresh their relationship to these beautiful relics of the past. When you look at an oil painting, every stroke is evidence of history. But these Light and Space pieces were made with the intent of not being of any time, or at least that’s how interpret them. It’s pretty awesome that this contemporary art show can have pieces from the 60s and 70s, and all the way up until now. In this case, I’m trying to just stay in my corner: I’m just like ‘this is the coolest’ in being here, and, no pun intended, mirroring some of the ideas that these artists pioneered.”
Larry Bell, _Violets are Blue_, 1990. Courtesy Sotheby's.
Moretti’s own first life-changing encounter with these concepts was at the Dia Art Foundation’s upstate New York location, which opened in 2003. “There’s a place called Dia Beacon—do you know it? There was a Robert Irwin there… And you know what the crazy thing is—there’s a Robert Irwin in this show! When it came, it came in a crate that said “_IRWIN_” on it, and I was just like ‘Oh my god!” I got so excited that inside was one of the most influential dudes to me. Also at Dia Beacon there was a Bruce Nauman piece, \[_Live Taped Video Corridor_ (1970)\] with walls that get increasingly tighter, and at the end there’s a television screen that’s projecting what has been filmed from behind you, so you’re kind of like looking at your back… They were really inspiring to me. Basically what I really wanted to do with this piece here was to pay homage to them.”
Lita Albuquerque, _Bleu Celeste_, 2018. Courtesy Sotheby's.
And what’s exceptional about this show is the crackling dialogue that arrises between Moretti’s radiant installation and that of long established practitioners. British master Anish Kapoor’s iridescent scarab-green metallic disc “Mirror (Pagan Gold to Organic Green)” (2016) nestles inside his vortex, and amplifies the sensory overload. Moretti explains the effect was deliberate: “This was all in the service of that piece, in order to highlight another piece of art. I don’t believe that the ‘Kube' itself is necessarily art. It’s like a design that helps you experience art… gives you a new perspective. I don’t know if it helps, or detracts, but it definitely makes you reconsider the experience of witnessing art.”
We stop in front of a celestial blue gradation panel by Lita Albuquerque that seems to hover in its own dimension. Fab is transfixed. “I think this might be my favorite piece. It’s just as deceptive as everything else here. It’s a pretty good example of the Light and Space movement. You think that it’s coming off the wall; it really urges you to think about your relationship to the artwork. As you move around it, it seems to move, and it gets deeper and deeper.” And at every turn, the exhibition offers a new visual challenge from the extensive vocabulary of forms from artists Gisela Colón, Mary Corse, Peter Alexander, Larry Bell, Tony Delap, Laddie John Dill and Dewain Valentine that graphically punctuate the space.
Mary Corse, _Untitled (White Inner Band)_, 2002. Courtesy Sotheby's.
Are fellow Strokes Julian Casablancas, Albert Hammond Jr., Nick Valensi, and Nikolai Fraiture supportive of their drummer’s branching out—has there ever been any conflict between art and band? “Maybe in the beginning, everybody wanted each other to focus primarily on the band. We all really wanted to give as much as each other. It’s not like I had this yearning to do anything outside of music back then. Also on top of that, the world that we lived in then was like a tornado, there was no breathing outside of that world.” Now that everyone is a little older, Moretti feels that “we’ve all have had more time to ponder things, to have families and stuff. I, in particular didn’t start a family—yet. I feel like we’re all doing various things apart from music now. And that almost heightens the experience when we do get together.”
I note that the sculpture Moretti has created is just as immersive as any of his musical output. “Music is probably _the_ most immersive medium. I have as much respect for the person who is receiving the artwork as I do for the person who is receiving the music. When we play a show, the only reason why it works is because there are fans there to listen, and to enjoy. And to respond by singing the songs, and jumping up and down. I would be really boring if we just went around the world playing the same songs over and over again to a mirror. That would be very very bad.”
Peter Alexander, _3-20-18 (Pink Frosted Wedge)_, 2018. Courtesy Sotheby's.
You can tell he’s really thought about all this, and so it follows that Moretti’s approach to this exhibition, and to his art practice in general, has sound theoretical backing. “This is all based on John Berger’s _Ways of Seeing_. He’s so sweet, he’s like this little guru.” The cult 1972 BBC2 UK television series (you can find all the grainy episodes uploaded to YouTube) also became a book, with Berger’s sharp eye and clever phrasing decoding the layers of meaning present in the art, advertising, signs and symbols that bombard us in our post-modern condition. So after leaving the busy artist “I have to get back, do some insulating and stuff,” I take another look at my own copy. Amongst many of the other revelatory truth bombs he drops, Berger tells us that “the more imaginative the work, the more profoundly it allows us to share the artist’s experience of the visible,” adding a Walter Benjaminian coda: “\[…\] everything that is shown or said through these means of reproduction, must be judged against your own experience.” So if you really want to get on Fab Moretti’s cosmic wavelength, best take the guru’s advice: stop reading about it, and make plans to go and experience the show for yourself. You’ve got two months. Make sure to pack your sunglasses.
_KUBE x LIGHT AND SPACE_ is open to view from December 3, 2021 to January 29, 2022 at Sotheby’s, 350 N. Camden Drive, Beverly Hills, CA 90210.
Robert Irwin, _Untitled, 2016_. Courtesy Sotheby's.
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