{"id":111068,"date":"2021-09-27T16:11:51","date_gmt":"2021-09-27T14:11:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/?p=111068"},"modified":"2024-04-18T09:33:50","modified_gmt":"2024-04-18T07:33:50","slug":"fin-simonetti-artist","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/2021\/09\/27\/fin-simonetti-artist\/","title":{"rendered":"At the tender edge of violence: Fin Simonetti"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a park in Manhattan near Union Square; it’s a beautiful park. There\u2019s a huge spiked fence all the way around it, and a locked gate.\u201d Only those who own an apartment close to it \u2013 that is, real estate \u2013 \u201chave the key to get in.\u201d Security, safety, comfort and protection, together with the symbols and beliefs that signal them, affirm themselves as a quiet, consistent conceptual presence across the work of Fin Simonetti. To her, such principles represent \u201cthe first layer\u201d of human violence. In the artist\u2019s imaginary, however, there\u2019s no gore nor shock to be found. Instead, Simonetti\u2019s cosmology softly treads in \u201cplaces of ambiguity\u201d by being grounded in the investigation of those slippery, ephemeral or subtly imprinted notions and norms that are used to define the way people should be, live, or think.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Fin
Fin Simonetti, My Volition 6, 2021,\nPortuguese Pink Marble, at Matthew Brown, Los Angeles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The work of Vancouver-born Fin Simonetti is interwoven with what she calls \u201ca thread of violence,\u201d a non-explicit factor that, running across a diversified, labor-intensive artistic practice as a subtext, silently unfurls through her iconography. Simonetti\u2019s observation of masculinity, male identity and gendered performance \u2013 topics she\u2019s been exploring extensively, across a variety of outputs \u2013 is tinged with empathy and compassion. Such features, rather than being by-products of a condescending gaze, emerge from the material quality of her works, as her Cathedral<\/em> series or the exhibition Pledge <\/em>reveal. The artist\u2019s personal history played a significant role in the development of her perspective on the theme. \u201cMy dad died in 2016, and I was estranged from him for most of my life. There\u2019s the loss of growing up without a father, and then there\u2019s the loss of losing a father. There\u2019s two layers of loss, impacted together.\u201d Crucially, her sculptural approach manages to embrace an inner fragility by navigating complex feelings of alienation, which are originally determined by the act of looking at the pain of \u201ccontemporary masculinity\u201d as a cisgender female, and have been ignited by \u201cthe double loss of a paternal figure.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fin Simonetti, Cathedral 4, detail, 2021, stained glass, found barbershop poster, wood frame, at Matthew Brown, Los Angeles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Fin
Fin Simonetti, Cathedral 4, 2021,\nstained glass, found barbershop poster, wood frame, at Matthew Brown, Los Angeles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Within her research on the nuances of human violence, Fin Simonetti chose to linger on the study of a specific non-human creature, the pit bull, painstakingly inspecting its form through stone carving, a medium she began to test in 2017. \u201cAnimals are my entry point into thinking about people,\u201d the artist states. Historically, they have been exploited in tournaments and gambling, as well as performance and blood sports, including hunting, bullfighting and dog fighting, chiefly as tools of masculine power and prowess. As the artist observes, the way we treat different animals \u2013 \u201cright down to the sub-breed\u201d \u2013 says a lot about how we interact with the world, and is a telling sign of the brutality inherent in our culture. To Fin Simonetti, the pit bull \u201cepitomizes that.\u201d She mentions how dogs are the animals we most identify with: \u201cwe take them into our houses, we let them sleep in our beds, we dress them up; they\u2019re completely anthropomorphized.\u201d Yet there are \u201ccertain breeds we made decisions about,\u201d which are enforced through breed-specific legislation, as in the case of pit bulls. \u201cIn Colorado you can\u2019t have a pit bull; it\u2019s illegal. They\u2019ll put them down if you have one.\u201d In light of such a framework, supremacy and dominance emerge as explicit features in human behaviour. An animal can be a proxy as well as a weapon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

[In regards to the condition of stray dogs in Mexico City here is a link<\/a> to our essay about Berenice Olmedo. Ed]<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Fin Simonetti, My Volition,\n2021, install shot at Matthew Brown, Los Angeles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Across millennia, non-human creatures have often represented a path to transcendence, a way to reflect on the human condition; at the same time, they\u2019ve been serving as scapegoats for our suffering and guilt, ultimately becoming \u201can extension of our own power\u201d through subjugation. Interestingly, vulnerability and wounding are present throughout Simonetti\u2019s universe as in that of Sylvia Plath (1), whose work the artist deeply admires and has referenced in one of her tracks, titled The Colossus<\/em>. In Plath\u2019s Pursuit<\/em>, masculine passion, desire, dominance, and violation also coalesce in the figure of an animal, the panther. Written in 1956, two days after she met then-husband-to-be Ted Hughes, the poem exemplifies Plath\u2019s prescient inquiry into the cultural ambivalence of  sexuality and power. The piece \u2013 overflowing with somatic metaphors and allusions to the erotic \u2013 appears to parallel the artist\u2019s conception of the animal as a tool, and extension, of human tyranny and greed, pointing to an atavistic culpability, and summoning sacrifice as its inescapable consequence: Insatiate, he ransacks the land \/ Condemned by our ancestral fault, \/ Crying: blood, let blood be split; \/ Meat must glut his mouth\u2019s raw wound (2).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Fin
Fin Simonetti, My Volition 3, 2021,\nhoneycomb calcite, at Matthew Brown, Los Angeles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In Fin Simonetti\u2019s work, the dichotomy expressed by the conflict between \u201cthe body that is a threat\u201d and \u201cthe body that is threatened\u201d is persistently at play. For instance, \u201cpit bulls\u201d \u2013 the artist elaborates \u2013 \u201care actually more dangerous because we treat them that way. You\u2019re more likely to get attacked by a pit bull because you\u2019re more likely to run into one that\u2019s been mistreated, used for dog fighting, and brutalized, so it kind of perpetuates itself.\u201d To her, however, it\u2019s about thinking how the same thing happens in other circumstances. \u201cYou can only push any creature so far before it absorbs that violence and becomes a weapon \u2013 an actual threat to you.\u201d Fin Simonetti effectively puts into perspective the social, political, historical and biological implications of the relationship that ties the two principles together \u2013 which, through her art, cease to appear antithetical. In fact, they end up standing right next to each other, like \u201copposite sides of the same coin.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Fin
Fin Simonetti, My Volition,\n2021, install shot at Matthew Brown, Los Angeles.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Another concern of Fin Simonetti, which is inextricably linked to the previous antinomy, pertains to the delineation of space and the demarcation of property. Taking into account the wider discourse surrounding marginalization, borders and barriers to entry, Simonetti brings attention to the ways spaces are partitioned, policed and controlled on a daily basis, and how different contexts \u2013 through implicit or explicit regulations, or simply by their designation \u2013 condition human behaviour. To the artist, \u201cspace, and access to space, is this really subtle marker of autonomy.\u201d From the display of her sculptures, as in her solo shows at Matthew Brown and Company Gallery, to the scripts of her performative work, <\/em>like when she secretly hired a bodyguard to shadow her during the opening of Lifemorts <\/em>at Interstate Projects, or in the music video for Daughters<\/em>, her sense of spatial awareness is informed by how barriers and devices actualize \u201cthe separation of private from public space, of inside from outside.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Fin
Fin Simonetti, SLdump, 2018,\nPortuguese pink marble, at Interstate Projects, New York<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

This threshold\u2019s conceptual core finds further substantiation in Fin Simonetti\u2019s stained glass pieces. More precisely, it is the combination of glass and stone \u2013 as well some of her shows\u2019 titles, like An Appeal to Heaven<\/em>, Pledge<\/em>, My Volition \u2013<\/em> that evokes a sense of sacredness in her work, conveying a tension to a higher power or will. Spaces of worship are a fruitful field of inquiry for Fin Simonetti due to their symbolic value and particular function, that is, of public places that harbour and feed collective \u2013 but intimately held \u2013 beliefs. Her interest, she says, resides in \u201cthe idea of a sacred place that, architecturally, signals the onset of communing with a presence that\u2019s not corporeal or material.\u201d A cathedral, or mosque, or synagogue, or other sites of worship, and \u201cthe words that go in there, the images there,\u201d cue to a distinct way of ritualized thinking which, prior to being religious, is abstract and metaphysical \u2013 \u201ca through-line\u201d spanning centuries of \u201cspiritual and religious narratives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Rituality surfaces with a certain continuity in the repetitiveness of the artist\u2019s choice of materials and techniques: in the case of stained glass, it was one of her uncles who taught her. When her father\u2019s family immigrated to Canada from Italy, stained glass became their trade. Since she was estranged from her father, Fin Simonetti grew up with her mother on the other side of the country. \u201cAfter I graduated from undergraduate I had some ideas for stained glass works that I wanted to do,\u201d she recalls, \u201cso I contacted one particular uncle, and said: I want to learn your craft.\u201d She apprenticed under him when she was twenty-three. That became her way \u201cto bridge, to connect\u201d with her ancestry. Today, Fin Simonetti recognizes that quietly doing the same thing over and over again \u2013 which she loves \u2013 is somehow cathartic, and that repetition is key to achieve depth of understanding. Still, she believes that ascribing value to the \u201cgrueling process\u201d of her labor can be \u201ca way to comfort myself about how hard it is.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Fin
Fin Simonetti, Gusset 3, 2021,\nstained glass, hardware, at Esker Foundation, alongside Louise Bourgeois and Chris Currer.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Music, on the other hand, holds a completely different purpose to her. \u201cThere\u2019s this Joni Mitchell quote where she says like, as she works in different materials, rotate the crops<\/em>. And music really feels like that.\u201d Simonetti\u2019s second album is about to be published, and it will come out under Hausu Mountain, the record label that published her first, Ice Pix<\/em>. But she actually sees music as a hobby \u2013 it is, for her, a way to decompress, an intermission between the hard labor required by her other media. \u201cIt\u2019s a pleasure-based thing, supplemental to making art in terms of creative process.\u201d Then, when people ask her \u201cwhat kind of music do you make?,\u201d she says it\u2019s \u201cexperimental pop.\u201d The fun of it, she adds, \u201cis getting to do something completely unrelated\u201d to her work. \u201cThere\u2019s a sort of cohesion, I think, if you\u2019re a practicing artist, in the work that you make \u2013 a sort of natural, narrative progression\u201d that unfolds \u201cthrough materials and ideas.\u201d The stuff she makes in relation to music? \u201cIt can be literally anything. It\u2019s a sort of get outta jail free card<\/em>: do what you want.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Fin Simonetti records the \u201clittle melodies\u201d that pop in her head \u2013 usually when she\u2019s walking the dog, after being in the studio \u2013 using the Voice Memo app. \u201cI have hundreds of these silly little sound bites,\u201d she jokes. Sometimes one of them will stand out to her, or get stuck in her head. \u201cThat\u2019s when I go to the computer and start recording, building on things slowly.\u201d Alternatively, she cuts a sample from a specific source that will eventually become \u201cthe kernel.\u201d \u201cRecently I sampled these church bells. I pitched them up an octave higher, so their sound comes out glitchy and higher, and looped them. And then from that a whole song came up.\u201d The artist stresses how in her music there\u2019s no concept. \u201cPeople can make music like that, but I don\u2019t. There\u2019s no thesis. It\u2019s soft and playful.\u201d Whilst Fin Simonetti\u2019s art making is \u201cpretty vigorous\u201d in its conceptual structure, requiring intensive journaling, writing and research in the planning phase (which she\u2019s currently undertaking to prepare her next show at Cooper Cole, scheduled in March 2022) her music just isn\u2019t. And because of its immateriality and its time-based nature, music cannot be compared to sculpture, drawing or painting. \u201cIt\u2019s not planned \u2013 it happens in the moment.\u201d Plus, it can be experienced anywhere. \u201cMusic is in your home or in your headphones. It\u2019s very personal and banal, and that\u2019s exciting. It\u2019s sort of un-academic and un-ritualized. It has that balance. It\u2019s expressive, open, and intuitive. Maybe it feels like dancing.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

(1) David M. A. Francis, Here Be Monsters: Body Imagery in the Poetry of Sylvia Plath (2018), p. 130. Source available at this link<\/a>. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

(2) Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes [ed.], The Collected Poems (1981), p. 22. New York: Harper&Row.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Spaces of worship constitute a fruitful field of inquiry for Fin Simonetti due to their symbolic value and particular function, that is, of public places that harbour and feed collective beliefs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":111054,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1793],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-111068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-to-be-discovered"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=111068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/111068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/111054"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=111068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=111068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conceptualfinearts.com\/cfa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=111068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}