Piero Golia

I’ve always had a problem with the abstract model. I’m more interested in the interstices between poetry and reality. And with art, in a way, I’m trying to do the same thing by pushing reality to become abstraction and poetry. —Piero Golia Italian-born, Los Angeles–based artist Piero Golia is a sculptor of situations. His works—which at times take physical form, often at an architectural scale, and at others are immaterial—are statements aimed at expanding the possibilities of art. His practice is heterogeneous and unpredictable, employing diverse mediums and methods to spark chain reactions that, even when they leave no objects or images behind, have the capacity to alter our perception. As a young man in Naples, Golia studied chemical engineering, learning about the transformation of raw materials into powerful energy sources. Such a concept captures a crucial aspect of his artistic approach, in which he takes preexisting objects from lived reality as the starting point for a set of actions that unfold, displacing initial meanings and functions. Drawn to the varied cultural associations of Los Angeles, where he has lived and worked since 2002, Golia has produced a vast number of artworks inspired by or situated in the city itself. For example, Luminous Sphere (2010), a five-foot-tall orb installed on the roof of West Hollywood’s Standard Hotel, is only illuminated when the artist is in town; like a sacred presence expressed in LA vernacular, the mysterious cipher awaits projection of meaning from the casual passerby unaware of what drives its pattern of illumination. “It’s a form open to urban legend,” the artist muses. In 2008 Golia was invited to take over a booth at the Art LA fair; his contribution was to completely fill the space with a full-sized passenger bus that had been dramatically crushed by bulldozers to fit the dimensions of the exhibition space. Retaining ties to his Italian roots, Golia was selected to represent Italy at the Biennale di Venezia in 2013. Golia installed Untitled (My Gold Is Yours) (2013), a gray cube 2.5 meters tall, composed of thirty-six tons of concrete mixed with two kilograms of gold sand and set directly on a grassy outdoor plaza. He then invited visitors to “mine” the sculpture for gold, a social proposition that would transform the physical form and monetary value of the work independent of the artist’s own direct actions. Golia frequently operates outside the traditional parameters of studio practice, often producing situations that aim to elicit an intuitive and spontaneous response from his viewers through theatrical, conceptual gestures. In 2013 he opened Chalet , an underground Hollywood speakeasy (later restaged as Chalet Dallas at the Nasher Sculpture Center in 2015) that was conceived as a space combining architecture, entertainment, and art. Working with architect Edwin Chan, Golia created his Chalets to encourage social interactions and generate a convivial art community that was visited by movie stars, art world luminaries, a local marching band, acrobats, and even a pair of alpacas. During the closing celebration of the four-month-long Dallas installation, Golia hired a mariachi band, arranged a fireworks display, and commissioned a large stage curtain printed with the iconic closing sequence from Looney Tunes cartoons, with the words “That’s All Folks!” His immediately recognizable Mariachi Painting series (2016), made from cut and stretched swatches of the Chalet Dallas curtain, serve as relics of this spectacular event. Since 2017 Golia has developed new projects that explore social networks and retain traces of prior circumstances. For an exhibition at Kunsthaus Baselland, Switzerland, in 2017, he realized the kinetic sculpture The Painter , which featured a robot programmed to paint abstract geometric forms onto eight large canvases whenever movement in the exhibition space was detected. The resulting Basel Paintings (2017) retain visual evidence of the process of their own making. Such pieces document the negotiation between Golia’s vision and the various realities he has to deal with, whether in terms of physical space, practical logistics, or even the laws of the city in which he works. Golia’s paintings and sculptures have entered esteemed public collections and have been exhibited at major international museums, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art; Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam; Witte de With, Rotterdam; and MoMA PS1, New York.