conflicts & war
Katonah Museum, New York, 2003

From the exhibition brochure:

Enticing visitors with a rhythm of pulsating color, Pietro Costa's seven cylinders sited under the Norwegian spruce trees in the Marilyn M. Simpson Sculpture Garden create an artificial copse of neon and fiberglass. The garden, already a place of natural beauty, is enhanced by Costa's man-made elements. The installation does not resonate with violence, as its title would suggest. Rather, Costa uses text and industrial materials to illuminate problems of perception and identity that exist at the very core of conflict.
Contained within each cylinder is a single word spelled in neon light. The words are connected to dimmers, which cause them to glow brightly and then fade out. There is a hypnotic syncopation in the on/off dichotomy of the work. Just as light can be either revealing or blinding, words can be precise or ambivalent, and conflict can be justified or immoral. The power of Costa's cylinders resides in the indefinable space between the 'on' and 'off,' when a slippage of meaning and language occurs. Costa's words are in constant flux both physically and metaphorically. They are shifting modifiers, which take on different meanings depending on context and point of view.
Six of the words relate in pairs: I/You, His/Hers, and Us/Them. The I/You coupling suggests issues of identity and how we perceive others and ourselves. His/Hers connotes ownership, whether of tangible objects, religious beliefs, or political opinions. Us/Them calls attention to the distinction between people, races, religions, genders, and ethnicities. Perhaps more than any other combination, this word pairing is the most passionately divisive as it implies prejudice and social discord. Using simple words, none containing more than four letters, Costa explores the most visceral causes of human conflict. His installation prompts viewers to reflect upon issues of personal identification-whom do we define as 'us' and 'them'-and questions whether there really is a distinction.
The seventh and final cylinder contains the word God. With this word, all earthly constraints are relegated to a higher realm. Zealous religious beliefs in God, however, have also been the justification for war throughout history, from the Crusades to the current conflict over holy land in the Middle East. The number of Costa's cylinders reinforces a spiritual element. Seven is a symbolic number in religion-God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh, hallowing it; the seven sacraments; the seven deadly sins. While examining topographical blueprints of the site in the early stages of developing the project, Costa discovered that seven is the number of trees that once stood on the land where the Museum is now constructed. In this regard, Costa's cylinders serve as ghost-like sentinels, reminders of nature altered.
In planning Conflicts & War, the artist used tracing paper to map out the location of the felled trees and rotated the schematic 90 degrees clockwise to determine the placement of his cylinders. This was not a precise translation, as the integrity of the existing trees took precedence. Costa dug test holes to ensure that no roots would be affected and adjusted his cylinder positions accordingly. The seven cylinders, each of a different height and width, are embedded in the earth. Costa, who was born to a farming family in Sant'Arsenio, Salerno, Italy, has an intimate understanding of the life-giving power of the earth. (He currently maintains an organic garden behind his studio in Brooklyn.) The cylinders stand for a metaphysical growth as much as for a natural one.
Each cylinder is constructed of fiberglass with epoxy resin. The result is a translucent form that allows the inside ring of neon light to permeate it. The rough, textured surface of the cylinder's exterior resembles tree bark, while the smooth, highly polished interior allows for multiple reflections. The fiberglass reveals the light but also conceals its source, which can only be seen when looking directly into the cylinder. There is a mirror at the bottom, which increases the illusion of depth and, by reflecting the face of the viewer, effectively incorporates him or her into the artwork. As the neon words grow fainter, the viewer's image emerges more clearly. The pulsating words beseech the questions: Whose side are you on? What do you believe?
The artist has long explored the cylindrical form, from Riposo in Bianco (1993), a sequence of white neon rings placed in a bed of flour on the floor, to the more recent grace (2001), a series of red neon circles suspended in a column from the ceiling. Costa was actually surrounded by cylindrical forms in his studio when he came to the realization that they echoed the shape and verticality of the trees in the sculpture garden. For the past two years, he has been developing his Donor Project, a series of works on vellum done in blood donated by friends and acquaintances. Several of these large bloodworks were loosely rolled up and stored on end in a random pattern across his studio floor. After visiting the Museum's sculpture garden and returning to his studio, Costa entered the room and, for the first time, viewed his collection of rolled bloodworks as a type of urban forest.
It is with his installation at the Katonah Museum of Art that Costa found the proper occasion to incorporate words into his art for the first time. This was a natural outgrowth of his founding of a non-profit poetry press and his self-proclaimed 'obsession' with poetry. Costa employs words like art materials, combining them in ways that are thought provoking and aesthetically pleasing. The result is an
artwork that, through its formal nature, questions centuries- old motives for conflict and war, which have particular relevance in today's fragile world.
— Ellen J. Keiter, Curator