outside, to clear my head    (2020 – 2022)

outside, to clear my head    (2020 – 2022)

Two sets of 10 dyptichs. [Versuta (1948/2022) and Rebibbia (1954/2022)]
Pigments on paper
Each dyptich: 42 x 29.7cm, 29.7 x 21cm

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outside, to clear my head (2017 – ) is an ongoing series of drawings where Chodzko brings into relation different states of human attention to ‘being in place’. One form of consciousness is towards the uniqueness of geographical place (using the geocoding system what3words: ‘Every 3 metre square of the world has been given a unique combination of three words. Used for e-commerce and delivery, navigation, emergencies and more’.) Another is towards the surreal imagery the what3words inevitably catalyses in the mind. A third is of a flow within place, leaking between memory, association, past and present, body interior with external landscape, the aerial with the subterranean.  The drawings therefore are a tension, or play, between different qualities of constraint, limitation and freedom and different positions of consciousness from which to perceive ‘being in place.’

In the exhibition “Renata, remember you are unconscious...” , at the British School at Rome (2022), outside, to clear my head (2020 – 2022) imagines and embodies two walks Pier Paolo Pasolini took near to his home neighbourhoods of Versuta (where he lived from 1942- 1950) and Rebibbia ( where he lived from 1951-54).  They are the kind of walks we all do alone, sometimes at night, when trying to get clarity, make a decision, feel oneself and achieve some form of peace. In both Versuta and Rebibbia Chodzko selected a sequence of 10 x 3m²  ‘walking steps’ along two suburban streets where he felt Pasolini might have restlessly walked and reached a cul-de-sac, a dead end, a turning point before then returning to a notion of home.

(Coincidentally, in both Versuta and Rebibbia there is a ‘coiling’!).

(a)
outside, to clear my head (2020 – 2022)  [Versuta (1948/2022)]
Along Via Fiume, 9, Casarsa della Delizia, 33072, Province of Pordenone, Italy

1) ///spire.corsets.permanently
2) ///computer.delegating.adjoined
3) ///overshot.stalled.breached
4) ///joystick.sandwiches.puddles
5) ///trachea.shores.painter
6) ///coiling.lewdly.hospitality
7) ///nitrate.solids.gamed
8) ///bowlful.raccoons.balconies
9) ///fishnets.retrieve.storefronts
10) ///gills.tubby.seeded

(b)
outside, to clear my head (2020 – 2022)   [Rebibbia (1954/2022)]
Along Via Giovanni Battista Radice, 40-50, 00156 Roma RM, Italy

1) ///jams.jokers.twisting
2) ///exactly.cure.never
3) ///shark.booklet.exit
4) ///stardom.snored.beard
5) ///rebirth.coiling.lasted
6) ///riding.wires.impulses
7) ///booth.fragment.flip
8) ///mandates.olive.pigment
9) ///sour.nurses.item
10) ///window.broken.instant

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Chodzko has often made work focussing on an apparently innocuous, small, finite piece of land and the complex psychologies that connect with it eg;  Settlement (2004), cell-a (2006), Involva (1995). Some of these works (particularly Settlement (2004)) also incorporate or allude to legal contracts and, or are intended as ‘evidence’ in order to redress an imbalance of power or facilitate a new vantage point eg; The Gorgies Centre (2002), Garden (2007), Corner (2007), etc. The notion of mud or earth containing knowledge, a guidance towards a future transformation is also explored in, for example, Better Scenery (2000 -), cell-a  (2002), Settlement  (2004), Sowmat   (2007), A Hostile Environment (2019) and Holding the Earth this Way, (2022).

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“Renata, remember you are unconscious; you have no expression, no pain, you don’t yell, you are unconscious!” (2022)   [ exhibition at the British School at Rome ]
includes the works:
A Sting from Two Houses   (2022)
ah; open; offering; severing; ah  (2022)
outside, to clear my head (2020 – 2022)
Reunion; Salò     (1998)
Knots (2013)