Piazza di Castello, Turin, Italy, Dimensions: 8 x 4 x 2 meters; 8 x 4 x 2 meters. Extant: 1996–Present
Image Courtesy: Castello di Rivoli
Neuhaus' work occupies two arcades of the completed part of Juvarra's project for a great double atrium of the ground floor. An 'area of passage and of rapid and continuous movement' (Gritella, p. 114) - entrance, carriage-way, the approach to the stairways - was to stand to the north-west, a gigantic recess marked by an air of 'solemn composure' (Gritella, p. 114) to the south-east. Neuhaus' work is positioned between these spaces. The completed and still-standing part of the project consists of a double series of three arcades that lead into an unroofed space that serves to connect the Castle proper to the so-called Manica Lunga, or Long Wing. Still today, following the restoration, this is the Castle's principal entrance; and it immediately reveals that the project remained unfinished.
Yes, we are within the area of the museum; but we are still outside the building, in a space which is also open to passers-by who have no interest in visiting the museum. So the work can be encountered quite by chance, without previous intention or inclination. The work's collocation in an 'open' space frees it from the overdetermination of its status as a work of art and thus sites its precise determinacy in the indeterminacy of 'the open'. The source of the sound is concealed within the architecture and constitutes no visual clue: 'In my work the speakers are always concealed, so the system producing the sound doesn't become a physical reference'. So the encounter is immediate and takes place at a purely auditory level. In the moment in which one's ears 'grab hold' of the presence of the sound, which is something they can also fail to do, the other senses likewise come to be activated and the work achieves its realization, presenting itself as a work that directly interacts with the space-time continuum of existence itself. The sound is a catalyst that gives rise to a particular perceptual situation, and it endlessly continues to evolve without interruption or self-repetition. It gives rise to a situation in which space is perceived to have substance and density, and not as a void or as a gap between solids. This density, moreover, can only be real, since we experience it by way of our senses. It dawns into the consciousness of the sentient subject, but in no way detaches perceiver from perceived; the subject and the subject's experience of space become amalgamated parts of a whole. The situation that Neuhaus creates is no partial or momentary invitation to a simply indicative awareness of self in a simply symbolic here and now. His work finds its fundamental terms of reference in freedom and responsibility, in generous respect for the fabric of existence and for the indeterminacy of the self; and it sees that they are not to be retrieved from myth, from the ideology of redemptive form, from the fantasy of poetry, or from the dream of 'the thing' which has since gone lost.
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