2020-11-13
In memory of Aldo Tambellini (1930–2020)
The ZKM mourns the death of the innovative avant-garde filmmaker and artist activist Aldo Tambellini
The painter, poet and media artist who had a decisive influence on the art scene of the 1960s and 1970s was a pioneer of video art and multimedia installations. The artist, who was born in 1930 in Syracuse, New York, has now passed away at the age of 90.
BY ZKM EDITORIAL OFFICE
Tambellini was best known for his lifelong fascination with the color (or non-color) black. He began his career as a video artist in the late 1960s, when in 1967 he founded the »Black Gate Theatre«, the first »Electromedia« theater, in New York with Otto Piene. The artist often created his films in Manhattan's Lower East Side with unconventional methods: For instance, he applied black paint to the film emulsion or scratched it. Together with Piene, Tambellini was one of the first video artists whose works were shown in a New York gallery and broadcast on television.
»'Black' is not the opposite of white; it is a state of being. We come from this womb. We come from this planet enveloped by 'Black'«
Black Matters
With the exhibition »Black Matters«, the ZKM dedicated its first large solo exhibition to Tambellini in spring 2017. Paintings, videos, photographs, installations, and lumagrams (hand-painted slides) from his most productive and versatile creative phase, as well as works not previously shown, provided an overview of Tambellini's comprehensive, multimedia oeuvre. The artist's oeuvre is understood as a manifesto for an organic connection between painting, sculpture, photography, moving image installation, kinetic art and performance. His works have been presented at the Centre Pompidou, the Tate Modern, the MoMA New York and at the 56th Biennale di Venezia (2015), among others.
We have just learned of his death with great sadness.
