The Gesamtkunstwerk Of Brigitte D’Annibale

Recently, I drove to Point Dume in Malibu, not to spend a day at the beach, or drop in on Bob Dylan (not that I could, but I did drive by his driveway). I was there to see a site-specific art installation by Brigitte D’Annibale.

D’Annibale, born in Los Angeles in 1971, moved to Kauai in 1998, living there until 2017 when she returned to Los Angeles. Over the last several decades, D’Annibale has pursued personal, artistic, and commercial outlets for her talents in a wide range of areas from exhibiting painting and sculpture in galleries, to painting for film sets and film studios, to architectural design work, home furnishings, even creating faux finishes on cabinetry and furniture, and designing large glass door walls that open like revolving doors.

D’Annibale found a property on Point Dume that had been ravaged by the fires, an abandoned construction site where a home had once stood and saw in it a site-specific immersive art installation to express her 30 years of artistic and architectural design practice, artistic theory and vision, and personal philosophy which she described to me as a process of deconstructing and constructing, of reuse, in harmony with the ecology, as an exploration of language and contemporary culture.

What you see when you arrive at the site is an industrial gate and once inside, there is a house at what seems to be the far end of the property, which appears boarded up, covered by a patchwork of reclaimed wood and other materials on its sides and roof.

To walk to the house, you cross a grassless lawn, the ground covered in the kind of sand one might find at a construction site, dotted by a dozen large white pebble-like forms that look like alien forms. Off to the left is a large pile of reclaimed wood stacked in such a way as to register as organized rather than random. Entering the house there are several installations: Sculptures and paintings on the main floor, a dining room with artworks on the walls and sculptures both on and above the table; and outside, a landscaped environment to experience.

I describe the scope of what’s there to make a simple point: All of it was made by D’Annibale: Every aspect, every detail, every door, window, skylight, light fixture, every piece of furniture, every painting and sculpture, even the landscaping. It is a gesamtkunstwerk, a “total work of art,” in which every detail has a purpose and a reason (a term popularized by Richard Wagner about his Operas but also used to describe architecture by Antoni Gaudi, Gerrit Rietveld and Frank Lloyd Wirght and the work of artists such as Michael Heizer (City), Walter de Maria (Lightning Field), and Nancy Holt (Sun Tunnels)).

The multi-disciplinary project is named B=f(P,E) after German-American psychologist Kurt Lewin’s equation that behavior is a function of the person in their environment. In this case, D’Annibale has reshaped an environment to influence perception, assumptions, and provide an experience that is immersive, thought-provoking, and potentially transformative.

As D’Annibale told me when we met at the site, “I have spent many years of my life with a kind of a separation of church and state for architecture and design and my fine art practice… primarily because it’s very hard to articulate what I do. And then…I had an epiphany. I want to bring 30 years of everything I’ve done and set up these installations based on everything I’ve [been] working on. So that’s how it was born.”

In using a gate to the property that she found in a salvage yard in Indonesia, and using reclaimed materials for the structure, D’Annibale hopes to reset our expectations for what we will find at a location in Malibu. The structure occupies the footprint of the original ranch house

As for the front yard, D’Annibale explained that part of the stripping down of the site was reclaiming California as a desert and having “180 feet to walk [to the house] and leave preconceived ideas at the door.”

Upon entering the structure through one of her glass revolving doors, a 3000-pound piece of glass that seems to float open effortlessly with a simple touch, one encounters a circular opening in the center of the room that looks up to a steel and glass oculus to the sky and down to a cistern on the ground garden, beneath and in back of the house.

“I took the center point of the home,” D’Annibale said, “And it started with a drop of water, which created these ripples into the natural foundation of the house, which ripple up through the structure of the house and then out into the universe.”

Hanging in the center space at various heights are round globes that look decorative but are in fact spheres which D’Annibale began making as artworks over 20 years ago. On closer inspection, they are formed by a jumble of letters.

“It’s about language and deconstructing it,” D’Annibale said, explaining: “I was a highly dyslexic child and learned to read by studying the white space. Form and shape, and light and shadows, have always been the lens in which I see the world. …. About 25 years ago, I was working on a design project in Indonesia and there was a gentleman carving these letters. So, I got the letters and created a poem, and then I completely scrambled it up and said, can you just put this in a ball?” The balls of letters weigh around 150 pounds but are covered in what looks like white plaster and appear weightless. The natural light creates shadows that move around the room during the day and at night.

D’Annibale is more interested in opposing forces and creating work that makes us ask questions. “I love using materials that tend to bind us,” D’Annibale said, “and [that are] always posing the question: Are we being supported by these things? Or constrained?”

Flanking the center space on the walls to the left and right are two large paintings that D’Annibale calls “Restraints,” which feature a very heavy piece of oxidized glass s cantilevered from the wall, leaning into the room, covered by a rough painter’s drop cloth (what you see is mostly the drop cloth with the mirror peeking through where the drop cloth is being held up by rope and wire. “I love the metaphor of it, using it to protect and cover, and creating this kind of tension and chaos on the canvas. And then having this little portal box of ice glass that peeks through. As the lighting changes and [as you] walk through [the space], it connects with different things,” D’Annibale said.

Connection being one of D’Annibale’ s major thematic interests. “I’m interested in connection,” she said, “Connection to the natural world and [to] structure, objects, space, and art and humanity.”

From the center installation one passes into what looks like a dining room with a long low table with bowls at each setting, which D’Annibale described as a “modern day last supper” and an installation that she calls “Pigs in Zen” (based on a Perry Farrell song).

The bowls at each place setting have inside them what looks like an endless chasm (the science geeks know that this is done with video and mirrors).

Why pigs? I asked. “Pigs just never stop consuming,” D’Annibale said. “They never have enough. And we’ve become a culture that’s sitting at the trough. Whether it’s information or material, it’s never enough.” And so, this [is] infinite [but] it goes nowhere.”

Nearby, along a wall are a row of artworks taller than they are wide (they are quite narrow), that are also pieces that are constructed, deconstructed, and reconstructed and that have embedded in them video screens, covered by caustic wax, showing letters randomly moving across the screen.

“You’re hard pressed to have a conversation about language and connection without addressing technology in some way,” D’Annibale said by way of explaining the works on the wall.

Above the table hanging from the ceiling is a long circular vortex of a sculpture that looks like the skeleton of some prehistoric giant snake, but is, in fact, the carcass of an Indonesian killing tree.

D’Annibale explained: “This parasite wraps around the tree and strangles it, so the tree ultimately dies, falls to the ground and decomposes. And the only things left is the parasite. It was such a metaphor [about] nature and what I was trying to express [about] technology…. In this moment in time, we’re all [witnessing] this technological killing [of] truth.”

For the fourth and final installation, D’Annibale led me outside the house, down a series of oblong steps seemingly made of the same material as the white forms in the front area. The area has been landscaped with fragrant herbs such as mint and cilantro, that add to the sensory experience of the installation.

The outdoor path leads you to a ‘conversation pit’: A semi-circular bench seemingly made into the site of baked mud mixed with cement. It surrounds a large cistern carved out of a 4000-pound rock that D’Annibale has been working on for 5 years. Sitting there, you not only contemplate the water in the cistern and the silo leading up to the oculus but also the view of the backyard and beyond to the ocean, an amazing view that is rare to experience in Los Angeles (or Malibu for that matter).

As I sat there, I had to admit that D’Annibale had succeeded in resetting my expectations, of what the site would be like, of what the experience would be like, about the various installations, of what her art is. Everything I saw, felt, even what I smelled was part of the work.

D’Annibale’s work, like the installation, sits at the intersection of experience and artwork, of decorative and design work and painting and sculpture, land art and conceptual work – you can appreciate the accomplishment without knowing its intellectual underpinnings – but doing so deepens the experience.

In some cases, the total work of art, the gesamtkunstwerk, can seem like the manifestation of one artist’s need to control every aspect of the viewer experience in all its visual, sensory, and even utilitarian experiences. When I broached this subject with D’Annibale, she answered that, “[The] controlling part of me, the older I get, I get that it’s not necessary to push rocks uphill,” she said, laughing. She is learning to embrace “just letting go and letting things happen.”

“Rarely does an artist get the opportunity to create such a total environment,” she said, adding, “Control is an illusion and really all you control is how you react to it. Ultimately, [you have to] respect that nature is in charge and life happens.”

Creating an environment where so many aspects of her work are in conversation with each other, and part of a total experience has been gratifying to D’Annibale. “It’s an honor and a privilege to be an artist at this time,” D’Annibale said, adding, “It’s a critical time for art and art that matters, and art that is about connecting and building community outside of just the white box galleries… and [that is] about building a culture around collective dreams and a place for people to go.”

The Point Dume B=f(P,E) installation has been available to visit by appointment since February 2023. Public hours and public programs including site-specific collaborations with other artists are being planned. For more information, contact via D’Annibale’s website.