by LUCA POZZI
Starting from the assumption that contemporary space is an open system which is constantly changing and being redefined, what do you think separates normality from the abnormality of the artistic act?
The definition of normality or abnormality is already a complicated question, let alone that of an artistic act. We ought to define the question more precisely before deciding what separates them.The only thing I can say is that art, in open, changing systems, resembles normality more and more and uses it as camouflage. Normality is often the result of curious and abnormal variants, which summed up produce what is called a normal average. Art is part of these variants which are absorbed back into normality: everything is art and everyone is an artist, as we have been reading all over the place for a while.
Your works generate alternative experiences, which show how reality can be lived in different ways. How do the properties of the situations you create achieve this aim (properties of the materials –glass machine; dimensional properties – 1:1 scale; properties of perception – fuori registri)?
I simply filter reality and recreate it according to a poetic project. The transformation can be more or less intuitive, as in the process of digestion, when we introduce nourishing organic substances into our body system and transform them into what we need most. A varied diet will produce in us more varied and elaborate reactions to stimuli. Will produce in us more varied and elaborate reactions to stimuli. If you concentrate for days on matter and you go into its density and depth, observing and listening to the materials the world is made of, you can approach their composition and intimate life and, if they allow you, you can enter the universe of particles and exit through cosmos.
Your work usually produces destabilizing tensions, mental and visual revolutions which sap the validity of clichés without entering the surreal or the fantastic, thus remaining in a kind of very concrete metaphysical limbo. What is the factor which separates the unlikely from pure magic?
Balance was not invented by tightrope walkers. I may not know how to walk a rope, but I move things until they reach a stimulating balance. It is easy to project rich and monumental works: rich in matter, rich in positive, political, social meanings, rich in rich materials or in poor materials, works which everybody see because they sparkle or because hey’re revolting, or works you can’t avoid seeing because they’re so huge you bang into them. It should be an interesting task for an artist to create something which has the qualities to be seen and noticed by those who share the same kind of sensitivity, and not by those who only wonder what it is when they trip over them. If ten people describe the same place, you’ll get ten different descriptions and each one of them will be the product of the person’s knowledge and sensitivity. A work of art shouldn’t attract attention just because of its glamour, coming from market research aimed at creating a supermarket product to be placed next to a series of a thousand other products with gaudy packages. This is a destructive kind of competition, especially if you think of the evocative and visionary power a work of art should have. Its presence ought to cause fear and dismay, not decorate houses.
In some of your works you use a terminology which is close to the virtual world of computers and digitalization. Do you believe certain virtual events can be reproduced in the real world in the form of a work of art?
When I use terminologies taken from different contexts, I am well aware of the meaning of the context to which the objet trouvé originally belongs. But in the same way as an objet trouvé mysteriously becomes evocative when I place it in a new context, I hope some other observer will notice this and see the transformation that I have seen with my own eyes.
The virtual world is less and less virtual because for many of us it is an increasingly present interface. I’d say it’s part of our world, assuming the world we see is real.
The process of art making is very present in your work. It’s almost as if the final product were created casually, as if it gradually built up in time. I remember you once talking about a project, it was called “cubefye the cubable”: you created cubes slowly, with waste material. What did it mean?
I like this, because it brings the work of the artist back to real work. It talks about the sedimentation of time as the only binding factor of our lives and about how the project is determined in time. Generally these processes take place on the side as discard processes and then become central with the passing of time because they bear witness to events and their strength grows with the knowledge that time stratifies in those works even before they’re finished. //
