Saturday 10 October 2015 at 6.00 pm
The exhibition is divided into two complementary paths that involve a dialogic comparison on the creative proposals of two artists, Andrea Marini and Roberto Pupi, who over the years have experimented through various working methods the possibility of ‘re-editing’ through the operation nature in a completely ‘unprecedented’ way. It may seem like a play on words, but, in truth, both manifest a playful component which is properly expressed in the relationship between nature and artifice and which underlies each of their creations. In fact, drawing ideas from the testimonies of the world as an ecumene, they reconsider phenomenal forms and environments to reflect on the possibility of making a variation to the state of nature, of recomposing and breaking down an organic element to decontextualize it, make it become something else through artificial materials or techniques. ‘since they are distinguished as constructions and recombinations that approximate the idea conceived by Gillo Dorfles of an’ artificialized nature ‘. In the aseptic space of a gallery the observer can perceive a similar living organism, which, despite being synthesized in resin or metal, as in the works – installation by Andrea Marini – seems to still pulsate, release energy even if eclipsed in the rigor of a material, maintaining the flexibility, the dynamism, contrary to the initial structure that could bring sensations close to nonsense and paralysis. Thus the photographic shot by Roberto Pupi which seems to block the life of the natural element, according to a false belief that the cooling medium stops the seductive power of the natural generation, in truth, it appears just as alive, as that staring at the eye of the objective on a detail or on a rest – testimony in the here and now, to increase its size, and ‘move’ it in the photographic transfer on the canvas, acquires through the extroflections a volumetric and equally dynamic connotation. Clearly, the abandonment of the typical two-dimensional format to become photo – sculpture, three-dimensional installation, now distant from the obsolete concept of photography itself considered only as representative, involves reinterpreting the game sometimes between symbol and reality, but in an equally spontaneous way, natural for which the very elements of nature ‘transported in a closed and aseptic exhibition space are enlivened precisely by the fact of preserving and expressing a sacred character as living relics.
Lightness is therefore a term that can express the spontaneity of natural elements and precisely the way in which in passing through artificial techniques to other material, the two artists always try to maintain that lightness of being that seems to contradict the title of the book by Milan Kundera, in struggling between necessity and nonsense, between potential affirmation and ephemeral denial, whereby each element becomes sustainable and not the other way around. This is because in the artistic creation through the lightness of each component that tends to an elevated form, almost rarefied compared to the daily dimension, so as to isolate itself in a study, as absolute, an internal energy survives that is strengthened and that allows sustainability and excludes the extinction, as if he wanted to scale and adapt to never fail in this existence, guaranteeing unusual rhythms to maintain a subtle balance, a wave line with the flow of the universe, easy to shatter.
“Re – creation of the world, re – creation of an ‘other’ world […] in a journey that insinuates itself between the conscious and the unconscious between amazement and anguish. Roberto Pupi and Andrea Marini act together – in – space shaped by disorienting images and forms of life in a primordial state and on the verge of becoming who knows what ”(Francesca Pontuale, 2005).
Mimicries, contaminations, embrications are the terms that are most suitable to characterize their research in the mixture of presences that, born from a critical reflection capable of substituting an ironic gaze on the world, in any case express lyrical density in the dialogue between whites and blacks. that alternate between the works on display, as positive and negative, between testimony and absence, between the perception of negation and the perpetuation of generation, as an eminently poetic continuous proliferation.
“A journey into the psyche, through the doors of memory. Memories, evanescent, materialize by merging with the dream, details emerge, others are lost. […]. Marini rediscovers the places of wonderful wandering, evoking contrasts and contacts between natural and artificial dimensions. Resins, fiberglass, plastic materials and metals combine in structures that suggest possible organic forms with immense evolutionary potential.
Primordial elements that seem to allude to a new biology that, like a virus, adapts to different situations. Marini shapes matter by playing with the physical properties of materials, subjecting them to the softness of organic forms that seem to wait only for a breath, a breath of life. If it is true that photography is in itself a sublimation of an exact moment, it is equally true that sculpture amplifies its intrinsic characteristics. A lesson that the two artists seem to know thoroughly: Pupi makes photography three-dimensional and Marini, vice versa, by capturing the exact moment of an imminent transformation, transfers the potential of photographic media into sculpture. The common goal of making the fleeting moment eternal seems to follow the ancestral human illusion of defeating death “(Loris Schermi, 2005).
The exhibition path created within the spaces stands out as an alchemical process to discover the philosopher’s stone, as if to rediscover the essence, the cosmic breath in the seed of the earth.
Sunday 11 October 17.30 – 20.00. Until October 31, 2015. Visits by appointment. For information and appointments: tel. 0571/73619; a.scappini@virgilio.it
How to arrive:
Freeway from Florence or Pisa (FI PI LI) EMPOLI exit (the second after Empoli Est or Empoli Ovest), 700 meters towards the Center in front of the INCOOP of Via della Repubblica or Ferrovie dello Stato from Florence, Pisa, Siena Empoli Station stop and continue on foot for one kilometer towards Pisa