The project shows the double face typical of love relationship: intimacy and danger. The dilution of a great number of red match heads in water creates a solution capable of dyeing textiles. The colour is a soft pink, but it also has an upsetting shade. When match heads are in water they are totally inoffensive, but when the dilution dries in a fabric, it regains its dangerous flammable property. Therefore, pink pillows seem ready for an idyllic relationship, but they hide the possibility of an explosion.

Till Death Do Us Part

The urban project is composed by a series of drawings spread around Milan. A thin white line links the chewing gums on the asphalt; the points being stars and the drawing becomes a constellation. The chewing gums are people’s trace, their refuse, but also the temporal stratification of their trail. The artwork is an appearance, the uncanny and surreal amazement to find a constellation on the street.

Sky trap

The body stands still, the gaze is distant. The whole weight leans on the left leg, while the right arm raises an ice cream cone. Time passes and the color slowly starts to melt, it blends, it waters the fingers, the palm and then the arm, beyond the elbow, down below. On one hand, the quote of the Statue of Liberty recalls a source of liberation, on the other hand, the melting of the ice cream shows a tragic and ironic situation at the same time. The action points to a blind alley, nobody will come, but even if someone came, they would not want to be there. Nothing happens but the evidence of time passing by, the glorious magnificence of the pleasure of being now.

But this is not the day

The video shows the episodes of the Point, the sculpture made of pluriball and scotch tape reporting the “Fragile” word as a warning. The screen shows two videos simultaneously: a static camera shows the events from the point of view of an external observer, while another camera shows the inner point of view of the sculpture. The observer can thus identify himself with the sculpture and at the same time amplify his vision. The video is composed by episodes, fragments without a structured narration but allowing a knowledge of the Point from different viewpoints. The Point is presented both as an object and a subject at the same time; thanks to this simultaneity, the observer can identify himself with the Point and feel pain or affection. 

The transparency of two videos forces the observer to continuously choose on which one to focus his attention; in this way, each spectator can see the video in a different way, realizing a personal editing in his own mind. In other words, the project generates infinite stories into the story thanks to the personal point of view of the observer. The project is an ironic and uncanny attempt to give birth to inanimate objects. It also aims at seeing things in a new and different way: the vision is a complex act which involves not only the sight but also a series of elements related to sensibility, narration and time.

From the point of view of the point

“Killing me softly” is a peace flag whose bands are made of tiny tanks. The work creates a sense of disorientation given by the difference between what the flag seems to be and what it actually is. The artwork asks to the observer: does the goal justify the means? On one hand, the flag is a threatening object because the tanks point the observers; on the other hand, the small dimension of the tanks shows their fragile and harmless side.

Killing me softly

The video shows a series of traffic lights. The large quantity of traffic lights and the absence of sound make the image transfer from urban context to abstract painting. The movement of the colors seems a dance and the traffic lights are released from their function; therefore, the video is a pure, contemplative image. Despite the cyclicity of each traffic light, the overall chromatic composition never repeats: the colors change regularly but their relationship creates an image which is always new. The video puts together order and chaos, through the regularity of each traffic light and the unpredictability of the global picture; it leads the observer to a state of authentic contemplative state. 

Wheat Field with Crows

Ctrl+Alt+Canc shows a series of Depositions coming alive thanks to a continuous process of destruction and reconstruction. As Christ is deposed from the cross, images are released from their body. The immateriality, or the unusual materiality of the digital world, forces us to redefine the perception of our body and the space where we live. Pixels fall more and more densely, then collapse and born again at every look of the observer.

Ctrl+Alt+Canc

The space is similar to a huge clepsydra. Time and space are connected: a line moves during the day and reduces the walkable space until people cannot enter the room. People change their perception of space as time passes and walkable floor becomes smaller and smaller. At the end of the day people cannot enter the space but they can contemplate it. The space seems empty, but it is actually full of the passed time. “Sinfonia n.1 \[zoom in\]” consists of a series of drawings showing maps where space is represented according to temporal measurements instead of spatial proportions. Some drawings are plausible whereas others are unrealistic as for instance the passage of time over 100 years. The drawings show that it is possible dwelling time as well as space. 

The video “Sinfonia n.1 \[zoom out\]” shows many dots freely moving in space. If we could zoom in the frame, would we see people running quickly in the room? Or dancing wildly? Or walking upside down? Maybe. The video doesn’t give answers but let us fantasize.

Symphony n.1

A synthesized voice conjugates the expression “stare benissimo” (“feeling great”). Starting from the present, going through the past and the future, ending with the imperative, the sense of “stare benissimo” (“feel great”) changes its meaning. The reiteration creates an anxious and claustrophobic atmosphere and the observer progressively doubts that there really was, or will be, a moment of happiness. Linked to the mechanic voice, the video shows colors moving very slowly reminding the sky of beautiful and clear day from the morning to the evening. The beauty is so strong that it seems unreal, and the observer asks himself if that splendor is fiction or not. The video quotes the famous Jean-Luc Godard’s film Alphaville, une étrange aventure de Lemmy Caution: to the citizens of Alphaville is forbidden saying some words, like “crying” and “loving”; they can use exclusively some expressions, like “I feel great, thank you, you are welcome”. The video shows how the repetition of the same expression can be a motivator and a self-destruction act at the same time. The work displays an uncanny mechanized world where freedom is replaced by an apparently fascinating and desirable safety.

Io sto benisssimo [I feel great]

The pieces of a stylized man break down and generate infinite drawings of the man itself. The breakdown of the image is the origin of new bodies characterized by a continuous transformation. The human body has an extension larger than its physical boundaries; it can shape time and space by means of its memory, desires, fears, successes, failures, … it contracts and stretches like breath. The capacity of shaping time and space is precious and dangerous at the same time: on one hand, imagination is a fertile and vital field; on the other hand, the attempt to indefinitely expand human’s boundaries could easily become an egocentric and despotic act. The selection of drawings, potentially infinite, shows a fascinating and risky scenario in which the destruction of reality is the tool to catch the indestructible.

Les jeux sont faits

Trappola per il cielo [Trap for sky]

A huge box moves along the narrow corridors of a flat. The box moves like a machine but in reality, there is the artist inside who moves it very slowly. The object goes back and forth without a destination, but the slow action makes the performance seem heroic and surreal. The artwork is an attempt of giving birth to the inanimate matter. On one hand the video shows how objects, robots for example, are becoming similar to human, on the other hand it reveals how human is losing vitality and becoming more and more similar to objects.

Non sto più nella pelle [I can't wait]

Never like today life is dominated by the fear of dying. We try to procrastinate death, or we ask it to come soon, but it is difficult to depict a triumph like the painters did in the XIV century. The performance is an ironic and dramatic attempt to prepare people to death. So, the video shows the artist jumping a rope made of barbed wire. Different types of jump give a rhythm to an action in which the habit to pain looks never enough.

Death training

I always remember the pleasure of being in balance on a minimal, thin, undefinable place. I decided to frame the image just above my ankles because I wanted to emphasize the solid and immobile presence of the sarcophagus. My intention is to try to exchange time with death: I attempt to make a deal with her, or maybe just a compromise. Some simple gestures, sometimes dramatic and sometimes ironic, wave heroically between something that is present and absent, mortal and immortal. As the action is a tragic and ridiculous attempt to negotiate time with death, the sound consists of a guitar that is looking for the correct tuning. Each cord is out of tune, but after some attempts they slowly become intone. The video plays in loop in order to allude an effort which is unsustainable and desirable at the same time.

E fu sera e fu mattina [And it was evening and it was morning]

The artist, dressed like a marshaller, simulates the poses of some famous classical Greek masterpieces. The iconic marshalling signals and the artistic language mix up and generate a polyphony full of references, familiar and mysterious at the same time. A marshaller can move huge airplanes using only a small amount of conventional signs; what does art move? The project probes the limits of language and shows that the loss of an unilateral sense produces a proliferation of viewpoints: on one hand, the richness of meanings amplifies the knowledge of reality, on the other hand, it makes the boundary between rationality and absurd more and more labile and confused. Light signals and gestures spread in all directions; in this way, the observer is disoriented and fascinated for something that looks familiar and absurd at the same time. The project guides the public into the space, but the simultaneity of multiple indications and the excess of meanings bring the public to feel puzzled and disorientated. The mixed feelings allow the observer to open his mind and see the space in a polymorphic shape: multiple senses are privileged over a static and univocal point of view. This is why all poses have the same duration, but their position changes every time.

The sound, produced by Paolo Romano specifically for this project, consists of contrabass chords partially modified with digital software so to create a classical and futuristic atmosphere.

Mmmmarshalling

The project weaves different media like sculpture, painting, performance and video; it delineates a reflection on the relationship between tradition and present. Five sculptures, representing famous protagonists of Greek myths, lose their status to become pure material. The artist uses the sculptures as massive chalks to create a big drawing on the black wall; this action causes also the statues to be reshaped by their own exploitation. At the same time, a black and white video shows the process of deconstruction and construction from the point of view of the statues. The installation creates a strange and fascinating identification between the public and the sculptures. The project puts in crisis the foundations of art to find which elements are essential today.

I would prefer not to

A chair is composed by eight wooden pieces; the fragments are not stably fixed, but they are placed in a precarious equilibrium. A video shows the artist destroying the chair and recomposing its parts to make “other chairs”. The attempts, dramatic and ironic at the same time, show similarities and differences between the original chair and the several new versions. The work rises some questions: when the wooden pieces fall on the ground, is it truly possible to come back to the starting point? What does unify the original chair and its copies? The project, tying different kinds of medias like sculpture, video and performance, highlights the vital and paradoxical nature of temporal dimension: only looking to the precariousness of reality we can see its eternity, as the link among the different versions can be found in a dimension of time lying above the linear time, in a continuous tension between presence and absence, instability and perpetuity.

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Luisa Turuani