Alessandro Casciaro

"With the mass of their bodies and their intensive physical presence they take over the surrounding space and invite you to interact with them: take for instance those human figures enclosed in a construction of scaffolding poles, hunched up in themselves, or with outstretched limbs, appearing to be wedged in or trapped, but also protected and sheltered, as if in a cocoon.
Anvidalfarei speaks of a veritable compulsion which forces him to create these bodies in heavy bronze. His inspiration and perception are shaped by his previous experiences fuelled, amongst other influences, by his mundane existence as a farmer. The artist looks with sober eyes, but at the same time with much love and empathy, at human beings and human existence. With titles such as “Becoming”, “The Prodigal Son”, or “Reconciliation Group”, his sculptures are an experience which has become material, but endowed with an emotional-existential, even religious quality. The artist makes the bronze come to life; the seemingly misshapen forms do not obey classical theories of proportion, but are modelled on a real body, often the artist’s own body. In his work the artist is inevitably confronting himself with his various moods, his state of mind, his emotions. They are mostly portly figures, male as well as female, who do not appear to reflect current ideals of beauty and representations of the Zeitgeist, and yet which are so much closer to reality than the models or society stars which constantly entice us with their smiles from the covers of glossy magazines, from internet forums or films. The bronze sculptures are not abstract, not conceptual, not even properly innovative, as far as the medium and its implementation, its themes, are concerned, and yet these works, in their authentic genuineness and their intensive liveliness, are topical and current. Anvidalfarei’s people live in our world whilst simultaneously remaining in their own peculiar world, they are not interested in us, the spectators, and yet we cannot stop ourselves from looking at them, from engaging with them."

For years now this German artist has been continuing his quest to combine complex digital manipulations of photography with architectural elements or virtual spaces. He does not seek to reproduce reality, as is the case with photography, but rather to create a new reality, an individual place or a landscape, with the aid of an obvious technique distinctly reminiscent of painting. If his previous works were characterised by strong objective and narrative elements, his new cycle is almost introspective. The references he makes to other artistic movements (the way he draws on the iconography and the colouring of American abstract expressionism is undeniable) highlight the close relationship which the artist perceives between the product of his own imagination and reality as he experiences it, and the heritage left to us by the masters of classical painting. It represents a form of veneration, whilst simultaneously regenerating and reactivating his work. Castell draws inspiration and creative impulses from moments of peace and contemplation. According to the artist, this is rather like dreaming. Much is stored in our subconscious mind and can be conjured up in moments of peace and quiet. The pictures created in this way refer less to actual events or definite stories, but rather portray an underlying mood, the inner feelings and sentiments of the artist, although they are also to do with allegorical symbols and collective thoughts. Motifs and images from different worlds and times, fragmentary traces from the past, the present and a projected future, are grouped together and give rise to a plethora of interpretations and associations.

Sissa Micheli questions the everyday and the familiar in a variety of photographs, video works and objects and opens up new perspectives. What can be perceived on the surface frequently refers to something else, something behind it, to a hidden story that can only be guessed at, to a riddle that can only be solved to a limited extent. Curious and inquiring, she approaches her fields of investigation and creates a sensual and enigmatic microcosm that moves between reality and fiction, past, present and future. Beyond their functional attribution, Micheli lends objects highly charged levels of meaning with surreal radiant power. Set against a black background in a highly dramatic manner, the photographs invite the viewers to continue the stories themselves, to find new meanings and interpretations. Staging the mise-en-scène is an essential part of Micheli’s work in general, the moving, dynamic image is a constant companion. Time and again, the artist blurs the boundaries between film, photography, and sculpture: she captures the smoke of a pipe photographically and transfers it to the floor as a large-scale carpet or transforms it as a lava-like mass into a surreal three-dimensional object. Using flying garments, she stages fascinating temporary sculptures that celebrate the ephemeral and transitory in a sensual and musical game. At the same time, the works also epitomise the basic characteristic of photography, to capture a moment and to freeze it visually in order to give it meaning. In the new triptych Scenarios of Existence created especially for this exhibition, mighty textiles reminiscent of animal heads or skulls hover in front of the face of a female figure. The human being, thrown into the world, is vulnerable, at the mercy of finite nature and of death.

The impact of the works of Robert Pan derives from their beauty of concept and construction, from the intensity and splendor of their colors, from the exactitude and sure effect of the way those colors are nuanced. The pigments are applied in numerous successive layers, sealed in resin, and filed and polished, all in the light of carefully construed relationships between areas of opacity and transparence. Pan’s craftsmanship is the vehicle for the achievement of a multidimensional experience of color in which larger and more complex tones result from the varying articulation of the hues that resonate beneath them. Robert Pan has always looked askance at the obvious, and has once again decided to voyage into places outside the realms of reason. He complicates our vision of daily experience, leading us beyond the extant and into the Eden of imagination, at the antipodes of objective observation. He allows us to grasp both the visible and invisible, material physicality and immaterial idea, the indeterminate point of view no less than the world of imperceptible detail, the metaphoric flowing of color and the immutable solidification of resins.

Presented on large-scale canvases and depicted in vibrant, almost lurid colours, Kinki Texas’s subjects may appear to have been quickly dashed off but have in fact been developed over a period of months. Their lengthy process of creation is only revealed on closer inspection, when the different stages of the picture’s evolution can gradually be traced. While Kinki Texas has a particular theme and subject matter in mind when he begins working on his pictures, he also reacts to what happens during the painting process, with the result that the development of the images can take unexpected turns. He paints, sprays, writes, wipes and scrapes away until he reaches a state where any additional painterly touch would overload the image, but any missing one would make it seem unfinished. The heroic figures in “Kinki Texas Space”, this is what the artist calls his creative universe, which draws as much inspiration from the comic genre as it does from television’s History Channel, employing means of depiction borrowed from graffiti and trash culture as well as from centuries of history painting, their appearance ranges from slightly strange to truly bizarre; some of them have a warlike and at times rather frightening demeanour; they confront the viewer with loaded guns, pose in suits of armour with swords drawn or like Native Americans with headdresses, bows and arrows.

In his works on canvas, paper or glass, Antonello Viola traces a chromatic perimeter where, through a process of accumulation, stratification and sedimentation, the canvas becomes a place devoted to meditation and the research of the absolute. The artist converts invisible into visible with thin layers of paint that are then scraped, removed and deleted. The painting's quiet surface is animated by signs that reveal what lies underneath, the deep, pulsating matter that ultimately gives shape to the work. The artist's visual experiences and the memory of them are absorbed by this process of stratification and sublimated in the colour layers. Through the material density of his work, Viola establishes a new relationship with space, a renewed dialogue between the inner dimension of the work and the environment that surrounds it, in which the artist does not act instinctively or empirically, but moves from a specific project.
This simple shape is intended to hold the colour in its perimeter, a fence whose boundaries are instead constantly exceeded by the vibrating energy of the act of painting. Viola establishes a new relationship with the modern tradition of monochrome painting, where the reduction of the pictorial vocabulary corresponds to a positive and constructive understanding of the world, which perception is renewed through the energy of colour. His most recent works have been characterised by the use of quite varied materials: Japanese paper, glass, gold leaf and oil pigments; single and multiple formats which are presented in careful compositions.