The Aesthetics of Absence
12:06:00
This series of works started with found elements, pieces of
old furniture, shelves on which you can still see the traces of the objects
that were kept inside.
Working, I am thinking of the idea of touch and of the memory of touch, often invisibile, more like a form of energy.
On these former shelves and drawers, the contact is visbile, though. We can still see the flat shape of the tridimensional object, like a ghost of its presence.
Like when you try to remember something – you are
touching the shelves of memory in the dark... you know that something used to be
there, but you cannot tell its exact shape; what is left of it is merely a
sensation and you cannot distinguish clearly its nature.
Besides collecting the objects that preserve the trace of the touch, of the familiarity, I tried to create a technique inspired by these objects and I used ash spread from my hands over various objects laid down on unprepared canvas. To get the effect of transparency, I move the objects around and I spread several layers of ash.
Ash is, in itself, a material with memory. In it, several
unknown objects lost their shape, desintegrating, merging, becoming anonymous
in this equalizing matter. It might be as well the last piece of materiality
that consciousness holds onto when it doesn”t want to let go of identification
– as is the case with the urns kept in the house in some cultures containing a
person s last remains, themselves having become anonymous, nothing different
than plant soil. Ash is what is left after the purification through fire, after giving
up the shape. A sort of primordial matter, a coming back to zero.
I also consider these pieces as works of asemic writing, a creative path that has always interested me. Rows of incomprehensible signs, a possible language, an invented language.
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