Greetings
from 27 April 2023 to 3 June 2023
Parigi
Tropicale, 1964
olio su masonite
180 × 140 cm
“For good or ill, we are social creatures and cannot bear to be cut off too long from our fellows, even if we have nothing really to say to them.” — (Anthony Burgess, Language Made Plain. English Universities Press, 1964)
Phatic communion is “a type of speech in which ties of union are created by a mere exchange of words”. In this conception of the relational role of language, greetings and the flow of conversation that follows become an essential mode of intimacy, bonding indi- viduals through the expression of their shared fragility and longing for connection and mutual recognition – we do exist. This relational aspect opens up the possibility of phatic communication as a ritual activ- ity, which not only establishes relationships but also achieves transitions.
Phatic language is a natural and instinctive ritual familiar to us all. We experience daily how meaningless words, or even misunderstood words, can keep a conversation going. They are neither inside nor outside us, but rather constitute what Lacan calls an extimate relation: “something strange to me, although it is at the heart of me.” This anthropological and primal need for subtle communication is found in the pensive repetition of silences between words, the movement – mechanical or fluid, repeated or frozen – and the contingency of the space between potentiality and actuality, a gesture on paper or metaphysical doodling with a pencil.
Phaticity has a multidimensional potential. The present groupshow articulates this discourse through various mediums and formats, developing a relationship between contemporary artists and works from Italian archives. The relational element of the exhibition introduces complexity, a form of cybernetics of the intangible, feedback that demands feedback. This circuit of relations generates entropy, a manifestation of the disorder that envelops the viewer and works in a state that becomes increasingly unknowable.
This system override translates into a selection of works, including sculptures and paintings, whose nature is intrinsically kinetic; forms that are nothing but structures of visualized thoughts enacted through visible signs and moving parts.
Aldo Mondino’s quadrettatura, “Tropicale”, articulates, through the modes of childhood artistic expression, the idea of creating an evasive balance between order and disorder. The object of such youthful inspiration, as may be found in the pictorial gesture of using a chequered sheet of paper, is to find a relational language for the disorderly and the orderly, a way of creating art that is only superficially ingenuous, but which in fact intrinsically affirms the struggle to establish semantic boundaries for the imagination.
These works all presuppose the possibility of an agreement – no matter if essential or momentary, present or future – between human beings and their feelings, between the self and the so-called lower faculties, and between subjective identity and sense. These sensory apparitions tell us that reality can be influenced in the desired sense through the co-presence of different species in the same space and time.
Relationality is made up of very light movements, imperceptible at first glance, tropisms that are the strat- agem of plants to seek light or react to external stimuli. A tension towards feeling good. Humans adopt the same system of adjustments, risking difficulties, facing impediments, and falls. Simply a “no” instead of a “yes”, an unexpected turn of the back, a mistake, a neglectfulness, an error... and friendship may be ruined the other person suddenly understanding what we really think of them and feeling exposed. “Collage” by Savelli condenses this conversation made of resistances, forms, and elongations, stretching towards stimuli and attractions so as to find a foothold. Orbits and shapes, as if leaning, slide into the white surface of consciousness, where they are “at the origin of our words, our gestures, and the feelings we express, that we are convinced we feel and that we can define.” A phatic formula that allows for the gestation of a relationship.
Opere correlate
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