almostMonocromoChartaRemPhase1_scratchedphotography
CHARTA MONOCHROMES
Taking to the extreme limit the photographic informal described as "material", the photograph is scratched and scratched until the almost total if not total disappearance of the upper (photographic) chromature.
The overlaying photograph vanishes bit by bit until it disappears completely, leaving not emptiness, which would be a sort of spatialism, but the bare base as it was created, which in this case is quite simply paper, or rather CHARTA, from Latin, which is the foundation of the Italian language. Indeed the foundation is the real base without which the photograph would not have been visible, and thus laid bare it takes on its proper role and takes centre stage, accompanied by a totally invasive and visible material-ness given by the scratched paper. It takes on its rightful importance, becomes what it has always been – indispensable. This is not a return to zero but liberation from a burden that was becoming increasingly oppressive. Not the first degree of visibility but the second; not the (apparent) leading role but the support; not the actor but the director; not the infinite but the finite, a wall that stands before us, full of life and historical (and photographic) residues, memories of a past that resurfaces, that becomes a participant in a perhaps somewhat forgetful present; not a concept but brute reality. The scratching, and therefore the erasure of the photographic chromature may take on various levels of penetrability and compactness, giving rise to infinite variations, infinite conceptual stages, to enable each of us to stop and perhaps to reflect, even if only in a temporal sense, on various levels of comprehensibility, not only of ourselves but of others too.
Silvio Balestra © Copyright
MATERIAL PHOTOGRAPHIC INFORMAL
A starting point: a photographic monochrome of unprecedented depth. Completely black, as dark as a starless night sky, as fearsome as a black hole in a galaxy, as infinite as a bottomless well, as pervasive and penetrating as a desert night with no point of reference, as mysterious as anything which communicates nothing, totally aseptic, seemingly uncontaminated but so concrete and physical that you are almost compelled to touch it, feel it, in the entirely vain hope of sizing it, formalising it, visualising it. What can be done when presented with a space (artistic) of such substance, a double-edged sword, hard to understand but with infinite evocative potential? Then the idea, materialised in the most spontaneous approach possible, as if from a state of total unconsciousness, the material feeling of the five senses has been regained, demands a hard and sudden confrontation, a sort of pain, an incipit, that after being inflicted entails a reduction of the spiritual state to a trivially material state, a falling into line, a return to the normality of individual existence.
What better than a scratch, a mark, a cut, to take on such a task?
Feet back on the ground, eyes wide open, ready to perceive any type of vital essence, there comes the realisation that rather than having inflicted pain, a disfigurement, on this immense dark mare magnum, you are transported to a different, parallel world where you take on the role of an archaeologist; digging, removing, cleaning, you discover the indispensability of a past that you have never stopped sharing with us; or of a sculptor who removes parts and savours the whole, which is still hidden but ready to emerge, being already present within.
So cut after cut, mark after mark, from that profound primordial darkness there arises a brightness such that alternative energy sources pale beside it; something is being created, who or what is not known but it is certainly a manifestation of life, an attack of vitality, an unprecedented cognitive approach. It is a simple act, seemingly trivial, repeated many times and learned in its substance, at times accompanied by an older brother – stronger, taller, more striking, whiter – together and apart in an unprecedented swirl of dynamism. Cut after cut, at last you savour the idea of a consciousness, a consciousness of the identity being assumed by everything we are discovering. The mark is sometimes modified, changed; initially a simple emotional and explosive act, it enters a channel of extreme rationality and complexity, is transformed into a peerless labyrinth where the straight and narrow can no longer be distinguished, only postulated. Its complexity develops to the extent that it surpasses its primordial form – the pure and simple act initially inflicted – and so for its own survival needs a rapid mutation into a sinuousness of rare and refined beauty, intertwined areas of extreme sensuality, tamed curves that touch and attract each other, let themselves go as if placed on flowing water, ready themselves to undergo sudden natural mutations. Reflecting lakes of unusual beauty and depth, not territorially fixed but absorbing and swallowing everything in continual movement, blacker than ever but full of light and brightness. What light if not that of the spirit, of the deepest and innermost self, the other facet of ourselves which we sometimes fail to extrapolate from our being human, ready to face the others but to face ourselves first? It's not yet possible to imagine what all this will entail, what the end result will be, what may be the purpose of such an emotional reconstruction... Then the passing of time reveals the superiority of this journey, this event. A superiority that only the flow of the various temporal units will be able to consecrate as such.
Silvio Balestra © copyright
Taking to the extreme limit the photographic informal described as "material", the photograph is scratched and scratched until the almost total if not total disappearance of the upper (photographic) chromature.
The overlaying photograph vanishes bit by bit until it disappears completely, leaving not emptiness, which would be a sort of spatialism, but the bare base as it was created, which in this case is quite simply paper, or rather CHARTA, from Latin, which is the foundation of the Italian language. Indeed the foundation is the real base without which the photograph would not have been visible, and thus laid bare it takes on its proper role and takes centre stage, accompanied by a totally invasive and visible material-ness given by the scratched paper. It takes on its rightful importance, becomes what it has always been – indispensable. This is not a return to zero but liberation from a burden that was becoming increasingly oppressive. Not the first degree of visibility but the second; not the (apparent) leading role but the support; not the actor but the director; not the infinite but the finite, a wall that stands before us, full of life and historical (and photographic) residues, memories of a past that resurfaces, that becomes a participant in a perhaps somewhat forgetful present; not a concept but brute reality. The scratching, and therefore the erasure of the photographic chromature may take on various levels of penetrability and compactness, giving rise to infinite variations, infinite conceptual stages, to enable each of us to stop and perhaps to reflect, even if only in a temporal sense, on various levels of comprehensibility, not only of ourselves but of others too.
Silvio Balestra © Copyright
MATERIAL PHOTOGRAPHIC INFORMAL
A starting point: a photographic monochrome of unprecedented depth. Completely black, as dark as a starless night sky, as fearsome as a black hole in a galaxy, as infinite as a bottomless well, as pervasive and penetrating as a desert night with no point of reference, as mysterious as anything which communicates nothing, totally aseptic, seemingly uncontaminated but so concrete and physical that you are almost compelled to touch it, feel it, in the entirely vain hope of sizing it, formalising it, visualising it. What can be done when presented with a space (artistic) of such substance, a double-edged sword, hard to understand but with infinite evocative potential? Then the idea, materialised in the most spontaneous approach possible, as if from a state of total unconsciousness, the material feeling of the five senses has been regained, demands a hard and sudden confrontation, a sort of pain, an incipit, that after being inflicted entails a reduction of the spiritual state to a trivially material state, a falling into line, a return to the normality of individual existence.
What better than a scratch, a mark, a cut, to take on such a task?
Feet back on the ground, eyes wide open, ready to perceive any type of vital essence, there comes the realisation that rather than having inflicted pain, a disfigurement, on this immense dark mare magnum, you are transported to a different, parallel world where you take on the role of an archaeologist; digging, removing, cleaning, you discover the indispensability of a past that you have never stopped sharing with us; or of a sculptor who removes parts and savours the whole, which is still hidden but ready to emerge, being already present within.
So cut after cut, mark after mark, from that profound primordial darkness there arises a brightness such that alternative energy sources pale beside it; something is being created, who or what is not known but it is certainly a manifestation of life, an attack of vitality, an unprecedented cognitive approach. It is a simple act, seemingly trivial, repeated many times and learned in its substance, at times accompanied by an older brother – stronger, taller, more striking, whiter – together and apart in an unprecedented swirl of dynamism. Cut after cut, at last you savour the idea of a consciousness, a consciousness of the identity being assumed by everything we are discovering. The mark is sometimes modified, changed; initially a simple emotional and explosive act, it enters a channel of extreme rationality and complexity, is transformed into a peerless labyrinth where the straight and narrow can no longer be distinguished, only postulated. Its complexity develops to the extent that it surpasses its primordial form – the pure and simple act initially inflicted – and so for its own survival needs a rapid mutation into a sinuousness of rare and refined beauty, intertwined areas of extreme sensuality, tamed curves that touch and attract each other, let themselves go as if placed on flowing water, ready themselves to undergo sudden natural mutations. Reflecting lakes of unusual beauty and depth, not territorially fixed but absorbing and swallowing everything in continual movement, blacker than ever but full of light and brightness. What light if not that of the spirit, of the deepest and innermost self, the other facet of ourselves which we sometimes fail to extrapolate from our being human, ready to face the others but to face ourselves first? It's not yet possible to imagine what all this will entail, what the end result will be, what may be the purpose of such an emotional reconstruction... Then the passing of time reveals the superiority of this journey, this event. A superiority that only the flow of the various temporal units will be able to consecrate as such.
Silvio Balestra © copyright
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