(IN)VISIBLE (IN)BODY has the ambition of drawing a map, however partial, but no less relevant, of the most recent operational area in which the parallel and integrated conceptions of the invisible in the visible and of the incorporeal are manifested in the body. The project aims to present a variety of approaches and outcomes that are very different from each other, in a path and in a story for works that on these initial assumptions, the presence of the invisible in the visible and the evidence of the incorporeal in the corporeal, thus like the tension of the visible towards the invisible and of the corporeal towards the incorporeal, are set in various ways. If the tools can only be those of art, in the specific case of an artistic manifestation, the two oppositional and interconnected axioms extend beyond the strictly artistic sphere to place themselves in a broader area of ​​interest that embraces the very meaning of culture in the era we are living in.
The incipit of the journey/story is given by a splendid and emblematic Cosmogonie by Yves Klein (Nice 1928 – Paris 1962), in which the imprint of a body is reproduced in blue pigment, an essential feature of all his work. It is in fact the French artist who peremptorily raises the problem of an immaterial art. If this is the beginning, the path subsequently unfolds in multiple phases and episodes far from that original statement. Aesthetic sensuality and the cult of beauty elevate bodies and figures in the immateriality, albeit illusory, of their appearances in the work of Ettore Spalletti (Cappelle sul Tavo 1940, lives in Spoltore). At the same time, and in the same cultural climate that characterized the Eighties, there is a call to a spirituality that manifests itself equally deceptively in the materials and constructions of Anish Kapoor (Bombay 1954, lives in London).
The tension of a nameless desire, like a passion without an object that is no less than the totality of meaning of life and being, transfigures the work of Marisa Merz (lives in Milan and Turin) into an index and announcement of something that surpasses the triviality of every appearance. The cancellation of the image in the work of Hiroshi Sugimoto (Tokyo 1948, lives in New York and Tokyo) causes the gaze to return to itself and its own solitude.
The sign/gesture that marks the void in the painting of Lee U Fan (Gyeongnam, Korea, 1936, lives in Kamakura), as well as the dissolution of form in the sculpture of Medardo Rosso (Turin 1858 – Milan 1928) combined beyond the time in which the respective works have made their appearance which indicate the continuous emergence of the invisible in the visible and the incorporeal in the corporeal. Addo Lodovico Trinci (Pistoia 1956, lives in Pistoia), who marks the polarities of the energy of the universe according to the principles of the Chinese doctrine of Feng Shui, and Salis-Vitangeli (Giovanna Salis, Sassari 1970, Massimo Vitangeli, Perugia 1950, live in Polverigi), which in their representation of a sacred environment make human figures pass by like fatuous shadows, make visible what remains invisible and deprive bodies of their potential for representation.
The cinema of Mark Lewis (Hamilton, Ontario, 1957, lives in London) in its filmic evidence exhibits what does not appear, taking nothing away from what is visible. The interventions of Koo Jeong-a (Seoul, 1967, lives in Paris) are always site specific and reveal, despite the discretion of their construction, a subtle essence that pierces bodies, substances and figures, like a thread of breeze that rises and penetrates the hottest day, bringing out the hidden and the dormant.
Giovanni Ozzola (Florence 1982, lives in Florence) works in his photographs and videos on an auroral substance where things, feelings and forms come to the surface from the invisibility that envelops them and are converted into diaphanous forms or into massive apparitions in which something is hidden or removed. The video of Sabrina Mezzaqui (Bologna 1964, lives in Marzabotto) is equally evident and does not grant any access except as a mobile curtain that blocks any further possible viewing. Giandomenico Sozzi (Solaro 1960, lives in Milan and Noto) presents a journey of monochromes that opens with found photos and ends in a mini sculpture of absolute sacredness, which tells nothing other than its own inscrutable story.
A dispassionate apologue on blindness is by the filmmaker Francesco Dal Bosco (Trento 1952, lives in Trento): two moments of silence that suspend speech.
Robert Vincent (working entity formed in 2004) proposes a dazzling environment around an object of elaborate and successive constructions, which is indicative of a fundamental absence. Davide Rivalta (Bologna 1974, lives in Bologna) recovers the oldest representation technique in history by drawing on the wall and uses it to depict animals, as in the caves of the origins of art, no longer hunted for sustenance , but creatures close to us and now forgotten except as nutrients without identity, laboratory and entertainment instruments, pariahs of life on earth. Giuseppe Caccavale (Afragola 1960, lives in Bari and Marseille) also recovers ancient ways of Mediterranean culture, which through decoration and obsolete symbols express the sense of mystery and the aspiration to beauty.
The exhibition ends with the cosmic images of Rotraut (Uecker Klein-Moquay) which are paired with the petit prince rustico by Pastorello (Sassari 1967, lives in Sassari), a fantasy figure, personification of an eternal childhood, which touches the brush painting a star.
If the exhibition inside the museum ends here, it continues beyond its walls and beyond the event of its inauguration, in the context of the city and its territory with secret interventions (Pawel Althamer, Warsaw 1967, lives in the Brodno district of the same city ​​) and occasional ones (Piotr Uklanski, Warsaw 1968, lives in Paris) to conclude in the ephemeral and final show of Cai Guo Qiang (Quangzhou, Fujian province, China, 1957, lives in New York). If this is so, it is because it is well suited to that which remains invisible in the visible and to that which is incorporeal in the course of construction.
Edited by Pier Luigi Tazzi, independent critic and curator
The artists _ Intra moenia : Yves Klein, Ettore Spalletti, Anish Kapoor, Marisa Merz, Hiroshi Sugimoto, Lee U Fan, Medardo Rosso, Addo Lodovico Trinci, Salis-Vitangeli, Mark Lewis, Koo Jeong-a, Giovanni Ozzola, Sabrina Mezzaqui, Giandomenico Sozzi, Francesco Dal Bosco, Robert Vincent, Davide Rivalta, Giuseppe Caccavale, Rotraut, Pastorello. Extra moenia : Cai Guo Qiang, Pawel Althamer, Piotr Uklanski.
