Gea Casolaro | THE GALLERY APART
MOLTO VISIBILE, TROPPO INVISIBILE
(Very Visible, Too Invisible)
30 sep 2019 – 20 dec 2019
Gea Casolaro offers her contribution to the ethical and moral question about the fate of our planet as well as the individual and collective consciousness. The exceptionality of the current times, the uncertainty of the stability of the democratic institutions, the materialisation of a catastrophic environmental scenario, the tragic inability to prevent and manage the migration flows. The resulting nationalist and racist instincts lead Gea Casolaro to suggest interpretations that eschew an excessively abstract approach from the problems, an attitude which is itself origin and concause of the difficulty in finding solutions.
Such ambition to concreteness underlies the artistic practice of Gea Casolaro. The investigation into the several ways of vision, on which the artists has based most of her poetics, is used to launch meaningful connections aimed at generating doubts and reflections in the viewer. An inclination towards multidimensionality already transpired from her past photography exhibitions. The need to incorporate the plurality of views, as well as the urge to foster critical masses in order to challenge the contemporaneity. To Gea Casolaro represent the reason for adopting new approaches in her artmaking practice. Hence, on one hand, her predilection for processes of engagement and participation in creating her artworks and on the other hand her experimentation, as opposed to the compulsive use of the images of today’s communication.
The project MOLTO VISIBILE, TROPPO INVISIBILE is also the result of this creative approach. Along with the philosopher Enrico Castelli Gattinara, Gea Casolaro has invited some renowned speakers to take part in the talks held in the gallery spaces with the aim of exploring topical issues from even eccentric, but never dull points of view. From these meetings, the artist has drawn the material to create the video from which the exhibition takes its name. At the same time, she has worked with a group of young foreigners arrived in Italy, intentionally outside any classification (regular/irregular, asylum seeker, refugee, economic migrant).
To underline the common belonging to one humanity whose members, nobody excluded, should be guaranteed the fundamental rights, including the right to dream of a better future. Her work shows how the desire of several migrants is first and foremost that of improving themselves. And the artist urges to reflect on how these ambitions and this energy may revitalize our exhausted societies.
As in all her works, Gea Casolaro acts by elicitation, exploiting the powerful images that take shape and unfold in her mind. She brings to the attention of who, through art, calls if not for solutions, at least for credible interpretations. The need for concreteness exhorts the artist to reify her goad-images in real tridimensional objects. Thus, sculpture pieces stand alongside the videos and the works of participatory art, which Gea Casolaro manages to treat for what they are: pure images.
The sweatshirt with the symbol from the costume of Ubu Roi to evoke the many, homebred and not, Ubus, whom the fate of the Nations and civil coexistence have to face.
The telescope aimed at a physical planisphere significantly entitled Il cielo stellato e la legge morale (The starry sky and the moral law), inspired in a Kantian-like way by the need to reflect upon our own role on this planet. It has to be protected and preserved in its entire and precious universality, without any boundary, distinction nor economic interests.
And Specchio delle mie brame, powerful anti-monument to incommunicability and to a distorted view of reality which characterizes today’s communication.
Finally Torno subito, an incitement to reclaim our role as sentient and rational women and men after a too long. Still ongoing, intellectual break: the ringing of an alarm clock, or of a bell, which Gea Casolaro entrusts to a message on a T-shirt significantly left white.
THE GALLERY APART
Via F. Nigri, 43
Rome
