alis-filliol/Ritratto di fantasma n°3

alis/filliol
ritratto di fantasma n°3
polyurethane foam, wood, iron, 320x200x180 cm, 2011

Apparently ruled by its own physiological drive, the Turinese duo Alis/Filliol, works to give their own declension to two large “measures” that the human is confronted with every day: space and time. Two macro-systems that Alis/Filliol modulate and filter through their own physical selves, in an ascensional drive between physicality and ideas. Space. Or rather, in their research, the analysis of the relationship between real space and perceived space, between that three-dimensional surface, sometimes visible, that makes up reality, and our “self”, experienced from the inside. What share of space our own body occupies (see “Occupare il minor spazio possible”)? How is it possible to trace an horizontal line running in a landscape of vertical masses (see the video “Muro”)? But, above all, is space as we experience it real or holographic? Through the filling of the emptiness, or visa-versa the emptying of the fullness they accustom their mind to enter a sort of trance that allows them ever closer to a resolution. A truth far from pompous mathematical calculations, instead extremely close to the most trivial fears and the psychological discomforts of the human being, like claustrophobia and agoraphobia. Action. For them, taking action always results in a strong and vigorous gesture. The finished work, abandoned in the expositive space, finds itself clenched in the definition of “ashes of a performative act”. In Alis/Filliol’s case we should really say, rather than ashes, still hot coals, electric ones, foreboding of an energy not at all exhausted, like in “testa di sirena urlante”. Like an unexploded bomb, their work is there, full of tension, a compact atomic nucleus filled with energy. Action always equals to body. But not in an hedonistic sense. The two artists are present only in the extent in which it is possible for oneself to lay hands on their work, working hard, doing heavy lifting and leaving in its wake the sweat imprints it caused. It is only this way that that energy will be able to pass through their selves, an unavoidable adrenaline rush, that will without fail release itself in all the materials that form the artwork. Materials that are obviously extreme from an insulation/conduction standpoint. What which the artworks convey (like “calco di due corpi in movimento nello spazio), even completely ignoring their doing, is effort. An exertion that is enveloping and peremptory. Like in the various “fusione a neve persa”, energy is consumed for blindness, for a performance ostentatiously sterile, and precisely because of it charged like a spring.
(alice ginaldi)


artwork part of
azimut
curated by alice ginaldi
sass muss, pavione building
17 september – 16 october 2011