The absolute in Laddie John Dill

by Marco Di Mauro

Laddie John Dill weaves iridescent surfaces and bands of light, creating a vivid sense of movement which spreads into the space by waves. The artist, mindful of Cubist and Cubo-futuristic inventions, reduces the multiplicity of reality to a mosaic of light splinters held together by a centripetal force which capture energy from without to feed the flow of matter. Another, opposite force returns the energy outside in the form of pulsating light which is irradiated in the environment.
The American artist forges the metal elements and moulds them carefully, making them resemble thin membranes that let themselves be permeated by the light (and by the gaze) to assert a ‘sustainable’ lightness of being. His way of crafting the sheets give them the three-dimensionality of sculptures, from which they cannot be distinguished. The application of paint – which is sometimes absent or only just perceptible – represents a halo which adapts to the reflections of the metal, without altering their quality. In fact, it is the form that carries the meaning of the work, while the painting, far from being a decoration or superimposition of sense, serves to exalt the intrinsic qualities of the material. The creases and engravings that mark the metallic surface lack the tragic evidence of Burri’s cretti; they have the serene consistency of Fontana’s cuts, lyrical openings to the dimension of the spirit, which craves to free itself of the weight of matter and invade space. There is, consequently, a desire for the absolute in the works of Laddie, who uses art as an initiatory instrument, to escape from the chaos of everyday life and ascend towards a higher dimension, by now free from bodily ties.
This transcendental dimension is accentuated in the recent installations featuring sand and neon, like the one exhibited at the Venice Biennial of 2011, or the one which is today presented at Villa Di Donato. In darkened rooms, the light of the neon makes the sand dunes give off reflections comparable to those produced on sheets of metal by daylight. However, the fine grain of the sand gives the work a sense of lightness which well expresses the reaching for the absolute, for pure spirituality, which is the key to reading the entire production of Laddie John Dill.