Ambiguous Reality in Naples

AMBIGUOUS REALITY
The theme of the exhibition mirrors contemporary society, posing problems that it does not claim to solve, and tangles that certainly cannot be undone.
Yet a reality that is mirrored or rendered visually in terms of uncertainty, doubt and ambiguousness appears as another attempt to understand everything surrounding us. The most important function of art is to observe and elaborate possibilities, denunciations, cultural acquisitions: not answers or solutions.
The ambiguity of the vision split between bi-dimensional and tri-dimensional, annihilates the certainty of the vision.
Indeed, it is a matter of a kind of “state of perception”, artistic/visual representations of a condition which is merely contemporary society and its reality.
12 artists, six American and six Italian, have been invited to capture aspects of a fragmented reality, fractals of reality, ambiguities of reality, and to measure swords with a very thin line of demarcation between reality and unreality, not so much a dichotomy opposing reality and fantasy as a perceptive acquisition which is distorted, ambiguous, uncertain. To show the signs of a society where it is hard to distinguish what is true and what is false, truth and lies, perceptions that are authentic and perceptions that are distorted by external interferences. The manipulation of reality and the superimposition of virtual realities on real ones, enigmas and paradoxes are all aspects which art must distinguish, because they are part of contemporary society, ridden by a combination of incongruity, truth, falsity, ambiguity, enigmas, and paradoxes. Human beings sometimes “perform” a character, “perform” a situation beyond their own real life. They are pushed to perform on the “stage” of life and wear a mask. The mask (Lello Esposito) becomes a human body and the two aspects are fused together so that you cannot recognize what is real, what is fake.
Faced with these works, the onlooker must ask him or herself what his or her eyes are seeing and what his or her brain is elaborating: is it a pure and simple image, or is it rather a personal mental elaboration of the object?
Is what I experience as reality every day really a true reality, or is a virtual and fictitious one created by the web or by social networks or by systems that make something seem real, when it really isn’t?
Also, Art is part of this investigation through the presentation or representation of the ambiguous perception of the artwork in itself.
Are all the vibrations I get from the works of art real? And is the impression of perceptions that I receive an illusion? A painted illusion of movement (Ellen Cantor), a painted illusion of objects in movement (Carla Viparelli), of smoke (Joan Wulf), of walking people (Dino Izzo and Emilia Castioni), a vision split between bi-dimensional and tri-dimensional (Miguel Osuna): they have all been created in order to give us a new perspective of vision. They have been created in order to make us ask ourselves what we are looking at, to place us face to face with our own assumptions and presumptions about what is real, and what isn’t. They are made to confuse us, or perhaps we should rather say, to make us question what we really see in everyday life: reality, or an illusion?
And so, art faces a new challenge, art responds to new questions about contemporary life; art makes us see the signs of something that is happening in our everyday life. Yet again, art is the fulcrum where all the new aspects of contemporary life converge to be focused on, revealed to the public, experienced and re-elaborated by human beings.
AMBIGUOUS REALITY
The theme of the exhibition mirrors contemporary society, posing problems that it does not claim to solve, and tangles that certainly cannot be undone.
Yet a reality that is mirrored or rendered visually in terms of uncertainty, doubt and ambiguousness appears as another attempt to understand everything surrounding us. The most important function of art is to observe and elaborate possibilities, denunciations, cultural acquisitions: not answers or solutions.
The ambiguity of the vision split between bi-dimensional and tri-dimensional, annihilates the certainty of the vision.
Indeed, it is a matter of a kind of “state of perception”, artistic/visual representations of a condition which is merely contemporary society and its reality.
12 artists, six American and six Italian, have been invited to capture aspects of a fragmented reality, fractals of reality, ambiguities of reality, and to measure swords with a very thin line of demarcation between reality and unreality, not so much a dichotomy opposing reality and fantasy as a perceptive acquisition which is distorted, ambiguous, uncertain. To show the signs of a society where it is hard to distinguish what is true and what is false, truth and lies, perceptions that are authentic and perceptions that are distorted by external interferences. The manipulation of reality and the superimposition of virtual realities on real ones, enigmas and paradoxes are all aspects which art must distinguish, because they are part of contemporary society, ridden by a combination of incongruity, truth, falsity, ambiguity, enigmas, and paradoxes. Human beings sometimes “perform” a character, “perform” a situation beyond their own real life. They are pushed to perform on the “stage” of life and wear a mask. The mask (Lello Esposito) becomes a human body and the two aspects are fused together so that you cannot recognize what is real, what is fake.
Faced with these works, the onlooker must ask him or herself what his or her eyes are seeing and what his or her brain is elaborating: is it a pure and simple image, or is it rather a personal mental elaboration of the object?
Is what I experience as reality every day really a true reality, or is a virtual and fictitious one created by the web or by social networks or by systems that make something seem real, when it really isn’t?
Also, Art is part of this investigation through the presentation or representation of the ambiguous perception of the artwork in itself.
Are all the vibrations I get from the works of art real? And is the impression of perceptions that I receive an illusion? A painted illusion of movement (Ellen Cantor), a painted illusion of objects in movement (Carla Viparelli), of smoke (Joan Wulf), of walking people (Dino Izzo and Emilia Castioni), a vision split between bi-dimensional and tri-dimensional (Miguel Osuna): they have all been created in order to give us a new perspective of vision. They have been created in order to make us ask ourselves what we are looking at, to place us face to face with our own assumptions and presumptions about what is real, and what isn’t. They are made to confuse us, or perhaps we should rather say, to make us question what we really see in everyday life: reality, or an illusion?
And so, art faces a new challenge, art responds to new questions about contemporary life; art makes us see the signs of something that is happening in our everyday life. Yet again, art is the fulcrum where all the new aspects of contemporary life converge to be focused on, revealed to the public, experienced and re-elaborated by human beings.