Exhibition

catalogue:

Like a real pearl - 1991

gallery:

Le Cadre gallery - Hong Kong

text by:

Giuliano Corti

ELEGY OF A VIEW

The eyes of the spirit are somehow surprised by the dizziness of their own inventions. the mind seizes an image, a mixture of things and persons, and a whole world springs up. the eye nearly always sees what is prompted by the mind, but the sight vanishes almost at once into an instant of optimism. The brief moment is wiped out by a past that has scarcely elapsed. the eyes however would like to hold it back for themselves, to contemplate in the metaphysical suspension of simple things that have the precise and quick identity of symbols. certainly, the aesthetic category of "symbolism" helps us to understand a work devoted to real things, everyday objects and the ordinary world's expression.

 But symbols are not just a concise expression of the power of arcane forms and ideal models, primordial fears and unknown smiles. symbols are also sensations by images, summaries of whole existential chapters. They are synopses that enable the static state of an interior to be grasped, in the immobile hope of a more dynamic future. released from the law of devouring time, suspended between the earth of signs and the sky of colours, everything is moved by the joy of a view that frames the world from above. Meanwhile the objects rest on the plane of their realistic condition. They are pretences of a reality set in motion, not so much in things that can be stopped and named, as in changing background within the wings of the mind's theatre.

 Against a backcloth of the spirit, buildings and cities are composed with colours that suggest ways of use and contemplation. Monumental forms of a cosmology of daily life are compounded of tender sacrifices and fierce acceptances; myths, games and prayers; deep wounds like those of our daily bread.

 Men always tell their story by striking up a past tempo, while the wave of a stormy present beats against the city's sea-wall. at the centre of vanilla-coloured square floats a table, a flower unafraid of the ominous sky and its promised gale force. the destiny of a chair or vase is unknown.
However the brief poetic moment of a fact, that becomes first an image and then an object, can be grasped. in the stories of this warm world everything is made of colour, poured from eyes that look down at the scene from the height of mystical words