2016 la freccia che colpisce il bersaglio vola per sempre Video
20
La Freccia che
The title The arrow that strikes the target flies forever refers to two videos – one of which is a loop – both based on a sculpture of the same title[read more=”Read More”less=”Read Less”] by Ferruccio Ascari from 2007, made of four pieces of white terracotta.
La Freccia che Colpisce il Bersaglio Vola per Sempre, 2’22”, 2016 (teaser 0’34”)
2012 Vibractions
20
12
Vibractions
2012
The sculptures and installations of this period are joined by works on paper, often large in size: while focusing on questions that cross the entire artist’s oeuvre,[read more=”Read More”less=”Read Less”]certain of these works offer us a chance for perhaps a closer approach to his personal sphere, almost to his physical being. We might talk about a proximity that is exposed to the gaze, in a cycle of works on paper under a single title: Respiro (Breath). The large sheets of paper lined up in overlaid rows are crossed by bundles of sinuous lines that flee to the margins. The observer is attracted by their slenderness and, at the same time, their evidence, deceptively like filaments, or hairs embedded in applied onto the paper. The sign is actually obtained with ink, but – as the artist explains – the result is possible only through particular physical and mental preparation: “To obtain this sign, it takes a gesture done with a special brush, with long bristles, dipped in ink. The ink held by the bristles is deposited with a wide, flowing, continuous gesture. Breathing is important: the exhalation accompanies the whole trajectory of the sign on the paper, and the air contained in the lungs is released in synchrony with the release of the ink from the bristles. The lines that cross the sheet have their own shape. Those modulations can be compared to the signs made by a seismograph: the point of the brush records an inner state, just at the tip of the seismograph records telluric movements, or the encephalogram records brain activity.” It is breathing, then, its rhythm, that determines the fluid movement of the lines that cross the paper.[/read]
Vibractions 2012. Enviromental Installation, forniture, harmonic string, fur, Milano, 2012 [PE0017]
Vibractions 2012. Sound Performance, Spazio O’ Milano, 2012 [PE0017]
2015 Mano Armonica Video
20
15
Mano
Armonica
[Video]
Music score written on the hand fingers—executed for the first time in Milan in 1978 as part of the installation/performance Vibractions,[read more=”Read More”less=”Read Less”]versions of this work were presented through 2012 in different locations.
This video stems from a work from 1978 of the same title, composed of twentyfive photographs of the artist’s hand. The fingers, bent in different positions, are the support of a music score executed for the first time as part of Vibractions, a sound installation/performance from the same year, presented in different locations and versions through the following years most recently in 2012. In the video, the music score and the hand’s movement are once again closely interconnected: the movement of the fingers generates the score, which by turn becomes the animation’s sound track.[/read]
Mano Armonica, 03’09”, 2015 (teaser 0’50”)
Courtesy: Museo del Novecento – Milano
2012 Casa Anatta
20
12
Casa Anatta
[Not Self]
In 2012, in the interiors of Casa Anatta, a unique house in Monte Verità, Switzerland, with inner walls entirely covered in wood, Ferruccio Ascari presented a new version of Vibractions, a sound installation first created in 1978.[read more=”Read More”less=”Read Less”]Much like in the original version, harmonic strings were stretched from one side of the rooms to another, so that the inner space of the house became a musical instrument itself “played” by the artist. These four videos document the performance, held in 2012 in the house’s four room, in the form of a video-installation.
Anatta (“Not I” in Pali language) is the name of a unique house built in 1904 in Monte Verità, Switzerland. This was the main venue of the artistic, philosophical and spiritural movement which took place in Monte Verità from early to mid twentieth century.
Consistently with the artist’s typical creation process, the sound and visual material documenting the performance are the starting point of the video-installation Anatta (Non Io). The installation is composed of four videos reproducing as many rooms that give onto the central salon of the house. Every room, with harmonic strings running from one side to another, is transformed into a speaker box, a musical instrument “played” by the artist. The peculiar volumes of each room, entirely covered in wood, result into different resonances. Much like in the original installation from 1978, and the most recent version from 2012, the sound is literally generated by the environment, while the severe black and white images show a space that was closed for many years, suspended in time.[/read]
2008 insiemi instabili
20
08
Insiemi
Instabili
Insiemi Instabili, like Odradek, Fiori and Vayu, belongs to a group of works in witch the multiplicity of parts “lacking a clear, recognizable order[read more=”Read More”less=”Read Less”]- as the artist says – seems to respondd to a pure need for growth; almost as if they were following their own secret impulses, expanding in the direction of least resistance”.
The form – the infinite, varied form through which life manifests itself – is the result of this impulse that knows no calm, driven by an overwhelming generative will that seems to have no goal other than reproduction. The cones of black terracotta of Insiemi Instabili are arranged in pairs, as if attracted by a magnetic force that urges them to make. The expand on the floor surface, in scattered order, in keeping with a movement that changes each time in relation to the host space. “There are no givens, only events and movements… Reality is not composed of things that essentially are and accidentally become – the artist says, speaking of these works – but of processes, i. e. of an essential becoming… Things are not in time, they are time.”[/read]
Insiemi Instabili. Terracotta, 140 elements different sizes, 2008 [S0024]
2008 Latte nero
20
08
Latte
Nero
Latte nero is an environmental installation composed of 83 parts in white terracotta that remind us of the form of the female breast,[read more=”Read More”less=”Read Less”]though they are hollow and reveal a dark chasm. Similar but of different size, the individual parts are arranged along the wall, apparently without any order. The work’s title refers to a famous poem by Paul Celan that begins with a disturbing oxymoron: milk, the symbol of nourishment and life, is reversed into its opposite, into denial of food and therefore death. In the work by Ascari, the contrast takes the form of the opposition between the fullness, the turgor of the form, and the black void it reveals: a void that is not just subtraction, but a dizzying attraction towards the infinite.[/read]
Latte Nero. Terracotta, 84 elements variable dimensions, 2008 [S0025]
2008 Vayu
20
08
Vayu
Vayu, like Odradek, Fiori and Insiemi Instabili, belongs to a group of works in witch the multiplicity of parts “lacking a clear, recognizable order[read more=”Read More”less=”Read Less”]- as the artist says – seems to respondd to a pure need for growth; almost as if they were following their own secret impulses, expanding in the direction of least resistance”.
The form – the infinite, varied form through which life manifests itself – is the result of this impulse that knows no calm, driven by an overwhelming generative will that seems to have no goal other than reproduction.
In Vayu the twenty parts, with similar forms but different sizes, are scattered on the floor. The title is a Sanskrit term that can be translated as “wind, air, current.” These are jars, containers without bottom, so that paradoxically they can contain nothing. Vessels destined never to be filled, whose form evokes and at the same time negates the empty-full dialectic that is part of the form and function of any container. Crossed by air, these jars evoke the void and, at the same time, the impossibility of its representation.[/read]
Vayu. Terracotta, 20 elements, variable dimensions, 2008 [S0027]
2007 La Freccia che Colpisce il Bersaglio Vola per Sempre
20
07
La Freccia che Colpisce
il Bersaglio Vola
per Sempre
The idea of center as origin, the place from which infinite directions depart, or the infinitely small vanishing point, is found in the iron scultpure Omphalos,[read more=”Read More”less=”Read Less”]a series of ink drawings with the same title, and La freccia che colpisce il bersaglio vola per sempre, a sculpture in white terracotta whose four parts are, in turn, composed of a series of concentric sub-parts sloping towards the inside to form a sort of visual vortex. Omphalos is a word from ancient Greek meaning “navel,” but also umbilical cord, the center of the Earth. The omphalos is the center of the human body, but it is also, significantly, a scar that bears witness to the moment in which we were separated from the maternal body that hosted and generated us; it is the tangible sign of a separation, but also of the conquest of an independent life.
In La freccia che colpisce il bersaglio vola per sempre the concentric circles attract the eye, sucking the gaze towards an infinitely small inner point, triggering a visual vortex. This tiny point is not conceived as the center or the extremity of the world, just as it was not seen as such in Omphalos. Instead, we can say that it is precisely “this vortex,” “this rotation” in a rhythmical movement of being and non-being, of visible and invisible that belongs to all things, and is seen as the extreme meaning of the world. The relationship between these works emerges, then, as tension, a struggle between two poles: not as laceration, but as the intense intimacy, the mutual belonging of the two rivals.[/read]
La Freccia che Colpisce il Bersaglio Vola per Sempre. Terracotta, 4 elements variable dimensions, 2007 [S0021]
La Freccia che Colpisce il Bersaglio Vola per Sempre. Paper model, 2007 [S0021]
La Freccia che Colpisce il Bersaglio Vola per Sempre. Terracotta, 4 elements variable dimensions, 2007 [S0021]
2012 Vibractions
20
12
Vibractions
2012
Le sculture e le installazioni di questo periodo sono affiancate da opere su carta, spesso di grandi dimensioni: benché riprendano questioni che attraversano tutto il lavoro dell’artista,[read more=”Read More”less=”Read Less”]alcuni di questi lavori ci accostano più intimamente alla sua sfera personale, quasi alla sua fisicità. Si può parlare di una vicinanza, di una prossimità che si espone allo sguardo, in un ciclo di lavori intitolati Respiro. I grandi fogli di carta allineati su registri sovrapposti sono attraversati da fasci di linee sinuose che sfuggono verso i margini. Chi guarda è attratto dalla loro sottigliezza e insieme dalla loro evidenza, che fa ingannevolmente pensare a sottili filamenti, a capelli applicati sulla carta. Il segno è in realtà ottenuto con l’inchiostro, ma – come spiega l’artista -tale risultato è possibile solo attraverso una particolare disposizione fisica e mentale: “Per produrre questo segno è necessario un gesto compiuto con un pennello speciale, a setole lunghe, intinto nell’inchiostro. L’inchiostro che le setole trattengono viene scaricato con un gesto ampio, fluido, continuo. È importante il respiro: l’espirazione accompagna tutto il tragitto del segno sulla carta e l’aria contenuta nei polmoni viene scaricata in sincronia con lo scaricarsi dell’inchiostro di cui le setole sono imbevute. Le linee che attraversano il foglio hanno un loro andamento. Quelle modulazioni possono essere assimilate a quelle di un sismografo: la punta del pennello registra uno stato interiore come il pennino del sismografo registra i movimenti tellurici o quello dell’encefalogramma l’attività cerebrale”. È il respiro, dunque, il suo ritmo, che determina il movimento fluido delle linee che attraversano i fogli.[/read]
Vibractions 2012. Installazione ambientale, mobili, corde armoniche, pelliccia, Milano, 2012 [PE0017]
Vibractions 2012. Performance sonora, Spazio O’ Milano, 2012 [PE0017]