dimanche 30 août 2015

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Sensitive alchemies

Francesca Capasso by Raffaella Barbato

, Francesca Capasso et Raffaella Barbato

Toutes les versions de cet article : [English] [italiano]

“True reflection presents me to myself not as idle and inaccessible subjectivity, but as identical with my presence in the world and to others, as I am now realizing it : I am all that I see, I am an intersubjective field, not despite my body and historical situation, but, on the contrary, by being this body and this situation, and though them, all the rest.” (Maurice Merleau-Ponty)

Francesca Capasso is a sensitive presence in the Italian artistic research of the last years. Through her work, she creates an intersubjective field in which the artist, as a diaphragm between the ordinary and extraordinary dimension of the phenomenology of presence – now called to cope with the symbolic mastery of absence – urges a person to listen to the original correspondence of man and nature ; inviting him to a circularity in which – as the French philosopher states -“every consciousness is perceptual”.

Senza Titolo installation 1

Through a silent and meditative inquiry, she lets us perceive those hidden places that are imbued with humanity and spirituality, often too ambiguous and disturbed by the many visual intrusions. By way of complex mechanics, her installations produce sensitive alchemies. The artist exposes the meaninglessness of the world – in the grip of the bulimic overwhelming of images emptied of the emptying ability and invites the spectator to a structural reset and encouraged him to rediscover the charm of the look and the invisible magic of the images ; the irreflection in which man and world bend. In her investigation around the social dimension as the centre of the ethical principles sustaining an individual’s commitment, the artist offers an unique crossroad of theoretical perspectives : her installation Italia 100% is inspired by the inconsistent practice of the Italian Constitution ; with Linea di Orizzonte, she homages the Declaration of Human Rights ; the work Senza Titolo is a reflection on the Four Days of Naples and its partisans and in the installation Irrigazioni e Mappe she offers a real experience. Francesca Capasso creates structures, vibrant matter in evolution, capable of bringing into life that subtle memory - deep and historical - which becomes motion in action and a sign that, thanks to water, ink, light, pigments and clay, will resist current events. Her work is the combination of different chemical and ritual processes echoing ancient crafts (embroidery ; dying of fabrics in boiling water, salt and pigments ; hand-cut cloth and the dry-off technique that reminds of old times workman distilling flowers essences or land irrigation). Each piece originates from unconscious gestures that cleverly bring to life a message.

linea d’orizzonte-Dichiarazione Universale dei Diritti Umani articolo 13, Russia, Ucraina, Cuba, Messico
installation, cotton, plexiglass, wood, fabric color dyes, neon 400x70 cm, 2013.

Thus, Sensitive alchemies, in which the artwork unveils itself and charms the spectator into being part of this mutation and revelation. In Linea di Orizzonte, a set of flags embroidered with the Human Rights articles, or in the installation Italia 100%, the verb/sign is snagged, purposely appearing illegible at first glance, but, thanks to the revealing power of light beaming on the hand-dyed fabrics (each colour is the mix of every country flag colours), the words appear conveying the esthetical nature of her inquiring work.

Principi fondamentali della Costituzione Italiana, art.1
oil and silk on canvas, 35X60 cm, 2012.

The phainómenon of transmutation marks most of the artistic production of Francesca Capasso. It animates Proclama, another homage to the partisans, and Mappe, a project designed for the abbey of Bucine, Arezzo. Irrigazioni is a white cloth on which are embroidered the needs of the soul, as described by Simon Weil in the essay The need for roots. Through a plexiglass irrigation system, the pure white linen is (de)signed by the random strokes of the water and black pigments that follow - and escape - the outline, disclosing an unexpected yet moving cartography of the soul. In those words, embroidered but snagged, a shallow and lazy look would have seen nothing but a scribble.

Mappe 01
installation site-specific, cotton, glass, iron, fabric color dyes, Abbazia S.Pietro a Ruoti Bucine (AZ), 2014.

Francesca Capasso works on a formal ambiguity that in its incompleteness becomes a primordial experience, a place of revelation, which is, inside and outside, intersubjective.

Senza titolo-reliquie
cotton, fabric color dyes, inch, 55x55cm, 2014.