Aluminium
WORKS
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| ADELE LOTITO AND HER STAR by Mario de Candia - 1990 | ||||||||||||||||||
| From her last, not so recent, solo Roman exhibition, Adele Lotito has appeared on the scene again in a completely new guise. A deep and radical change, beginning, firstly, with a study on the structures themselves, bringing into question not only those closely linked to vision, but also those which question doing itself, the communicative value, forcing us to act, trying to solicit their theoretical status verified through an ongoing practice. It is the latter that goes back to an almost minimal level, where all is reduced due to a scarce, almost zero, elaboration, under the rules of a binary system, a duality and contrasting entity, programatically set to eliminate any disturbing element, any overloading of the artistic work. Even if, in fact, Lotito's project takes on entirely personal and characteristic connotations (that, moreover, do not mean painful nor traumatic breaks from an original research in a climate of exuberance and trust in the communicative and expressive potential of the "pictorial story" happily sparked off more than a decade ago by the Transavanguardia), the actions/doings, but more than the actions, I would say, the behaviour and the mentality that the artist's research identify and make concrete, coincide with a questioning of refounding, revising and reconsidering that art and artists, a little everywhere, and in Rome particularly, have triggered. And that, for some time, have singularly guided reasons, functions and roles to be assumed, also regarding a time perspective, not necessarily or exclusively anchored in the discriminating restrictions of our present time. Adele Lotito has specifically presented a work based on an idea, being as real as it is virtual in its specularity, its materialization of reflection, the latter playing a all-purpose and all-meaningful role, neither more nor less corresponding to meanings associated with "reflecting" in our everyday language. It is a five-pointed star made up of aluminium triangles marked by a continuous, possessive and maniacal incision that, more than being an attempt at writing, seems to respond to another need or will. That of measuring the capability of change of the subject possessed by the act united with the sign, to extract and create a space of darkness, a shadow where the metal is utterly clean, and of light where a swathe of compact blackness progressively obliterates the beams from the star. This composition anchored to the wall and generating an idea of movement and emptiness corresponds to, on the floor, a complete stasis, mirror-like, made of nine aluminium squares on which the shape of the star is recomposed, reflected and distorted, and where movement appears to be impeded by the the margins of the design. In many ways, Lotito's work seems to exemplify an emerging and very complex attitude which sees the artist, today, working on internal materials, models, almost "pathological", and establishing a principle of identity, with which to invest the representation with a sense or meaning coinciding with a way of seeing, living and being in our reality. | ||||||||||||||||||
