Glass
WORKS
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| NO SMOKING by Roberto Gramiccia - 2000 | ||||||||||||
| No smoking is a forbidden. It is fobidden to enjoy the pleasure of smoking. Instead, Adele Lotito has based all her work on the ambiguous fascination of the opacity produced by smoke. That it is the smoke from a candle rather than from a cigarette is not important. Her reality, that which is of interest to her, is perceivable through a patina which the smoke leaves on the surfaces (see the group Oltre le nuvole – Beyond the clouds). Often, her reality is the same patina it coincides with, even when it is not the smoke that causes it (see the series Vetri appannati – Misted glass). Adele does not have the showy and ostentatious practice to represent or narrate. Her art is not to subtract but rather to add. Adding depth to the experience of observing and reflecting, rendering the interlocutor active in eye and mind, making it a part of oneself. As happens in the semi-erased faces of the Apostles. In a time, in which we celebrate the universal rite of the obvious, the representation of the apparent, the safety of the infallible ways of singular thinking and the triumph of techniques, Adele sows the seeds of doubt. She hides the sun because we think in semi-darkness, we see better. We see better inside and outside. It is easier to resist the poisonous lure of set habits. Art, after all, has a task, one at least – to reach out to truth and beauty. This objective goes against everything forbidden, as well as every rule or paradigm. What does it matter if this freedom generates doubts. If some cracks appear on the surface of nothing binding the experiences of all, or many, like a straight-jacket. You will not be able to enjoy the life-jacket in the common sense, perhaps you will be a little more afraid of pain and death. But who said that people, to be free, cannot withstand this. That they don't know how to actually live outside a state of sub-continuous narcosis. Turning off or at least dimming the blinding light emanating from the signs from the market of souls, means turning on the one inside our critical and, at least potentially, rebellious thinking. It involves seeing with the eye of Narcissus - (Adele's) and in seeing ourselves we become aware of ourselves, not falling into the water and drowning, but looking up and searching for new friendly but troubled eyes. Thus, no smoking becomes a contorted word, meaning – forbidden to forbid. |
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