Disegnare l'aria / Drawing the air (work notes)
Drawing the air
The title of this exhibition project (which will take place in October 2017) refers to a kind of drawing that renounces the support of a chosen model (something “real”, a tangible object), and addresses an image that is invisible - or visible only to its creator, suspended in the air – and elusive, relating to an intangible but equally real entity pertaining, in the broad sense, to one's perceptual scope. There are many possibilities and many different areas where it is possible for the visionary drawer (or drawer of visions) to tap into this mode, and each of the three artists participating in the exhibition (still in the planning phase) represents one of the areas of these possibilities quite well.
For a long time now, Miki Yui has established her own mode - perhaps more existential than strictly artistic – which frequently, though discontinuously, consists of a quick and often almost feverish attempt (it must be done soon, the image is fading just like and even faster than a ray of sunshine filters through shutters into a house) to retain fragments of her dreams, some of which are recurring. Upon awakening in the morning, Miki often makes sketches, in a little book she keeps for this purpose, of the images of her interrupted dream whose shapes, colors, sounds, and odors still revolve around her for a few seconds. She sometimes does this a little while after she has woken up, and it is more accurate since the memory of it still persists with clarity. But the drawings made upon awakening must be instantaneous, for the stronger her perception of the dream is, the more rapidly it fades away. And so Miki also uses words which, at times, seem to be better able to synthesize an image that is both powerful and elusive.
Saverio Tonoli Adamo often resorts to a kind of drawing that is similar to Yui's, but differs in many respects. In the series of drawings made at the beach in the summer, there is a strong light all around him (these beaches are in Italy or Spain), which seems to exclude any vision other than that of the hyper-realistic landscape surrrounding him. Saverio makes use of pebbles that he collects on the beach or shore, as well as the sand itself, and these tangible elements of the landscape help trigger the occurrence of a transcendent experience from which intensely colorful drawings materialize (colors that Saverio might not have seen there, in those moments) which seem to suggest incomprehensible or unclassifiable forms, while the only evidence left of the pebbles or sand (these 'catalysts of vision') is their absence, or disappearance, which thereby represents them.
Loren Chasse also makes his drawings outdoors, extemporaneously, and it is some real phenomenon (a form, a sound, a light effect, or any sudden and unexpected situation) that gives impetus to his imagination, and he makes an attempt to represent something that is suddenly and uncontrollably made manifest within himself, almost synchronous with that phenomenon. Chasse often does not complete a drawing, in order to leave room for what cannot (or is best not to) be represented, or which could be represented only by resorting to a pretense. That which would sap the drawing's vital energy and his ability to capture a plausible trace of the phenomenon (inside/outside of himself) without presuming to have caught it, or killing it, like prey. When the epiphany takes place, in Loren Chasse's own words regarding the result of these actions, which are always very rapid and unprepared and created by using any materials at hand, “what I get is an apparition with but a small foot in this world ”.
Carlo Fossati, March 2017 (translated by Laura Culver)
