S. Tonoli Adamo, L. Carbotta, L. Chasse, A. Quaranta, M. Yui: Disegnare l'aria / Drawing the air

The title of this exhibiting project (which will be inaugurated on Wednesday October 25, 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 artists participating in the exhibition 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. 
Alessandro Quaranta has also felt the sudden urge to draw, in order to capture an image that recurs in his dreams. Last summer, when he was staying for a few weeks in a place familiar to him since childhood, he tried several times to depict it. It is the image of a mountain that is seen from the windows of that house, but which in his dreams is often inexplicably seen from another point of view. And that form manifests itself on paper in his elaborate and insistent doodling. 
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 ”.
On Saturday, November 4, at 9 pm, blank will host a performance event by Ludovica Carbotta, created as a part of Monowe (name of an imaginary city designed for one person), a project that she has been working on for some time and which is constantly evolving into a multitude of complementary expressive areas. It will be an 'intrusion' into the exhibition space by a character whose existence can be considered pertinent to an uncertain area of reality, bordering on the imaginary [see also HERE].