Nasilna ljudska povijest pod povećalom se vidi kao konglomeracija ameba i geometrije.
Gromoglasan film.
www.alessandrobavari.com/
METACHAOS
METACHAOS IS A MULTI-DISCIPLINARY
PROJECT FROM ACCOMPLISHED, AMBITIOUS, ITALIAN ARTIST ALESSANDRO BAVARI, WHICH
INCLUDES A PHOTO-SET, MIXED-METHOD PAINTINGS AND THIS SHORT FILM, AN 8MIN
ASSAULT ON THE SENSES
METACHAOS,
FROM GREEK META (BEYOND) AND CHAOS (THE ABYSS WHERE THE ETERNALLY-FORMLESS
STATE OF THE UNIVERSE HIDES), INDICATES A PRIMORDIAL SHAPE OF AMEBA, WHICH
LACKS IN PRECISE MORPHOLOGY, AND IT IS CHARACTERIZED BY MUTATION AND MITOSIS.
IN FACT
THE BODIES REPRESENTED IN METACHAOS, EVEN THOUGH THEY ARE CHARACTERIZED BY AN
APPARENTLY ANTHROPOMORPHOUS APPEARANCE, IN REALITY THEY ARE WITHOUT IDENTITY
AND CONSCIENCE. THEY EXIST CONFINED IN A SPACELESS AND TIMELESS STATE, AN
HOSTILE AND DECADENT HYPERURANIUM WHERE A FORTRESS, IN PERPETUAL MOVEMENT,
DOMINATES THE LANDSCAPE IN DEFENSE OF A SUPERCELESTIAL, HARMONIC BUT FRAGILE
PARALLEL DIMENSION. IN ITS DESTRUCTIVE INSTINCT OF VIOLATING THE DIMENSIONAL
LIMBO, THE MUTANT HORDE PENETRATES THE INTIMACY OF THE FORTRESS, LAYING SIEGE
LIKE A VIRUS. SIMILAR TO THE BALANCE OF A PHILOLOGICAL CONTINUUM IN HUMAN
SPECIES, BRINGING THE STATUS OF THINGS BACK TO THE PRIMORDIAL BROTH.
Almost too
much exposition no? I thought the key to being an artist was cultivating a
sense of mystery surrounding oneself and one’s work =). Bavari’s forthrightness
has not prevented the film from noted honors, including the Golden Nico Award
at the 2011 Prix Ars Electronica Festival, though, with only 3000 views after 6
months online, internet success has so far eluded this stunning effort.
For more info on Bavari’s work, check out his
website. - Jason Sondhi
METACHAOS Duration: min. 8:27 Original format: Pal Widescreen 1050x576 - Progressive Alessandro Bavari: Camera Tremula 1, Noise Melange, XYZ Ocula Depth Fulvio Sturniolo: Camera Tremula 2 Jeff Ensign aka Evolution Noise Slave: Sonic Harmonium |
|---|
Metachaos, from Greek Meta (beyond) and Chaos (the abyss where the eternally-formless state of the universe hides), indicates a primordial shape of ameba, which lacks in precise morphology, and it is characterized by mutation and mitosis.
In fact the bodies represented in METACHAOS, even though they are characterized by an apparently anthropomorphous appearance, in reality they are without identity and conscience. They exist confined in a spaceless and timeless state, an hostile and decadent hyperuranium where a fortress, in perpetual movement, dominates the landscape in defense of a supercelestial, harmonic but fragile parallel dimension. In its destructive instinct of violating the dimensional limbo, the mutant horde penetrates the intimacy of the fortress, laying siege like a virus. Similar to the balance of a philological continuum in human species, bringing the status of things back to the primordial broth.
METACHAOS is a multidisciplinary audio-visual project, articulated in a short film, a set of photography and mix-technique paintings. The purpose of the project is to represent the most tragic aspects of the human nature and of its motion, such as war, madness, social change and hate.
______________________________________________________________________________
METACHAOS won the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica, Austria.
METACHAOS won the Golden Nica at Prix Ars Electronica, Austria.
JURY STATEMENT
Alessandro Bavari’s “Metachaos” is an impressive display of the amazing graphics that can be produced with leading-edge hardware and software. The 8-minute clip begins with a sequence of clear, geometric forms that suggest a serene world. But it doesn’t take long until it’s apparent that this was just the calm before the storm. Shadowy creatures and shockingly grotesque figures intrude into this domain rendered in black & white and sepia tones and rip it to pieces. Using the interplay of light and shadow, intentionally shaky camera movements and quick cuts, Bavari takes us on a tour de force through an unsettling imaginary cosmos that grips viewers and doesn’t let them loose. In addition to its extraordinary visuals, “Metachaos” features an impressive composed soundscape of incredibly concentrated intensity—noise elements paired with driving beats, panic-stricken screams, the rattling of bones and gale-force winds.
Alessandro Bavari’s “Metachaos” is an impressive display of the amazing graphics that can be produced with leading-edge hardware and software. The 8-minute clip begins with a sequence of clear, geometric forms that suggest a serene world. But it doesn’t take long until it’s apparent that this was just the calm before the storm. Shadowy creatures and shockingly grotesque figures intrude into this domain rendered in black & white and sepia tones and rip it to pieces. Using the interplay of light and shadow, intentionally shaky camera movements and quick cuts, Bavari takes us on a tour de force through an unsettling imaginary cosmos that grips viewers and doesn’t let them loose. In addition to its extraordinary visuals, “Metachaos” features an impressive composed soundscape of incredibly concentrated intensity—noise elements paired with driving beats, panic-stricken screams, the rattling of bones and gale-force winds.
While some of as did not necessarily share the apocalyptic view of this film, we found that it left the most indelible impression. Narrowly passing through the first round, it grew on us, so that on repeated viewing it miraculously made its way to the top.
What starts as a cinematic, kinetik, yet clean field of geometry and bodies, gradually evolves, or devolves, into the artist's vision of a nightmarish black-and-white world created by a continual collision of the human and the architectural form. It finally culminates in a screaming dance among the ruins. In a impressive virtuoso tour de force, Alessandro Bavari creates a constant mêlée of grime, projectile muck and dust among collapsing spaces at the stage for metamorphosing human bodies with branching limbs that seem constantly to break the architectural environment apart. Zombies with missing limb sand decaying skin and faces sometimes stand around listlessly and other times appear to engage in orgasmic sex. The human forms become insect-like and multiply in hordes across the building forms. Dust particles and snakes of turbolent, ferrous liquid finally explode into an apocalyptic ocean of flotsam and sludge.
Bavari's few collaborators helped shape what the credit call "camera tremula" (shaky, documentary-style camera) and sound design. We commend his dedication to a singular artistic vision that is grounded in his practice as a photographer. This is a representation of a caustic end of the world, a world of a audible pain and hopeless destruction rendered with a disturbing reference to 80s-style computer-generated animation as well as 60s "actionism".
What starts as a cinematic, kinetik, yet clean field of geometry and bodies, gradually evolves, or devolves, into the artist's vision of a nightmarish black-and-white world created by a continual collision of the human and the architectural form. It finally culminates in a screaming dance among the ruins. In a impressive virtuoso tour de force, Alessandro Bavari creates a constant mêlée of grime, projectile muck and dust among collapsing spaces at the stage for metamorphosing human bodies with branching limbs that seem constantly to break the architectural environment apart. Zombies with missing limb sand decaying skin and faces sometimes stand around listlessly and other times appear to engage in orgasmic sex. The human forms become insect-like and multiply in hordes across the building forms. Dust particles and snakes of turbolent, ferrous liquid finally explode into an apocalyptic ocean of flotsam and sludge.
Bavari's few collaborators helped shape what the credit call "camera tremula" (shaky, documentary-style camera) and sound design. We commend his dedication to a singular artistic vision that is grounded in his practice as a photographer. This is a representation of a caustic end of the world, a world of a audible pain and hopeless destruction rendered with a disturbing reference to 80s-style computer-generated animation as well as 60s "actionism".
________________________________________________________________________________
METACHAOS has been awarded Best Experimental Film at the Stortford Film Festival, Stortford, U.K.
_________________________________________________________________________________
METACHAOS won the Special Award IED Madrid at the Skepto International Film Festival.
_________________________________________________________________________________
METACHAOS won the "Best Direction Prize" at the Cinemavvenire Video Festival._________________________________________________________________________________
METACHAOS has been awarded Best Experimental Film at the Stortford Film Festival, Stortford, U.K.
_________________________________________________________________________________
METACHAOS won the Special Award IED Madrid at the Skepto International Film Festival.
_________________________________________________________________________________
METACHAOS won the "Best Direction Prize" at the Cinemavvenire Video Festival._________________________________________________________________________________
METACHAOS won the 1° Prize Art Lab at the Festival Internazionale del Cinema d'Arte.
INTERNATIONAL FESTIVAL OF FILM ART
It ended Saturday, July 23th, the 10th edition of International Festival of Film Art. Have contributed to the success of this 10th edition the charming and intimate context of the Cloister of Seminarino, but also the affection of the public who attended the welcome celebration of the Awards Ceremony.
On stage, Luca Viscardi has introduced the evening by welcoming the audience and thanked all partners who have supported the event and, with the Festival‘s Artistic Director, Enzo Sallustro, has launched a movie representative of all 10th editions of the festival.
This led to the expectation awards ceremony, which saw the top step of the podium for the category Art Lab “Metachaos” by Alessandro Bavari, a visionary, experimental work that has won over the jury for the techniques used and the ability to evoke apocalyptic worlds.
Also in the category Art Lab, “Adamha” of Mashaallah Mohammadi received a special award for the animation, given the simplicity of the design with which the director conveys the sense of detachment of contemporary society, while “Amourette” Maja Gehrig special award for originality, has been awarded for the irony and poetry with which the filmmaker explores a theme apparently like rough sex.
In the category Art Cinema Award Special Director went to “The class teacher goes to heaven” by Valentina Jordan, a key black and white documentary that investigates the precarious situation of teachers in the real Milan. “Forada instant” of a Spanish-Elisabet Prandi work that shows how meticulous creation of a work of art becomes art in it self-it is instead won the award for best documentary, while the overall winner of the category Raphael was Buranelli with “Salome – a story”: a journey through time and different media, a work characterized by great attention to aesthetics and an excellent interpretation of the leading actress who, with a modern and original narrative style , manages to interact with different forms of art without taking them too seriously.
In the category Art Cinema Award Special Director went to “The class teacher goes to heaven” by Valentina Jordan, a key black and white documentary that investigates the precarious situation of teachers in the real Milan. “Forada instant” of a Spanish-Elisabet Prandi work that shows how meticulous creation of a work of art becomes art in it self-it is instead won the award for best documentary, while the overall winner of the category Raphael was Buranelli with “Salome – a story”: a journey through time and different media, a work characterized by great attention to aesthetics and an excellent interpretation of the leading actress who, with a modern and original narrative style , manages to interact with different forms of art without taking them too seriously.
After the ceremony was the last time anticipated event of the 2011 Festival: Conferring the Award for Lifetime Achievement to Remo Girone. Driven by the demands of Enzo and Luca Sallustro Cavadini, the actor has successfully entertained the audience by telling amusing anecdotes of his career, encounters, moments of personal life, in a pleasant conversation that revealed both the professional man. Accompanied by his wife and actress Victoria Zinny, Group received the award “The Golden Walls” by Roberto Gualdi, Director General of the Festival, showing deeply grateful for the recognition received for being one of the most compelling and versatile actors of the Italian scene, capable to move with ease from television, theater, film, inspired by the characters he plays and screenplays that of master in his career he helped turn into great works.
The Festival ended as it had been opened in the name of Italian cinema: a tribute to Ugo Tognazzi the first evening and the Lifetime Achievement Award in Pool wove the story of an event of international scope, with works in the competition came from around the world.
The Festival ended as it had been opened in the name of Italian cinema: a tribute to Ugo Tognazzi the first evening and the Lifetime Achievement Award in Pool wove the story of an event of international scope, with works in the competition came from around the world.
_________________________________________________________________________________
METACHAOS won the 1° Prize ex aequo as best short and Prize Critics Special Mention at the
Corto Dorico Short Film Festival.
METACHAOS won the 1° Prize ex aequo as best short and Prize Critics Special Mention at the
Corto Dorico Short Film Festival.
Jury:
Marco Bechis (presidente)
Caterina Carone
Maya Sansa
Roberto Silvestri
Marco Bechis (presidente)
Caterina Carone
Maya Sansa
Roberto Silvestri
Symphony of images and music, apocalyptic and psychedelic, Metachaos is a compelling video that can not be tamed: elusive, hypnotic, swirling and disturbing work of art carved for moving images, reflects on the violent opposition between harmony and chaos. Excellent workmanship, the harmony of the editing, the suggestive animations, the powerful music. His experimental tension, which puts it more in the path of avant-garde video art rather than the film's narrative, is evidence of a significant and deserving research.
_________________________________________________________________________________
METACHAOS was awarded for the Best Design Award at the 13th Animation Film Festival Animated Dreams
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METACHAOS is a multidisciplinary audio-visual project, articulated in a short film, a set of photography and mix-technique paintings. The purpose of the project is to represent the most tragic aspects of the human nature and of its motion, such as war, madness, social change and hate.
HEADCLEANER
SODOM AND GOMORRAH
 |
"At night they will think they have seen the Sun,
When they see the half-pig man.
Noise, screams battles seen fought in the skies.
The brute beasts will be heard to speak". Nostradamus, Century I, Quatrain 64
~§~
1- The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. 2- "My lords," he said, "please turn aside to your servant's house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning." "No," they answered, "we will spend the night in the square." 3- But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. 4- Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom-both young and old-surrounded the house. 5- They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them." 6- Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7- and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing. 8- Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof."
Book of Genesis, chapter 19~§~
"Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them,
since they in the same way as these indulged
in gross immorality and went after strange flesh,
are exhibited as an example,
in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire"
Epistle of Jude. 1:7~§~
30- Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. 31- One day the older daughter said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is no man around here to lie with us, as is the custom all over the earth. 32- Let's get our father to drink wine and then lie with him and preserve our family line through our father." 33- That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and lay with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up. 34- The next day the older daughter said to the younger, "Last night I lay with my father. Let's get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and lie with him so we can preserve our family line through our father." 35- So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went and lay with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up. 36- So both of Lot's daughters became pregnant by their father.
Book of Genesis, chapter 19~§~
10- And the vale of Siddim was full of slimepits;
and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled,
and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain.
Book of Genesis, chapter 14
~§~
Introducing the men-women,
descendants of those of the inhabitants of Sodom
who were spared by the fire from heaven.
Sodom and Gomorrah 1921/22, Page 9 [introduction], Marcel Proust
~§~
10- And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar. 11- Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other. 12- Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom. 13- But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly.
Book of Genesis, chapter 13~§~
And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts:
but they give no thought to the work of the Lord,
and they are not interested in what his hands are doing.
Isaiah, Chapter 5, Verse 12
~§~
23- By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. 24- Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah-from the Lord out of the heavens. 25- Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities--and also the vegetation in the land. 26- But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
Book of Genesis, chapter 19
When they see the half-pig man.
Noise, screams battles seen fought in the skies.
The brute beasts will be heard to speak". Nostradamus, Century I, Quatrain 64
~§~
1- The two angels arrived at Sodom in the evening, and Lot was sitting in the gateway of the city. When he saw them, he got up to meet them and bowed down with his face to the ground. 2- "My lords," he said, "please turn aside to your servant's house. You can wash your feet and spend the night and then go on your way early in the morning." "No," they answered, "we will spend the night in the square." 3- But he insisted so strongly that they did go with him and entered his house. He prepared a meal for them, baking bread without yeast, and they ate. 4- Before they had gone to bed, all the men from every part of the city of Sodom-both young and old-surrounded the house. 5- They called to Lot, "Where are the men who came to you tonight? Bring them out to us so that we can have sex with them." 6- Lot went outside to meet them and shut the door behind him 7- and said, "No, my friends. Don't do this wicked thing. 8- Look, I have two daughters who have never slept with a man. Let me bring them out to you, and you can do what you like with them. But don't do anything to these men, for they have come under the protection of my roof."
Book of Genesis, chapter 19~§~
"Just as Sodom and Gomorrah and the cities around them,
since they in the same way as these indulged
in gross immorality and went after strange flesh,
are exhibited as an example,
in undergoing the punishment of eternal fire"
Epistle of Jude. 1:7~§~
30- Lot and his two daughters left Zoar and settled in the mountains, for he was afraid to stay in Zoar. He and his two daughters lived in a cave. 31- One day the older daughter said to the younger, "Our father is old, and there is no man around here to lie with us, as is the custom all over the earth. 32- Let's get our father to drink wine and then lie with him and preserve our family line through our father." 33- That night they got their father to drink wine, and the older daughter went in and lay with him. He was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up. 34- The next day the older daughter said to the younger, "Last night I lay with my father. Let's get him to drink wine again tonight, and you go in and lie with him so we can preserve our family line through our father." 35- So they got their father to drink wine that night also, and the younger daughter went and lay with him. Again he was not aware of it when she lay down or when she got up. 36- So both of Lot's daughters became pregnant by their father.
Book of Genesis, chapter 19~§~
10- And the vale of Siddim was full of slimepits;
and the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah fled,
and fell there; and they that remained fled to the mountain.
Book of Genesis, chapter 14
~§~
Introducing the men-women,
descendants of those of the inhabitants of Sodom
who were spared by the fire from heaven.
Sodom and Gomorrah 1921/22, Page 9 [introduction], Marcel Proust
~§~
10- And Lot lifted up his eyes, and beheld all the plain of Jordan, that it was well watered every where, before the LORD destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, even as the garden of the LORD, like the land of Egypt, as thou comest unto Zoar. 11- Then Lot chose him all the plain of Jordan; and Lot journeyed east: and they separated themselves the one from the other. 12- Abram dwelled in the land of Canaan, and Lot dwelled in the cities of the plain, and pitched his tent toward Sodom. 13- But the men of Sodom were wicked and sinners before the LORD exceedingly.
Book of Genesis, chapter 13~§~
And the harp, and the viol, the tabret, and pipe, and wine, are in their feasts:
but they give no thought to the work of the Lord,
and they are not interested in what his hands are doing.
Isaiah, Chapter 5, Verse 12
~§~
23- By the time Lot reached Zoar, the sun had risen over the land. 24- Then the Lord rained down burning sulfur on Sodom and Gomorrah-from the Lord out of the heavens. 25- Thus he overthrew those cities and the entire plain, including all those living in the cities--and also the vegetation in the land. 26- But Lot's wife looked back, and she became a pillar of salt.
Book of Genesis, chapter 19
SODOM AND GOMORRAH
Many things have been said about sodom and gomorrah but still nobody knows anything.
The only the only "plentiful" evidence that Sodom and Gomorrah actually existed has been handed down to us by the Book of Genesis.
Some think that they are submerged under the heavy waters of the Dead Sea, destroyed by a natural disaster as was Pompeii. In fact, according to geological studies, the area where they stood appears to be rich in sulphur, bitumen and oil (not yet found).
When it is said that Lot's wife (Lot was the only inhabitant fearful of God and was therefore saved from Divine wrath), overwhelmed by the seed of doubt and second thoughts, was transformed into a pillar of salt upon looking behind her as she was fleeing, one could understand her to have been struck by a scorching gust of sulphur and ashes, as with the petrified bodies of the ancient Pompeiians.
So as not to have to face the colossus of Archeology, I have decided to approach the subject by following a precise itinerary, imagining landscapes, portraits, environments and objects, and by following almost the same path that Italo Calvino took thirty years ago in his Le Citta' Invisibili [The Invisible Cities] (1972, Einaudi) where, through Marco Polo's eyes, he visited these seemingly believable cities. He wrote:
"All cities were invented; I have given each one a woman's name: Procopia, Zenobia, Chloe, Hypatia, Zora, Phyllis, etc (...). The book was created one piece at a time, at intervals which were sometimes lengthy (...). I keep a file on objects, a file on animals, one on individuals, one on historical figures and another on mythological heroes. I have a file on the four seasons and one on the five senses; in one I collect pages related to the cities and landscapes of my life and in another, imaginary cities, outside of space and time."
I have the habit of taking photographs of everything wherever I go: human and animal matter, objects, landscapes and architecture. Materials that I have accumulated and catalogued of things photographed in museums and on the street, on trips outside Europe and on brief afternoon outings.
Materials presented in this imaginary journey, the journey which launched me into the metaphor of these two forbidden and damned cities where people happily live in a total absence of morality, devoted to vice and lust, where every kind of sexual perversion is part of everyday life.
In Sodom and Gomorrah, sexual perversion is considered a virtuosity. Virtuosity in which genetic crossbreeding from one generation to the next accumulates over time. Yet it did not cause shame; on the contrary, for the New Progeny it was the rule to show off with pride and irony an evermore unique body.
I have imagined these two cities as a kind of amusement park for visionaries, where my gaze is neither accusing nor benevolent, but simply amused and curious, open to taking in as much as possible. An enormous freak show designed with kitsch and geometrical rationality, like that of crib, where one can get lost, and scrutinize an intimate daily life as hybrid as it is metaphysical, and then find one's path, perhaps to get lost again.
In short, I have wanted the people of Sodom and Gomorrah to be happy, creative and imaginative up to the very day of the apocalypse in which God omnipotent, vexed by their excessive exuberance, decided to spread forevermore his immense black veil.
"Sodom and Gomorrah" is an open-ended project, to which I will continue to add artworks. It is an always expanding project, like Sodom and Gomorrah would be if they had survived the Divine Wrath: an irrational expansion, chaotic, exuberant and spontaneous. Just like that of all modern cities.
Many things have been said about sodom and gomorrah but still nobody knows anything.
The only the only "plentiful" evidence that Sodom and Gomorrah actually existed has been handed down to us by the Book of Genesis.
Some think that they are submerged under the heavy waters of the Dead Sea, destroyed by a natural disaster as was Pompeii. In fact, according to geological studies, the area where they stood appears to be rich in sulphur, bitumen and oil (not yet found).
When it is said that Lot's wife (Lot was the only inhabitant fearful of God and was therefore saved from Divine wrath), overwhelmed by the seed of doubt and second thoughts, was transformed into a pillar of salt upon looking behind her as she was fleeing, one could understand her to have been struck by a scorching gust of sulphur and ashes, as with the petrified bodies of the ancient Pompeiians.
So as not to have to face the colossus of Archeology, I have decided to approach the subject by following a precise itinerary, imagining landscapes, portraits, environments and objects, and by following almost the same path that Italo Calvino took thirty years ago in his Le Citta' Invisibili [The Invisible Cities] (1972, Einaudi) where, through Marco Polo's eyes, he visited these seemingly believable cities. He wrote:
"All cities were invented; I have given each one a woman's name: Procopia, Zenobia, Chloe, Hypatia, Zora, Phyllis, etc (...). The book was created one piece at a time, at intervals which were sometimes lengthy (...). I keep a file on objects, a file on animals, one on individuals, one on historical figures and another on mythological heroes. I have a file on the four seasons and one on the five senses; in one I collect pages related to the cities and landscapes of my life and in another, imaginary cities, outside of space and time."
I have the habit of taking photographs of everything wherever I go: human and animal matter, objects, landscapes and architecture. Materials that I have accumulated and catalogued of things photographed in museums and on the street, on trips outside Europe and on brief afternoon outings.
Materials presented in this imaginary journey, the journey which launched me into the metaphor of these two forbidden and damned cities where people happily live in a total absence of morality, devoted to vice and lust, where every kind of sexual perversion is part of everyday life.
In Sodom and Gomorrah, sexual perversion is considered a virtuosity. Virtuosity in which genetic crossbreeding from one generation to the next accumulates over time. Yet it did not cause shame; on the contrary, for the New Progeny it was the rule to show off with pride and irony an evermore unique body.
I have imagined these two cities as a kind of amusement park for visionaries, where my gaze is neither accusing nor benevolent, but simply amused and curious, open to taking in as much as possible. An enormous freak show designed with kitsch and geometrical rationality, like that of crib, where one can get lost, and scrutinize an intimate daily life as hybrid as it is metaphysical, and then find one's path, perhaps to get lost again.
In short, I have wanted the people of Sodom and Gomorrah to be happy, creative and imaginative up to the very day of the apocalypse in which God omnipotent, vexed by their excessive exuberance, decided to spread forevermore his immense black veil.
"Sodom and Gomorrah" is an open-ended project, to which I will continue to add artworks. It is an always expanding project, like Sodom and Gomorrah would be if they had survived the Divine Wrath: an irrational expansion, chaotic, exuberant and spontaneous. Just like that of all modern cities.
Alessandro Bavari, 2000
Critical essays and reviews:
Sodom & Gomorrah
Critical essay by Gianluca Marziani
Critical essay by Gianluca Marziani
SODOM & GOMORRAH: written like that, with the & which brings to life the dynamic apocalyptic spirit of the two biblical cities. Their narrative begins in the Book of Genesis, in the first inklings, already definitive, of a more advanced intellect. Lot and the two angels, the punishment wrought on the forbidden cities, fire and brimstone brought down to destroy sinfulness, Lot’s wife who looks back and is turned into a pillar of salt, Lot’s daughters who conceive their first born with the seed of their own father…we know much, maybe very little, about those places where excess is transformed into daily virtue, of those strange worlds where races and species have become mixed in a complete mutation of cross breeds. Forbidden cities where lust is the king, a paradise of vices where morality gives way to the rampant freeing of the senses. Two ideal spaces that have become archetypes of tolerant, courageous and liberating thought. Centres of gravity that boast of a radical past while tracing the electrocardiogram of an everyday apocalypse.
SODOM AND GOMORRAH is the title Alessandro Bavari has chosen for his loudly contemporary project. He has however left the words with their classical conjunction, giving us a precision that doesn’t reinterpret the title but, using honest and veiled means, allows for an astounding cerebral re-reading. A dense mass of memory, layered down towards the bowels of the past while at the same time regurgitating the technology of today. The & (mine), on the other hand, underlines the distance between the literary heredity of the biblical chapter and the artwork’s overturning of it. Almost to reiterate the task that the artist carries out, a task that goes well beyond the boundaries of the sacred texts, well outside the rhetoric of everyday discourse, towards mental images that are effective in their liberating qualities.
A licence (literary) on the & (licentious) which affirms a project of a universal grammar and an international lexicon.
Bavari undertakes a visionary iconographic excursus that, through the centuries, hypothesizes a future following an adventurous ethic. It is the journey of the extreme body through a landscape that reflects the unleashing of perversion, of sexual lechery, of the shining instinct that becomes a crazed law of life. All this in order to extol, by means of an impeccable style, the dignity and the energy of modified bodies, that have become hybrids, abnormal, half way between man and the skeletons of bizarre animals. Their gestures narrate a world of domination and submission, radical satanic ideology, medieval rites, an atmosphere redolent of science fiction. They move about in a Calvino-style city where the urban landscape mixes visionary skyscrapers with a flora mutated in a similar vein, desert-like landscapes with imposing and totemic bodies, cathartic gestures together with consciously degraded spaces. Places in which the figures carry out their rites and recreate the sexual gestures powerful lyricism, exciting the beauty of an “other” world while being conceptually real. Mentally determined. Almost mathematical in the balance of power between the subjects portrayed.
To help us we have the most conceptual of Italo Calvino’s books, “The Invisible Cities” that has for years contributed to architectural visionariness from archeology to the future. In one chapter he writes: "Finally the journey leads to the city of Tamara. You penetrate it along streets thick with signboards jutting from the walls. The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things: pincers point out the tooth-drawer's house; a tankard, the tavern; halberds, the barracks; scales, the grocer's...” The distance is situated between that which exists and that which we perceive, between the physical truth and its mental projection. Sodom and Gomorrah remain biblical archetypes that many have interpreted, and often and at times understanding its clear metaphoric nucleus. For Bavari the two cities embody the luxurious impulses from which all moral judgments are banished. A space where appearances hide timeless truths, outside the boundaries of time, plausible yet fantastic.Out of the ordinary yet not too unreal: because if the interpretation of a of a biblical passage opens the limits of the image, then Bavari is showing us something that exists.
Buried in the ancestral memory, held in chains in the visionary mind.
A something that reveals its own subliminal presence, in the same way that Calvino-style cities are being built around us, ever more similar (radical architecture, mega polis, suburbs, skyscrapers, geodetic domes…) to the visions that Marco Polo related to Kublai Kan. An example? In the piece entitled “City of Sodom” there are a number of mounds in the ground within whose warrens live the population of a ghettoized underclass. In the background there are skyscrapers and organic obelisks that emphasize the contrast between the social classes. On one side sprout Paleolithic forms similar to those found in Turkey or the Sassi di Matera; on the other side metropolitan prototypes that includes skyscrapers and urbanized greenery, recalling scenes found in Singapore or certain Indian cities.
The narrative density and its semiotic complexity are the sign of an author who possesses a continual intuition, an inventive eye for composition and for digital manipulation, and a perfectionist in the production of “multicoloured” black and white photography. The artist incessantly photographs subjects and details both indoors and out. He gives preference to the studio set when the depiction of central participants requires it. Otherwise he roams cities, towns and medieval villages, abandoned spaces, suburbs, social events, streets and crevices.
Once he has selected the material for his compositions he digitally reworks his work and prints it on photographic paper, maintaining a chromatic perfection in which black and white is modulated into multiple variations of grey, metallic tones, dense whites and blacks which push the limits of their malleability.
The work, with maximum formal mimesis, brings out the digital potential of revealing pictorial forms: on the one hand creating a juxtaposition of figurative levels able to give life to the image, while on the other overlaying contrasts, burning, fading, graphic marks and deformations. The final image captures an atmosphere with an extremely powerful impact, coldly perfect but emotionally boiling, as if aging or soiled hands had left their dirty marks on a story of pure directly transmitted life.
This visionariness belongs to an immediately recognizable universe where things that are held in common outweigh any individual diversity. A cultural space that mixes visual radicalism with extreme formal experimentation. It is a creative zone in which expressions feed a harmony that elsewhere would be difficult to believe. Here music, cinema, visual art, literature and video feast together at a banquet that emphasises a digestive harmony found when there is a basis of common ingredients. Every author has different aims, a different vision and different values; however we are always left with an intense exploration of the moral content, of the liberating instinct, of unleashed perversions, of the overindulgences that become insights into one’s (ab)normality. Fear of nothingness doubts about dogma, the courage of madness: elements of the shared escape from the linear rhythms of everyday life. The love felt for a precarious body, the changing landscape, for a contamination that mixes categories and social classes: other elements of a common energy in the face of a restless world. It is from this that we saw the birth of the industrial sounds of Einstürzende Neubauten, the sonorous sounds of Aphex Twin, the mechanical sounds of Autechre, the heavenly sounds of the Boards of Canada, the enigmatic sounds of Radiohead, the amniotic sounds of Portishead. And thus the magical realism of James G. Ballard, the hyper technological writing of William Gibson, the acid writing of William S. Burroughs, right up to the outsiders; Jim Goad, Peter Sotos, Monte Cazazza, Hakim Bey. Thus the prophetic cinema of David Cronenberg, the chemical cinema of David Lynch, the mutant cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto, the deformed cinema of Ciprì and Maresco. Thus the magmatic videos of Floria Sigismondi. Thus the visual arts of explosive artists like: Mark Ryden with translucent children who burst into subtle intimate horrors; Joel-Peter Witkin and his freakish and pictorially masterful still-life studies; Enrico Corte with his cerebral autobiography that journeys through symbolic languages and references; Andrea Nurcis with his familiar yet foreign subjects; Rinat Baibekov with a vampirism of a bodies belonging to a Nordic fable; Yoshifumi Hayashi and his cerebral eroticism; Filippo Scozzari and his ironic irreverence; Daniel Lee and his portrait of an animal-like humanity; Camille Rose Garcia and her fairly tales of a malign undergrowth; Eric White with his grotesque deformations that, in the final analysis look like us…
Alessandro Bavari spins his thread in a giant web of common sentiments. He weaves his thread in between the thread of others; he touches them or knots them, leaving other to embroider their own threads in his autonomous world. Yet doesn’t change and in the end resembles only himself. But inside the spider’s web he accepts the flows of wandering ideas where the aforementioned artists confer in an invisible yet powerful dialogue.
Bavari is interested in the dilation of the body as though it were a prismatic mirror reflecting the mind. He follows a wave of hard-edged thinking, of the extreme contemplation that comes with delving deep into one’s own habits, until he manages to transfer his own identity onto the image: that does not mean, “to be” that which we see but “to feel it” without any dishonesty.
If we then consider the talent from whence all this springs, it is hard conceive of any other outcome, so disquieting and cathartic, we are in the presence of an imagination that exceeds the simplified limits of the everyday pragmatic mind.
She is always there behind the narratives of “Sodom and Gomorra”, that magnetic sexual perversion that clutched at the adventurers in that primordial anarchy. It is obvious to say this in regard to the themes that bind the images, less so when there is nothing pornographic in the images, or at least nothing recognizable. The naturalism of the sexual act is transformed into a serial multi-breasted queen, into coprophilic bodies in giant crinoline petticoats, intonude voyeurs who peek through holes in the floor, into cut up bodies, of feminine figures with wings and the faces of insects, into a bald woman locked into a pillory, into a king suspended in the air, into nymphomaniacs in gaudy dresses and stupendously perverse expressions. They all have faces that disturb, wildly overloaded eyes, sinuous and savage movements.
Emblematic, in this sense, is the piece entitled “Coprophilia Hall” with busts with life-like muscles supported on the exposed framework of giant crinoline petticoats.
Under these bodies in the covered pouch of the wooden framework, tiny human figures move about, some kind of dominated masochists who await their coprophilic lessons, the material anointment with faeces of their personal liberation. The whole series doesn’t reveal the usual well noted sexual postures; it doesn’t follow the classical standard background or even the fluent notes of the sexuality of the ancient orient. Here the egocentric nature of sexual desire is opened up to unknown gestures, to the unleashed instincts of those who have no moral binds. The actions condense the power of nature with the complete liberty of a social utopia. A wonderful anarchic flow that anticipates ancient Rome - imperial and perverse, Gabriele D’Annunzio’s decadent Fiume, the Sixties with their all too small dreams, Fellini’s “Città delle Donne”, the luxury micro-worlds of Marchesa Luisa Casati, of the Marquise de Sade and of the Barone von Masoch… right up until the prosaic flesh found in present day saunas devoted to sexual congress, in the German fetish clubs, in the hidden microcosms of sexual freedoms. The first limbo in human history was founded in Sodom and Gomorrah, a fluid place for long lasting souls and well prepared bodies. Almost an abstract of living: and like all extreme things, destined (unfortunately) to finish under the black sky of the Apocalypse. The entire human race, in the final analysis, crosses those two cities in the length of a lifetime. Some people are aware of it, others live the crossing only in their dreams, and too many convince themselves that the rot is in another place, distant from their nose and their eyes. But Sodom and Gomorrah are not that far away. On the contrary…
And so lets conclude with a look at the aesthetic qualities of the works. The images are an intricate development of the compositional elements.
At first sight rich beyond expectations, they underline a synthetic harmony where everything has a meaning and a sensual release. To do this, the artist doesn’t improvise anything but has developed a solid knowledge of expressive techniques, from painting to photography, from drawing to advanced digital graphics. He has portrayed, during a life’s work of minute experimentation, human and animal subjects, specific architecture and landscapes, according to an elastic curiosity that we can recognize in the multitude of languages used in this project. “Sodom and Gomorrah” speaks the language of our disquiet, of our interior brothel, of the poison that runs inside us. He recounts the normality of the absurd but also the absurdity of normality.
Creating an impossible space (?), within a cerebral geography that exists and becomes adult. Plausible. Absurdly real.
Gianluca Marziani web site
SODOM AND GOMORRAH is the title Alessandro Bavari has chosen for his loudly contemporary project. He has however left the words with their classical conjunction, giving us a precision that doesn’t reinterpret the title but, using honest and veiled means, allows for an astounding cerebral re-reading. A dense mass of memory, layered down towards the bowels of the past while at the same time regurgitating the technology of today. The & (mine), on the other hand, underlines the distance between the literary heredity of the biblical chapter and the artwork’s overturning of it. Almost to reiterate the task that the artist carries out, a task that goes well beyond the boundaries of the sacred texts, well outside the rhetoric of everyday discourse, towards mental images that are effective in their liberating qualities.
A licence (literary) on the & (licentious) which affirms a project of a universal grammar and an international lexicon.
Bavari undertakes a visionary iconographic excursus that, through the centuries, hypothesizes a future following an adventurous ethic. It is the journey of the extreme body through a landscape that reflects the unleashing of perversion, of sexual lechery, of the shining instinct that becomes a crazed law of life. All this in order to extol, by means of an impeccable style, the dignity and the energy of modified bodies, that have become hybrids, abnormal, half way between man and the skeletons of bizarre animals. Their gestures narrate a world of domination and submission, radical satanic ideology, medieval rites, an atmosphere redolent of science fiction. They move about in a Calvino-style city where the urban landscape mixes visionary skyscrapers with a flora mutated in a similar vein, desert-like landscapes with imposing and totemic bodies, cathartic gestures together with consciously degraded spaces. Places in which the figures carry out their rites and recreate the sexual gestures powerful lyricism, exciting the beauty of an “other” world while being conceptually real. Mentally determined. Almost mathematical in the balance of power between the subjects portrayed.
To help us we have the most conceptual of Italo Calvino’s books, “The Invisible Cities” that has for years contributed to architectural visionariness from archeology to the future. In one chapter he writes: "Finally the journey leads to the city of Tamara. You penetrate it along streets thick with signboards jutting from the walls. The eye does not see things but images of things that mean other things: pincers point out the tooth-drawer's house; a tankard, the tavern; halberds, the barracks; scales, the grocer's...” The distance is situated between that which exists and that which we perceive, between the physical truth and its mental projection. Sodom and Gomorrah remain biblical archetypes that many have interpreted, and often and at times understanding its clear metaphoric nucleus. For Bavari the two cities embody the luxurious impulses from which all moral judgments are banished. A space where appearances hide timeless truths, outside the boundaries of time, plausible yet fantastic.Out of the ordinary yet not too unreal: because if the interpretation of a of a biblical passage opens the limits of the image, then Bavari is showing us something that exists.
Buried in the ancestral memory, held in chains in the visionary mind.
A something that reveals its own subliminal presence, in the same way that Calvino-style cities are being built around us, ever more similar (radical architecture, mega polis, suburbs, skyscrapers, geodetic domes…) to the visions that Marco Polo related to Kublai Kan. An example? In the piece entitled “City of Sodom” there are a number of mounds in the ground within whose warrens live the population of a ghettoized underclass. In the background there are skyscrapers and organic obelisks that emphasize the contrast between the social classes. On one side sprout Paleolithic forms similar to those found in Turkey or the Sassi di Matera; on the other side metropolitan prototypes that includes skyscrapers and urbanized greenery, recalling scenes found in Singapore or certain Indian cities.
The narrative density and its semiotic complexity are the sign of an author who possesses a continual intuition, an inventive eye for composition and for digital manipulation, and a perfectionist in the production of “multicoloured” black and white photography. The artist incessantly photographs subjects and details both indoors and out. He gives preference to the studio set when the depiction of central participants requires it. Otherwise he roams cities, towns and medieval villages, abandoned spaces, suburbs, social events, streets and crevices.
Once he has selected the material for his compositions he digitally reworks his work and prints it on photographic paper, maintaining a chromatic perfection in which black and white is modulated into multiple variations of grey, metallic tones, dense whites and blacks which push the limits of their malleability.
The work, with maximum formal mimesis, brings out the digital potential of revealing pictorial forms: on the one hand creating a juxtaposition of figurative levels able to give life to the image, while on the other overlaying contrasts, burning, fading, graphic marks and deformations. The final image captures an atmosphere with an extremely powerful impact, coldly perfect but emotionally boiling, as if aging or soiled hands had left their dirty marks on a story of pure directly transmitted life.
This visionariness belongs to an immediately recognizable universe where things that are held in common outweigh any individual diversity. A cultural space that mixes visual radicalism with extreme formal experimentation. It is a creative zone in which expressions feed a harmony that elsewhere would be difficult to believe. Here music, cinema, visual art, literature and video feast together at a banquet that emphasises a digestive harmony found when there is a basis of common ingredients. Every author has different aims, a different vision and different values; however we are always left with an intense exploration of the moral content, of the liberating instinct, of unleashed perversions, of the overindulgences that become insights into one’s (ab)normality. Fear of nothingness doubts about dogma, the courage of madness: elements of the shared escape from the linear rhythms of everyday life. The love felt for a precarious body, the changing landscape, for a contamination that mixes categories and social classes: other elements of a common energy in the face of a restless world. It is from this that we saw the birth of the industrial sounds of Einstürzende Neubauten, the sonorous sounds of Aphex Twin, the mechanical sounds of Autechre, the heavenly sounds of the Boards of Canada, the enigmatic sounds of Radiohead, the amniotic sounds of Portishead. And thus the magical realism of James G. Ballard, the hyper technological writing of William Gibson, the acid writing of William S. Burroughs, right up to the outsiders; Jim Goad, Peter Sotos, Monte Cazazza, Hakim Bey. Thus the prophetic cinema of David Cronenberg, the chemical cinema of David Lynch, the mutant cinema of Shinya Tsukamoto, the deformed cinema of Ciprì and Maresco. Thus the magmatic videos of Floria Sigismondi. Thus the visual arts of explosive artists like: Mark Ryden with translucent children who burst into subtle intimate horrors; Joel-Peter Witkin and his freakish and pictorially masterful still-life studies; Enrico Corte with his cerebral autobiography that journeys through symbolic languages and references; Andrea Nurcis with his familiar yet foreign subjects; Rinat Baibekov with a vampirism of a bodies belonging to a Nordic fable; Yoshifumi Hayashi and his cerebral eroticism; Filippo Scozzari and his ironic irreverence; Daniel Lee and his portrait of an animal-like humanity; Camille Rose Garcia and her fairly tales of a malign undergrowth; Eric White with his grotesque deformations that, in the final analysis look like us…
Alessandro Bavari spins his thread in a giant web of common sentiments. He weaves his thread in between the thread of others; he touches them or knots them, leaving other to embroider their own threads in his autonomous world. Yet doesn’t change and in the end resembles only himself. But inside the spider’s web he accepts the flows of wandering ideas where the aforementioned artists confer in an invisible yet powerful dialogue.
Bavari is interested in the dilation of the body as though it were a prismatic mirror reflecting the mind. He follows a wave of hard-edged thinking, of the extreme contemplation that comes with delving deep into one’s own habits, until he manages to transfer his own identity onto the image: that does not mean, “to be” that which we see but “to feel it” without any dishonesty.
If we then consider the talent from whence all this springs, it is hard conceive of any other outcome, so disquieting and cathartic, we are in the presence of an imagination that exceeds the simplified limits of the everyday pragmatic mind.
She is always there behind the narratives of “Sodom and Gomorra”, that magnetic sexual perversion that clutched at the adventurers in that primordial anarchy. It is obvious to say this in regard to the themes that bind the images, less so when there is nothing pornographic in the images, or at least nothing recognizable. The naturalism of the sexual act is transformed into a serial multi-breasted queen, into coprophilic bodies in giant crinoline petticoats, intonude voyeurs who peek through holes in the floor, into cut up bodies, of feminine figures with wings and the faces of insects, into a bald woman locked into a pillory, into a king suspended in the air, into nymphomaniacs in gaudy dresses and stupendously perverse expressions. They all have faces that disturb, wildly overloaded eyes, sinuous and savage movements.
Emblematic, in this sense, is the piece entitled “Coprophilia Hall” with busts with life-like muscles supported on the exposed framework of giant crinoline petticoats.
Under these bodies in the covered pouch of the wooden framework, tiny human figures move about, some kind of dominated masochists who await their coprophilic lessons, the material anointment with faeces of their personal liberation. The whole series doesn’t reveal the usual well noted sexual postures; it doesn’t follow the classical standard background or even the fluent notes of the sexuality of the ancient orient. Here the egocentric nature of sexual desire is opened up to unknown gestures, to the unleashed instincts of those who have no moral binds. The actions condense the power of nature with the complete liberty of a social utopia. A wonderful anarchic flow that anticipates ancient Rome - imperial and perverse, Gabriele D’Annunzio’s decadent Fiume, the Sixties with their all too small dreams, Fellini’s “Città delle Donne”, the luxury micro-worlds of Marchesa Luisa Casati, of the Marquise de Sade and of the Barone von Masoch… right up until the prosaic flesh found in present day saunas devoted to sexual congress, in the German fetish clubs, in the hidden microcosms of sexual freedoms. The first limbo in human history was founded in Sodom and Gomorrah, a fluid place for long lasting souls and well prepared bodies. Almost an abstract of living: and like all extreme things, destined (unfortunately) to finish under the black sky of the Apocalypse. The entire human race, in the final analysis, crosses those two cities in the length of a lifetime. Some people are aware of it, others live the crossing only in their dreams, and too many convince themselves that the rot is in another place, distant from their nose and their eyes. But Sodom and Gomorrah are not that far away. On the contrary…
And so lets conclude with a look at the aesthetic qualities of the works. The images are an intricate development of the compositional elements.
At first sight rich beyond expectations, they underline a synthetic harmony where everything has a meaning and a sensual release. To do this, the artist doesn’t improvise anything but has developed a solid knowledge of expressive techniques, from painting to photography, from drawing to advanced digital graphics. He has portrayed, during a life’s work of minute experimentation, human and animal subjects, specific architecture and landscapes, according to an elastic curiosity that we can recognize in the multitude of languages used in this project. “Sodom and Gomorrah” speaks the language of our disquiet, of our interior brothel, of the poison that runs inside us. He recounts the normality of the absurd but also the absurdity of normality.
Creating an impossible space (?), within a cerebral geography that exists and becomes adult. Plausible. Absurdly real.
Gianluca Marziani web site
INVITATION TO THE JOURNEY
Critical essay by Luca Bandirali
"In religious symbolism, as in every kind of symbolism,
it is through forms - and with these forms -
that thought constructs its objects."
(Jean-Pierre Vernant)
it is through forms - and with these forms -
that thought constructs its objects."
(Jean-Pierre Vernant)
The first Christians, divine effigies, had a dubious relationship with the image. The mediologist Regis Debray reminds us that the Bible "clearly associates sight with sin" and he highlights the following passage from the Book of Genesis: "he woman saw that the tree's fruit was good to eat, pleasant to look at...". The image is Evil itself. The damned cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, which the Bible elevates to a paradigm of Evil, are related to the image as aesthetical pleasures are consummated there, primarily of the gaze.
For this reason, Alessandro Bavari's voyage is one directed towards the origins of the image. But it is not the journey of an archaeologist as Bavari's art is conjugated in the present tense - the infinite present of great utopias. Sodom and Gomorrah are not consumed by the gaze: they are constructed by the gaze. Places of the mind.
The progeny of Canaan was the first to enter the land of Sodom and Gomorrah, beyond Gaza. They are the damned children: Noah, upon being seen drunk on wine by his son Cam, condemns his son to become "the least of his brothers' servants". The Valley of the Jordan where they live "was all irrigated...like the Lord's Garden, like the land of Egypt". The artist sees joyful cities where Creation has not stopped, where everything is movement and ferment.
An invitation to the journey
Access to the places from which the deafening clamor of sin reaches God involves the passing of a threshold, of a Gate that is marked by Bavari with the presence of an anti-monument. Beside it he places the elements of the entire oeuvre as clues that the gaze collects to orient itself or out of simple curiosity or mania. The Veil, the Fragment, the Superhuman are the elements of a poetics that is mannerist by vocation: the Veil places things in the uncertain light of an irreductible ambiguity; the Fragment is a quotation, it is the linguistic withdrawal that takes away from order to give to chaos; the Superhuman is the leap in scale that leads individuals and objects to create unheard-of and stimulating proportions (to the artist and to the eye).
The Statue, the Gate's anti-monument, returns in both Simposia,(I - II) ad intogether shattering surface and symbol: the Statue is an effigy, therefore an image (in Hebrew "image" is "selem". It comes from "salmu" in Akkadian, which means statue, effigy), a doubling of the real, a doubling of dreams. Sodom and Gomorrah are the places of style, with landscape and men in blissful symbiosis, as they create a tableaux vivant. Herein lies the mannerist practice of an art that protects (itself) from life, and refuses life's ethics in order to seek refuge in glittering metaphor. It is man that says: I am the Image. I am the Work of Art. Here the New Flesh is engendered. Beyond the human, all too human of Abraham and Lot. In these cities, aesthetical domains of grafting, the gaze quenches its thirst: vain creatures are reflected on mirror picture frames which cast back beauty, calm, voluptuosness. It is an invitation to the journey in the fashion of Baudelaire. It is a journey of the eyes.
The destruction of the cities of the impious is Divine Justice. Only one man is saved, Lot: he has not joined in the unnatural practices of the Sodomites. He remained an outsider, he remained pure. But above all he is the son of those who have not been given the terrible promise of damnation. He is not the "east of servants". Therefore virtue consists in not seeing: for example, beauty. In Lot's Progeny, Man takes the graces of a young woman out of view-but he can in no way deny beauty, which lifts itself above the characteristic misery of all censors with small and graceful wings. The angels know that the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah is looming, and Lot hurries to try to save his family from Divine Punishment. His wife, who hesitates fatally and turns her head while fleeing, is turned into a pillar of salt, becoming the negative model of a doubting individual who does not know Faith's blind and deaf embrace.
Bavari's work can be divided into three categories by theme: Environments, Situations and Portraits.What links each painting to the others is the ambivalence of the images, based in reflecting layers and fooling the eye. As Freud argued, everything subject to taboo has the nature of ambivalence: see the way in which the artist has reinterpreted the genres of painting (portraiture, landscape); upon coming into contact with each fragment you will experience the vertigo of the double meaning. Not to say that it is impossible to reconcile this with a subject ignorant of taboo: the serene contemplation of pleasure that emanates from pictures such as Portrait of a woman watching an initiation rite also shows the anguish in every life. It can be said that Bavari's exploration of form and symbolism leads him into the territory of mannerist poetics: under the shinning surface dark things nest, and the harmony of the visible contains in itself the seed of disharmony. This oscillation, which is precisely an ambivalence, creates a constellation of opposite signs: life and death, joy and sorrow, hope and resignation.
An imaginary, created in such a way, derives from a deep understanding of all historical crisis: we know that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah are a damned progeny, destined in any case to disappear, as they are the children and great grandchildren of Canaan. Therefore, the menace that threatens them, coloring the sky, ineluctably has those features which make the chosen tone of Bavari's work come close to the modes of the tragic genre.
An imaginary, created in such a way, derives from a deep understanding of all historical crisis: we know that the inhabitants of Sodom and Gomorrah are a damned progeny, destined in any case to disappear, as they are the children and great grandchildren of Canaan. Therefore, the menace that threatens them, coloring the sky, ineluctably has those features which make the chosen tone of Bavari's work come close to the modes of the tragic genre.
On the other hand, from a compositional point of view, the space within each piece is extraordinarily open; the subjects represented within it as well as the spectator's gaze can move about freely. But this triumph of infinite perspectives, these urban deserts which follow one another until you can no longer see them, maintain illusion's patina and fragility. And they are forcefully negated by domestic interiors, a list of objects compiled in a sculptural vein, which are forever creating changeable and controversial combinations. What is found in these houses, in these faces, cannot be fully expressed in words: a dynamic tension can be perceived, but the rules of its movement are internal to the pictures themselves.
We are led to wonder where this language comes from, capable of creating cities and transmitting to our time the message of balance and lightness of an imaginary civilization a civilization that takes shape and narrates itself. There is no place, one would almost want to say, to which these visions can be referred. There is the Artist and the Machine. Bret Easton Ellis wrote: "With this you can set the planets into motion. Forge existences. Photography is just the beginning".
ALESSANDRO BAVARI by Gigliola Foschi - ZOOM magazine (n. 184, May/June 2003)
"A hallucinatory, spatial jumble in which farfetched flowers and strange, Max Ernst-style vegetable beings proliferate. Or ghostly skyscrapers and grandiose architectural structures, highly immaginative desolate expanses and forests of saplings arranged Italian garden-style. A surreal triumph of metamorphic bodies and tiny beings that pop out of dark, evil-looking holes. An encyclopedia of disturbing polymorphic, Hindu-like figures waving their multiple arms.
Images that provoke half-picturesque, half-erotic sensations, both horrible and fantastic, constructed of an unlikely, yet perfect mix of Hieronymous Bosch, Jan Saudek, Alexander Jodorowski, Odilon Redon, Gustav Moreau, Joel-Peter Witkin, Caravaggio, Giotto and Bellmer.
A direct descendent of painters and photographers of the imaginary, Alessandro Bavari (who studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome and since age fifteen has been creating photomontages), prefers the hints originating in dreams and the unconscious rather than the real world—visionary representations rather than the illusion of the truth. He does not photograph reality, he brings to life a new reality.
A reality composed of jovial monstrosities and unbridled mythological symbolism transformed like a Baroque allegory and suspended somewhere between a Bosch-like past and Alien-style future (but much less terrifying), amidst visionary dreams cascading tangles of greenery à la Gustave Moreau and lush pleasures of the flesh.
Images that provoke half-picturesque, half-erotic sensations, both horrible and fantastic, constructed of an unlikely, yet perfect mix of Hieronymous Bosch, Jan Saudek, Alexander Jodorowski, Odilon Redon, Gustav Moreau, Joel-Peter Witkin, Caravaggio, Giotto and Bellmer.
A direct descendent of painters and photographers of the imaginary, Alessandro Bavari (who studied at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Rome and since age fifteen has been creating photomontages), prefers the hints originating in dreams and the unconscious rather than the real world—visionary representations rather than the illusion of the truth. He does not photograph reality, he brings to life a new reality.
A reality composed of jovial monstrosities and unbridled mythological symbolism transformed like a Baroque allegory and suspended somewhere between a Bosch-like past and Alien-style future (but much less terrifying), amidst visionary dreams cascading tangles of greenery à la Gustave Moreau and lush pleasures of the flesh.
"Sodoma e Gomorra - Un Reportage dalle Città Perdute" (Sodom and Gomorrah - Report from the Lost Cities) is the title of his new work, but it shouldn't conjure up lewd scenes of depravation and lust or even sulfurous gloom.
"I conceived of these two cities as a type of amusement park for visionaries in which my 'photographic eye' is neither reproachful nor benevolent, just amused and curious, ready to capture anything that presents itself. A huge freak show arranged with the geometric rationality of a manger scene, yet both kitschy and sophisticated at the same time. An opportunity to lose oneself and peek in on the intimate scenes of a daily existence that is as much metaphysical as it is a mélange, then finally get back on track only to get lost anew. In essence, I wanted people in Sodom and Gomorrah to be happy, creative and imaginative, right up to the day of the apocalypse in which the Almighty, annoyed by so much exuberance,decided to extend his immense black veil forever," writes the photographer in presentation of the exhibit of his work recently held at the Massenzio Arte e Photogallery in Rome.
Another major source of inspiration for this ingenious work was Italo Calvino's classic novel, Le Città Invisibili (Invisible Cities) in which the author, through the eyes of Marco Polo, describes to a melancholy Kubla Khan extraordinary cities suspended between the real and make-believe. In "Sodom and Gomorrah" we find echoes of Calvino's city of Tamara in which "the eye does not see things, but figures of things that mean other things", or Zirma, the city of redundance where
"things are repeated so that at least something remains fixed in the brain", or, finally, Zobeide "the white city with full exposure to the moon with streets that wind around each other, like a big ball of yarn." Just as Kublai Khan at a certain point stops listening to Marco Polo's tales because he is able to make up imaginary cities himself by mixing-and-matching their attributes, Bavari (following Calvino's lead), has invented two imaginary, dreamlike cities in which desire, unexpected fears,
misleading perspective and absurd rules all intertwine.
Theoretically all well and good, but how was Bavari able to create these architectural visions of part madness, part mythology, part delirium of the psyche and part amusement park using the "reality" of photography? While Witkin (the photographer his work most closely resembles) succeeds in creating his terrifying and perverse hybrids using traditional techniques working with the negative in the dark room, Bavari, who has also participated in numerous international animation and digital art festivals, makes use of complex digital editing techniques. "I modelled some obiects in Softimage 3D for insertion in the scene," he explains. "The landscape is from a shot I took some years ago in Costa Rica. And crowds of people are actually made up of some friends, who kindly agreed to pose for me."
Even the aged look of the paper, similar to that obtained by Witkin with positive and negative scratches and emulsifying the print with pure beeswax, was created by Bavari entirely with the use of the computer.
"To 'distance' the viewer from the fierce crudity of the photograph, I use a technique of layered 'patinas', the same technique used in oil painting with glazing in which successive, transparent layers of pitch and asphalt lend depth and distance to the image.
I don't think the use of this technique at the computer undermines its essence, it's just that technology gives us new tools for making art.
In fact, I am firmly convinced that if Leonardo da Vinci had had a computer, he would have used it," the artist states.
Alessandro Bavari is also not afraid of advanced technology because—like the more "established" Witkin—his works are not just empty experimentation. They are supported by a project and a profound knowledge of art history that penetrates into the very pores of his images without ever becoming mere virtuosity.
"I conceived of these two cities as a type of amusement park for visionaries in which my 'photographic eye' is neither reproachful nor benevolent, just amused and curious, ready to capture anything that presents itself. A huge freak show arranged with the geometric rationality of a manger scene, yet both kitschy and sophisticated at the same time. An opportunity to lose oneself and peek in on the intimate scenes of a daily existence that is as much metaphysical as it is a mélange, then finally get back on track only to get lost anew. In essence, I wanted people in Sodom and Gomorrah to be happy, creative and imaginative, right up to the day of the apocalypse in which the Almighty, annoyed by so much exuberance,decided to extend his immense black veil forever," writes the photographer in presentation of the exhibit of his work recently held at the Massenzio Arte e Photogallery in Rome.
Another major source of inspiration for this ingenious work was Italo Calvino's classic novel, Le Città Invisibili (Invisible Cities) in which the author, through the eyes of Marco Polo, describes to a melancholy Kubla Khan extraordinary cities suspended between the real and make-believe. In "Sodom and Gomorrah" we find echoes of Calvino's city of Tamara in which "the eye does not see things, but figures of things that mean other things", or Zirma, the city of redundance where
"things are repeated so that at least something remains fixed in the brain", or, finally, Zobeide "the white city with full exposure to the moon with streets that wind around each other, like a big ball of yarn." Just as Kublai Khan at a certain point stops listening to Marco Polo's tales because he is able to make up imaginary cities himself by mixing-and-matching their attributes, Bavari (following Calvino's lead), has invented two imaginary, dreamlike cities in which desire, unexpected fears,
misleading perspective and absurd rules all intertwine.
Theoretically all well and good, but how was Bavari able to create these architectural visions of part madness, part mythology, part delirium of the psyche and part amusement park using the "reality" of photography? While Witkin (the photographer his work most closely resembles) succeeds in creating his terrifying and perverse hybrids using traditional techniques working with the negative in the dark room, Bavari, who has also participated in numerous international animation and digital art festivals, makes use of complex digital editing techniques. "I modelled some obiects in Softimage 3D for insertion in the scene," he explains. "The landscape is from a shot I took some years ago in Costa Rica. And crowds of people are actually made up of some friends, who kindly agreed to pose for me."
Even the aged look of the paper, similar to that obtained by Witkin with positive and negative scratches and emulsifying the print with pure beeswax, was created by Bavari entirely with the use of the computer.
"To 'distance' the viewer from the fierce crudity of the photograph, I use a technique of layered 'patinas', the same technique used in oil painting with glazing in which successive, transparent layers of pitch and asphalt lend depth and distance to the image.
I don't think the use of this technique at the computer undermines its essence, it's just that technology gives us new tools for making art.
In fact, I am firmly convinced that if Leonardo da Vinci had had a computer, he would have used it," the artist states.
Alessandro Bavari is also not afraid of advanced technology because—like the more "established" Witkin—his works are not just empty experimentation. They are supported by a project and a profound knowledge of art history that penetrates into the very pores of his images without ever becoming mere virtuosity.
Sodom & Gomorrah
Critical essay by Agnieszka Anna
Critical essay by Agnieszka Anna
The postmodern aesthetic is what describes Allesandro Bavari’s series of photograph-paintings titled Sodom and Gomorrah. The deeply dark and abyssal images of a lost world of the legendary cities of Sodom and Gomorrah are staged in front of us, as if returned to life from ashes. Philosophically and technically the photographs are emblems of postmodern art and I would like to point to these two aspects respectively.
The idea of postmodernism is seen in a few faucets. First of all, the imagery is very subjective.
But unlike the modern ‘stream of consciousness’, subjectivity gives freedom to various, infinite interpretations. This very aspect is closely connected to the technical creation of postmodern art. The break up of structures and their chaotic, almost arbitrary placement within the structure or the picture plane as in the case of the photograph Birsha’s Symposium is what generates infinite analyses. The photograph is a random-seeming collage of various materials, erratically dispersed and bearing no meaning overall. In this case, the haphazard mix up of table utensils, greenery, fruit and vegetable, birds and cut body limbs invites cultural and historical readings as well as startling connotations brought out from the unconscious realms of the mind. Historically, what we know about the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah is the hedonistic lifestyle of its inhabitants and the antiquity as the time setting. The leftovers from a possible one of many feasts may symbolize gluttony of which Gomorrah’s citizens were famous for in biblical terms. The limbs are connotative of antique marble statues produced by artists in the classical period and so the sculptures indicate time itself. Second association are the fallen statues or/and killed, dismembered people during the great catastrophe which destroyed the cities. Throughout the imagery, there are similes connotative of antiquity like pyramidal- like structures in The Hall of Coprophilia. At the same time, unsettling is the juxtaposition with modern structures of skyscrapers in The City of Gomorrah and The City of Sodoma. It is also a postmodern characteristic to mix not only time indicatives, which results in the loss of private temporality in the imaginative world where time is lost. Further, the space in the photographs is filled with darkness which reinforces the ambiguity of time and space. In Portrait of Birsa, King of Gomorrah, while looking at his own destiny, elements seem to be hovering in vacuum and trees growing from underground and in The City of Gomorrah and The City of Sodom people seem to be living in underground holes. The darkness and no sense of space, the pastiche of antiquity elements clashing with symbols of modernity decenter the ideas of time and space.
But unlike the modern ‘stream of consciousness’, subjectivity gives freedom to various, infinite interpretations. This very aspect is closely connected to the technical creation of postmodern art. The break up of structures and their chaotic, almost arbitrary placement within the structure or the picture plane as in the case of the photograph Birsha’s Symposium is what generates infinite analyses. The photograph is a random-seeming collage of various materials, erratically dispersed and bearing no meaning overall. In this case, the haphazard mix up of table utensils, greenery, fruit and vegetable, birds and cut body limbs invites cultural and historical readings as well as startling connotations brought out from the unconscious realms of the mind. Historically, what we know about the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah is the hedonistic lifestyle of its inhabitants and the antiquity as the time setting. The leftovers from a possible one of many feasts may symbolize gluttony of which Gomorrah’s citizens were famous for in biblical terms. The limbs are connotative of antique marble statues produced by artists in the classical period and so the sculptures indicate time itself. Second association are the fallen statues or/and killed, dismembered people during the great catastrophe which destroyed the cities. Throughout the imagery, there are similes connotative of antiquity like pyramidal- like structures in The Hall of Coprophilia. At the same time, unsettling is the juxtaposition with modern structures of skyscrapers in The City of Gomorrah and The City of Sodoma. It is also a postmodern characteristic to mix not only time indicatives, which results in the loss of private temporality in the imaginative world where time is lost. Further, the space in the photographs is filled with darkness which reinforces the ambiguity of time and space. In Portrait of Birsa, King of Gomorrah, while looking at his own destiny, elements seem to be hovering in vacuum and trees growing from underground and in The City of Gomorrah and The City of Sodom people seem to be living in underground holes. The darkness and no sense of space, the pastiche of antiquity elements clashing with symbols of modernity decenter the ideas of time and space.
Fragmentation is another aspect visible in Bavari’s series of photographs. There are ideas existing in binary oppositions which clash with each other and thus bar any continuity of narrative. Time is infinite, embracing Antiquity, Modernity as well as the age of dinosaurs (the plants in The City of Gomorrah are reminiscent of Jurassic flora) or frozen in the moment of the volcanic eruption which consummated the depicted cultures. The visual quality of the photographs like the scratches on the surface are indicative of webs engulfing the dead land or the splashes of paint (in Lot’s wife becomes a pillar of salt) are connotative of the outburst of the volcano and the moment of destruction.
The fragmentation of ideas, setting them opposite each other produces a non-narrative effect. The narrative throughout the imagery is discontinuous only hinting at plots and possible events. Each of the photographs is a small curious glimpse of the cultures’ lives. Portrait of nymphomaniacs in the depths of Gomorrah gives the viewer a chance to look closer at the social life of Sodom and Gomorrah citizens. Three peepers, along with its title, psychologically make the viewer interested and puzzled what hides underneath the ground. Only a random close up in The new progenies: portrait of a girl in front of a mirror may be the answer to the enigma. Despite the inquisitive close-up, the images of action are intertwined with static, frozen as if scapes where no activity takes place, that is not extended to other images. No linkage is provided to tell a story or to make a point.
The above perceptions are arguments for the constructedness of the images. The technical side of the artworks also points to postmodern art. The fusion of mediums, in this case of photography and painting reinforces the structural quality of the artwork. The constructed reality, seeming provisional, fragmented, discontinued, incoherent, does not try to make a point that is to extract a meaning out of the world. Postmodern art does not authorize reality by giving statements and so Bavari does not judge or criticize the world by creating a doomed, disaster-prone reality. The gaze of the artist is involved and inquisitive, celebrating the non-sense. Bavari creates an artificial, virtual simulacrum where there is no original for the world of legendary Sodom and Gomorrah that might have not existed at all. The photograph-paintings are not an attempt to recreate the iconographic history of the cities and realistically depict biblical stories. The particular insights into the ancient legendary world simulate the idea of Sodom and Gomorrah that exists in cultural common subconsciousness. The simulation operates not only on the visual level but providing us with fragmentation of imagery, interprets the reality on almost linguistic level, leaving it to us to make sense out of the linguistic-visual puzzle.
Hot Irish Art: Review by Mic Moroney
CURE OF ENCHANTMENT ON MINOR KEY
Click here to seeeach panel individually
Cure of enchantment on Minor KeyWhen I was nine my father gave me a guitar, a small child-size guitar, not a toy instrument but a real one on a smaller scale.
I was naturally inclined to be seduced by this instrument straight away.
For the next five years my love of the guitar led me to study classical music, which I continue to play even now for personal pleasure.
For the next five years my love of the guitar led me to study classical music, which I continue to play even now for personal pleasure.
When Mr Galvez, the founder of the I+Gen agency, proposed a work created around this instrument, I grasped the opportunity without hesitating, as the guitar is so close to my heart.
Cura dell'Incanto in Chiave Minore is a work in three parts. Its metaphor expresses the value of music as a generative act, as an instrument for the sharing of a common feeling. Its spell can drive weak and hostile minds to abandon and reconciliation.
So, this is music as a universal value, whose instrument, in this case the guitar, becomes an extension of the mind and body: its virtue, translated in vibrations and tunes, can elicit emotion and lead to indulgence.
Cura dell'Incanto in Chiave Minore is a work in three parts. Its metaphor expresses the value of music as a generative act, as an instrument for the sharing of a common feeling. Its spell can drive weak and hostile minds to abandon and reconciliation.
So, this is music as a universal value, whose instrument, in this case the guitar, becomes an extension of the mind and body: its virtue, translated in vibrations and tunes, can elicit emotion and lead to indulgence.
Here, aligned with the fundamental elements of nature, the musician becomes the demiurge, with thaumaturgical powers. The pathos that is inspired in those who listen is not only sweet and melancholic but also an expression of force, overwhelming energies and profound agitation.
Alessandro Bavari, 2006
TRYPTICHONDeconstruction of a Hero and recostruction of the Man
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TRYPTICHON
Deconstruction of a Hero and recostruction of the Man
Alessandro Bavari is one of the coming modern artists who have performed classical studies in art but then went over to combine this education with the new world of the computer. This allows him to generate paintings in the old roman tradition of Giotto, Michelangelo and Piero della Francesca but also in the style of the flemish schools like van Eyck and to incorporate them in digital photographies. This allows him a transition from real world images into the virtual artistic world of visions and interpretation of emotions. Photography until recently has not always been regarded as a true art. Since Wolfgang Tillmanns was decorated early this year with the Turner Price for the first time a now became officially so to say a member of other yet classical arts. Alessandro Bavari is certainly one of the modern multitalented artists who contribute to this new quality of art with his work. His last work Sodom and Gomorrah opens a whole new vision with impressive images of this old myth.
Alessandro Bavari has created with the TRYPTICHON, deconstruction of a Hero and reconstruction of the Man a new allegory of fragility of men on one hand, a men who can hold a mountain on one finger but also its permanent will to power, survive and violence. The symbolic statements relie entirely on body images with the concept that men`s body may mirror even more than the face an essential part of human biography.
Deconstruction of a Hero and recostruction of the Man
Alessandro Bavari is one of the coming modern artists who have performed classical studies in art but then went over to combine this education with the new world of the computer. This allows him to generate paintings in the old roman tradition of Giotto, Michelangelo and Piero della Francesca but also in the style of the flemish schools like van Eyck and to incorporate them in digital photographies. This allows him a transition from real world images into the virtual artistic world of visions and interpretation of emotions. Photography until recently has not always been regarded as a true art. Since Wolfgang Tillmanns was decorated early this year with the Turner Price for the first time a now became officially so to say a member of other yet classical arts. Alessandro Bavari is certainly one of the modern multitalented artists who contribute to this new quality of art with his work. His last work Sodom and Gomorrah opens a whole new vision with impressive images of this old myth.
Alessandro Bavari has created with the TRYPTICHON, deconstruction of a Hero and reconstruction of the Man a new allegory of fragility of men on one hand, a men who can hold a mountain on one finger but also its permanent will to power, survive and violence. The symbolic statements relie entirely on body images with the concept that men`s body may mirror even more than the face an essential part of human biography.
Mr. Dieter, Hesch, M.D.
Professor of Medicine and Biology, scientist and writer
Rolf.Dieter.Hesch@uni-konstanz.de
Professor of Medicine and Biology, scientist and writer
Rolf.Dieter.Hesch@uni-konstanz.de
TRYPTICHON
Deconstruction of a Hero and recostruction of the Man
Deconstruction of a Hero and recostruction of the Man
In several images realized in these last years, the head of my subjects is often replaced with that of an animal, with an object, or occulted by a mask. This my choice proceeds from the wish to make the figures represented in my works an integral part of the composition, bodies treated in the same way as if they were simple objects, without a definite personality or characteristic.
Revealing pronounced features and eyes too much intense and pregnant could make the models the protagonists of the image, averting the attention of the observer from the choralism of the whole composition, changing significance and allusions.
When I realized TRYPTICHON, deconstruction of a Hero and reconstruction of the Man, I painted once more a human body without face, being its absence (subrogated by the fragments of the head of a statue) not a synonymous of anonymity but the magnification of an anti-individualistic ideal, aimed to representing the man in his whole universality. In TRYPTICHON the absolute protagonist is a vital body, impetuous and vibrant, that just like a sculpture is dismembered and reassembled, becoming the allegory of the history of mankind. This body will get to temper its own exuberance trasforming into a sublime and trascendental object, but at the same time fragile and unstable, in which the balance of body and soul is kept by a thin rope tied to a twig, and the balance of mind and knowledge is counter balanced by a head held in the palm of a hand, with the awareness that this will be an equilibrium forever unstable and swinging, on the edge of the infinite abyss of the eternity.
Revealing pronounced features and eyes too much intense and pregnant could make the models the protagonists of the image, averting the attention of the observer from the choralism of the whole composition, changing significance and allusions.
When I realized TRYPTICHON, deconstruction of a Hero and reconstruction of the Man, I painted once more a human body without face, being its absence (subrogated by the fragments of the head of a statue) not a synonymous of anonymity but the magnification of an anti-individualistic ideal, aimed to representing the man in his whole universality. In TRYPTICHON the absolute protagonist is a vital body, impetuous and vibrant, that just like a sculpture is dismembered and reassembled, becoming the allegory of the history of mankind. This body will get to temper its own exuberance trasforming into a sublime and trascendental object, but at the same time fragile and unstable, in which the balance of body and soul is kept by a thin rope tied to a twig, and the balance of mind and knowledge is counter balanced by a head held in the palm of a hand, with the awareness that this will be an equilibrium forever unstable and swinging, on the edge of the infinite abyss of the eternity.
Alessandro Bavari, 2001
MISCELLANEOUS - 1994/1999
A kind of contamination amongst the arts dissolving
the boundaries which distinguish them
The hauntingly poetic images created by Italian artist Alessandro Bavari, with their luscious textures and exquisite detail, are the fruits of a long journey of exploration to discover a personal artistic language that can transcend the limits of established media through what he describes as “a kind of contamination amongst the arts dissolving the boundaries which distinguish them."
These images make many references back to the paintings of Italian and Flemish artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; Giotto, Piero della Fancesca and Hieronymus Bosch to name but three. Not the grandeur of the high Renaissance, but the essentially humanistic outlook of the painters who wished to convey the pathos and pleasures of our inner lives. They are ‘Gothic’ in feel, with their fantastical imaginings, adoration of detail and fascination with the natural world. The size of your screen will not do them justice, they should be ten feet tall so you could climb up and into them to appreciate their complexity and wealth of content.
Bavari began making photomontages at the age of fifteen. He subsequently studied scene-painting and history of art at the Academy of Fine Art in Rome. He started working in a variety of traditional media, from oil painting to copper plate engraving, whilst maintaining a strong interest in photography. His working methods became increasingly experimental, mixing tar, glue and industrial paints and exploring the possibilities of photographic printing techniques. He then added imprints creating a vocabulary from found natural objects, such as bones and fossils and creatures washed up on the shores near his home. In 1993 he bought his first Macintosh. Working exclusively in Photoshop to create his highly personal imagery, he found he was able to arrive more easily at the fusion of painting and photography that he had been working towards. Bavari regards the computer as being like “ any other working instrument, like a brush or palette or darkroom”.
These images make many references back to the paintings of Italian and Flemish artists of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries; Giotto, Piero della Fancesca and Hieronymus Bosch to name but three. Not the grandeur of the high Renaissance, but the essentially humanistic outlook of the painters who wished to convey the pathos and pleasures of our inner lives. They are ‘Gothic’ in feel, with their fantastical imaginings, adoration of detail and fascination with the natural world. The size of your screen will not do them justice, they should be ten feet tall so you could climb up and into them to appreciate their complexity and wealth of content.
Bavari began making photomontages at the age of fifteen. He subsequently studied scene-painting and history of art at the Academy of Fine Art in Rome. He started working in a variety of traditional media, from oil painting to copper plate engraving, whilst maintaining a strong interest in photography. His working methods became increasingly experimental, mixing tar, glue and industrial paints and exploring the possibilities of photographic printing techniques. He then added imprints creating a vocabulary from found natural objects, such as bones and fossils and creatures washed up on the shores near his home. In 1993 he bought his first Macintosh. Working exclusively in Photoshop to create his highly personal imagery, he found he was able to arrive more easily at the fusion of painting and photography that he had been working towards. Bavari regards the computer as being like “ any other working instrument, like a brush or palette or darkroom”.
VIDEO - Selected commissioned works
PLANET FUNK: "Stop Me"
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TIROMANCINO: "Imparare dal vento"
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DjSensei: "Musica grande"
>>Click image to view the clips<<
| Alessandro Bavari belongs to that group of artists in constant technical and critical ferment who are able to feel the importance of the tragical and happy events of human existence with a sensitivity which is divinatory.His symbolic universe is full of myths, allusions, allegories, which have their own roots in the Indo-European cultural tradition. Using representation at the limits of gestic expression, photograph, painting, computer graphics allow him to give us, sometimes in a paroxysmic way, the cathartic possibility of life beyond death, to catch the brutal strength of nature and to interpret mythology with the eye of the present. So, the already mentioned techniques allow him to express himself, using a new expressive strength characterized by a concise, essential figuration focused on a few sure elements. Here then appear, as obsessive and repeated suggestions, the constant themes of the European figurative tradition: the warning of life's caducity, the beauty that passes, but also the initial prelude of rebirth; this last subject has characterized the history of symbolistic culture from the classic world till today. This warning appears to us very current as we feel the call to superindividual, objective, ideal values. But Alessandro Bavari doesn't give us an apocalyptic vision of reality; he avoids mental categories linked to chaos through exaltation of disorder; on the contrary, he suggests to us the search of a new religiosity, new pagan, in which the only assurance is the constant possibility that the soul can survive through art. Max Vittori |
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