dark room

“… It’s as if everything moved at the speed of a plant. It looks still and instead moves. Because it’s alive, but calm, in harmony with time. World time is made for plants, not for us”.

I like to look at the details of things, like a mouth, a plant or a curtain that the draught of a window moves slightly. I would like more to see all this without being present, being ethereal, regardless of time and space. It’s a bit like looking at something through a keyhole. This desire is the theme of my investigation. My research aims to open up glimpses that allow us to see the essential without being present. To see without being.

As I said, I like to look at people, and I also like to draw them. After years of a passionate and realistic approach to the human figure, I felt the need to draw a synthesis of it, and to execute it in a short time, so as not to lose the cultured moment, as in the immediacy of a photograph. To do this I developed a technique that would allow me to portray people in a few seconds. With practice I refined my ability and over time this graphic research has flowed into painting, driven by curiosity to see the result of the union between sign, material and color. Since childhood the use of colors has never intrigued me, so after a short time I returned to the monochrome approach; as an artist I need to set myself different limits, too much freedom confuses me. So here is the choice of my material: black sheet, square and therefore always straight, white acrylic chalk for the base on which to draw, black pen.

You can divide this research into several consequential phases. The first is what I call LINES, in which the subjects represented come from inspirations belonging to the outside world. The second phase, SAGOME, is a union between the living spaces suggested by the spots, and subjects belonging to my inner world. In the third phase, called EXTRUSIONS, the subject is completely expressed by the stain. My task is only to make it more visible, to extrude it. During the study I also realized that the strength of these works lies in their overall, rather than individual, vision. From far the various forms create dynamic games of small-big-light-dark that visually stimulate the observer and at the same time recall a complex of galaxies, as in that famous photograph taken by the satellite Hubble in 2003. That’s why I started talking about COMPOSITIONS, in reference to my work. As a result of the EXTRUSIONS, my investigation resulted in the sculpture. Attracted by the mysterious beauty of the regular geometric solids, I began to reproduce them using black cardboard, then staining them and interacting with the gashes. I consider geometry a language very close to the truth of things, and that pleasant sense of three-dimensionality I experienced, directed me towards the use of plastic materials. I had given a three-dimensional shape to the black base of my work and now I wanted to see what would happen if I gave volume to the stain. So I started to create shapes with das and extrude or line the subjects, and then lay it all on the flat black sheet. The effect intrigued me. I liked to see this shape rising from its dark base. It looked like a stage set on a prose stage.

In fact, at the same time, as an actor, I wondered how to bring this pictorial research into the performative field. So I began the development of my own show, on which I am still working today. A small part of the work created so far has become a music video clip entitled LA STANZA. The last idea developed with the material created during the performative work process is a series of photographs that have two functions. The first one is that of being pure images, photographic equivalents of the pictorial studies, which therefore make my research also lead to photography. The second is to create promotional material in order to propose these habitats as installations to be exhibited together with the exhibition of the pictorial material.

The inspiring elements of this research are astronomy, physics, good books, good films, good drinks in good company, but also, without a doubt, M.C. Escher, visionary and revolutionary illustrator of the twentieth century, who, I feel, was able to represent space-time on paper, and with him many other masters and friends, present and past.

Dark room, Antony Risi