Artistic Research
I love to call it Artistic Research more than Artistic Project; for me the first name is a continuum of mental activity linked to questions that one poses and tries to answer without a predetermined temporal end, letting himself wander aimlessly between his own interior and the external world perceived through the multi-sensoriality of the 'human body; on the contrary the project is caracterized by a beginning and an end, with a well-defined purpose.
My photographic research, lasting for more than ten years had already started some time ago, but the 2008 award for "Moments of Life" with a color photo a bit 'special, stimulated and motivated me to look for a different approach to photography, which could change what we see every day, and that we usually photograph as a copy of reality. Which medium is the most common if not water?, Water that with the games of light and wind manages to deconstruct reality and transform the real into the abstract, into color palettes, in which spatial perception is canceled while subjective perception allows everyone to travel with his own imagination creating his visions. One can even, if lazy look only at the colors as a perceived expression of the abstracted reality and enjoy them.
In fact, the first collection of my photographs in a 2009 catalog was titled: "Abstractions: informal perceptions of space" presented by Bruno Ponte (my uncle) and by Andrea Palmieri (Modenese photographer). B. Ponte and A. Palmieri presented in a different way, owing to their cultural formation, the characteristics of these reflections of the surrounding world. In reality, the use I was making was to transform a technological tool into a brush, without the aid of a software and therefore without substantial processing of the captured images (1A 1B).
In reality, for me the painter's brush or the sculptor's chisel is similar to the camera. The tool changes but the creativity, imagination and transmitted empathy are similar in all cases. It is not the tool that produces the pictorial work, sculptural, photographic but rather your brain. The neural network that makes up the brain receives a lot of incoming signals (inputs) and then, depending on the type of nervous and neurochemical bonds, it can produce an art work (output) by means of different motor programs.
To better explain my thoughts I report what was written on FB on 30 October 2013 Leopoldo Bon: I think of those who do not understand that there is no difference between painting, photography, sculpture, music, dance, psychology, neuroscience ...... Everything is the result of the integration and processing of the brain. The cognitive and creative functions of the Brain depend on the one hand on the genetic equipment and, on the other hand on early sensorial experiences and on those following one another until adulthood. And so on .......... We must always search for new ways of inspiration and extrinsication of our imagination and creativity, regardless of their age.
Luciano Bovina: Think Leopoldo, for me photograph it even closer to literature.
People who like this item: Cristina Lucchetti, Miriam Bergonzini, Sandro Iovine, Riccardo Biavati, Bruno Taddei, Donatella Gianforma, Graziella Gabrielli, Fabio Sfreddo, Grazia Petrarcheni, Vincenzo Terlizzi, Giorgia Cavallieri,
Marco Lanzilotto, Aldo Genovesio, Rosalba Boscaini, Maria Luigia Molla.
Then, in the context of the research on abstraction, I found a result different than the previous ones, either for the play of shapes, resulting from different interactions between the water and the wind, both for the more or less tangential play of sunlight during the different hours of the day. At the same time, the study of reflections at night begun, reflections deriving from very colored artificial lights. This was possible in the Croatian small marinas where, in summer the reflections of the colored lights arranged in festoonscreated special effects with of the undertow waves. Water movements and consequently the overlapping reflections of the lights, created part effects with a particular dynamism.
All this, very interesting from an abstraction point of view, can generate at the same time images not visible with the eye. These images last a fraction of a second and then disappear. Then, in those situations we photograph the non-existent, the nothingness, the most absolute ephemeral.
Once, the last day of the year, by chance, I decided to go around with my camera. When I arrived in Sistiana I started to take some panoramic photos. The color of the sky was special, the sun emitted an intense and warm light. All this, together with the sun reflecting in the see, sugested me to create a blurred image, which was for me e very good result. This picture induced me a new photographing mode. With the blurring appropriately dosed and the lights games, I developed another photographic line, divergent but successding the previous ones, which brought me to move step by step from the abstract to the informal.
From this research work was the book "Watch and Image" was born. It is divided into three parts: Perceive, Reflect, Imagine. All three states express different instants: the glance, the evaluation of the composition of the image and finally the imagining. The free imagining of the mind without the constraints of more or less mathematical or geometrical rules. This type of photo excludes representing the image captured in that moment as a representation of reality, because after a fraction of a second it is gone, it is evanescent, non-existent.
The presentation of the Evola at the beginning and of Marcolini in the continuation of the book give a clear, pertinent and exhaustive interpretation of my way of understanding and expressing myself with the photographic means. (2, 3).
In a further phase, always based on nocturnal reflections, I tried to make a mental report subdividing two conscious and unconscious psychic states and thus creating two folders composed each of six works that should appear on "Profili d'Artista" published by Satura Art Gallery of Genoa.
This was the last work that closed the research on reflexes while a line of research that had begun a few years earlier gained shape and consistency.
As I had previously tried to represent the world in an abstract way up to the informal way, to define two mental states based on the characteristics of colors and brightness, I tried to represent the following:
Hallucinations.
The term hallucination comes from the Latin hallucinere or hallucinere, which means "wandering in the mind". It could also be traced back to the Greek ἁλύσκειν (haluskein), which means "running away", "avoiding", referring to the widespread definition of hallucination as an escape from reality.
The hallucinatory disorders were studied and described since the classical age, but only in 1574 Fernel used, for the first time, the term hallucination, to define ocular affections. Subsequently, in 1817, Esquirol defined the hallucination as the intimate conviction of a sensation currently perceived while no external object suitable to excite this sensation is within the reach of his senses. A peculiar characteristic of hallucination is the certainty, on the part of the subject, of the truthfulness of perception.
It should be noted that at present neurophysiological and neurological researches indicate that there are certainly physiological hallucinations: hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations (hypnagogic hallucinations are visual, auditory and tactile experiences that may occur at the beginning of a period of sleep), while hypnopompic hallucinations they are visual, auditory and tactile experiences that can occur at the end of a period of sleep).
In addition to physiological hallucinations there are those resulting from both neurological diseases (Parkinson's disease, epilepsy), and psychiatric diseases. Furthermore, those deriving from particular situations must also be considered: drugs used for sedation, during surgery and in the surgical room overlighted; not to mention those induced by drugs or volatile chemicals.
Why to try to be able to generate images that could represent the HALLUCINATIONS.
The works of my research in general and this one in particular have been defined ar t" art critics as they show what we normally do not see (Paul Klee: Art does not reproduce what is visible, but makes visible ). It is also true that Virgilio Patarini in a presentation at an exhibition in Milano (E Gallery , Navigli) defined me “the visionary photographer”,
If one has been trying to represent the world differently from what others see, the most banal and exhaustive answer is: why not to do it ???
There are countless photos representing models, war situations, street people, selfies and we could continue with several other examples; so why not to try to represent with deforming glass games, mirrors, lights and colored lamps, shapes that represent mental states not present during the vigilance level?
Then we arrive at the current research on the “ALLUCINAZIONI”, starting from abstraction going through Perception, Reflection and Imagination, up to the psychic states.
In other words, all these researches delete the concept that
Baudelaire had of photography (1839):
a) True art is the negation of naturalness: there is no art in the
moment in which nature is mirrored. And so
photography, reproducing an exact copy of this, cannot
be considered other than opposed to art.
b) Photography is the gym of missing painters, of those who do not have never had talent and those who did not possess constancy in
studies. Therefore, photography shows again its own unfitness to art since it does not require to be practice those mental and ideal abilities that instead characterize the "True" artist. (From MU.SA. Laboratory of photographic thoughts Baudelaire, plague and horns on photography 5 February 2016, https://saramunari.wordpress.com/2016/02/05/baudelaire-peste-e-corna-sulla-fotografia/) .
Leopoldo Bon
