Ignazio Fresu è nato a Cagliari nel 1957. Nel 1975 si è trasferito a Firenze per frequentare l’Accademia di Belle Arti. Da anni vive e lavora a Prato. La sua attività espositiva è molto intensa e si svolge in Italia e in varie nazioni estere. Si occupa di arte a 360 gradi, dedicandosi alla scultura alla pittura ed alle istallazioni.
Dopo la personale Dissolvenze presso “Il Giardino del The” di Prato dove ha presentato nel mese di febbraio una serie di tele riepilogative di tutta la sua precedente attività, attualmente lo troviamo impegnato, ancora una volta in terra toscana, con una installazione presso il Chiostro del Convento delle Oblate di Firenze, ubicato nella centralissima Via dell’Oriuolo, accanto al Museo Storico Topografico “Firenze com’era”.
Questa antica struttura ospita fino al 21 luglio una rassegna di arte contemporanea dal titolo “Rivivere il Chiostro”. Si tratta di una mostra collettiva nata da un’idea di Silvia Fossati e curata dall’Architetto Guido Del Fungo, in cui 29 artisti provenienti da vari paesi del mondo, di cultura e formazione diversa e con linguaggi e strumenti assai eterogenei fra loro, si misurano con il tema del cerchio.
Attraverso originali sperimentazioni materiche e formali gli artisti affrontano la ricchissima simbologia del cerchio, alludendo alla perfezione che questa figura geometrica da sempre suggerisce, rappresentandola come una sorta di area sacra oppure come corso ininterrotto della vita.
I cerchi sono tutti delle stesse identiche dimensioni e si trovano appesi sotto le arcate del chiostro con fili trasparenti. Sembrano figure magiche, apotropaiche, un po’ come gli scaccia spiriti messicani, oppure dei festoni beneaugurali, simili a quelli che nel Quattrocento venivano usati nelle feste e nelle cerimonie. Sono simboli misteriosi che evocano comunque un senso di pace e di armonia e che si prestano a mille interpretazioni.
Ignazio Fresu affronta il tema del cerchio in maniera completamente diversa dagli altri artisti. La sua installazione dal titolo Divenire e memoria non si trova sospesa in aria, bensì su un prato al centro del chiostro ed è di grandi dimensioni. E’ un cerchio magico, con una suggestiva aura sacrale, costituito da 13 colonne bianche in stile dorico, alte poco più di due metri che stanno in equilibrio precario. Sembra che qualcuno abbia riassemblato i blocchi alla rinfusa e in tutta fretta senza curarsi della loro stabilità. Sia da vicino che da lontano si prova un senso di fastidio, di vertigine e di precarietà. Lo spettatore avverte un senso di caducità paragonabile a quello che caratterizza l’esistenza dell’uomo e il trascorrere del tempo. Dice Ignazio Fresu.
L’opera si presenta come una struttura fortemente instabile in contrasto con la massa pesante di cui si compone. Ma a ben guardare il materiale con cui sono realizzate le colonne non è marmo, bensì semplice polistirolo rivestito di sabbia bianchisima proveniente dalle famose “Spiagge Bianche” di Rosignano Marittimo (LI) mescolata con della resina ipossidica.
Le installazioni di Ignazio Fresu sono basate sul contrasto tra realtà e apparenza, sull’inganno generato dallo sguardo frettoloso. Ogni cosa è esattamente l’opposto di ciò che sembra e nessuno sembra accorgersene. Il metallo non è metallo, ma spesso cartone o polistirolo travestito da metallo. L’usura e l’ossidazione dei materiali sono soltanto un abile gioco di interventi manuali. La leggerezza è travestita da pesantezza Gli equilibri precari sono calibrate composizioni statiche L’acqua viene riprodotta attraverso materiali tecnologici come il plexiglass e il vetro.
Giocare con i materiali e con il concetto di apparenza è uno dei modi di Ignazio Fresu per collegarsi alle tematiche del divenire, della trasformazione dell’uomo e delle cose operata dallo scorrere del tempo così come al concetto della bellezza precaria ed effimera.
Spesso l’artista si avvale anche di titoli evocativi, riferibili a frasi o aforismi tratti dall’universo letterario o filosofico. E’ il caso per esempio di Nulla perdura se non il mutamento, opera ispirata ai Frammenti di Eraclito che sarà esposta dal 30 giugno al 31 luglio allo Spazio Eventi Mondadori San Marco 1345 di Venezia, in occasione della 52° Biennale Internazionale d’Arte.
Sara Paradisi
Tratto dalla rivista rivista Era 2000 e da www.era2000online.it
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Playing around with appearance and turning it into art
Ignazio Fresu (b. Cagliari, Sardinia 1957) is an all-round artist, working with sculpture, painting and installations who exhibits extensively both in Italy and abroad.
His works, based on the contrast between appearance and reality, show how easily we can be tricked and misled if we cast only superficial glances at objects. Metal is not really metal, but often cardboard or polystyrene dressed up to look like metal. The wearing and oxidisation of materials are the result of Fresu’s clever hand. Lightness is masked as weightiness. Precariously balanced objects are, in fact, stationary, calibrated compositions. A water effect is reproduced through technological materials such as glass and plexiglas.
Playing around with materials and with the concept of appearance is one of Ignazio Fresu’s ways of dealing with the themes of becoming and of the transformation of man and of objects, which takes place over the passing of time, thereby rendering the concept of beauty as something transitory and ephemeral.
The artist often makes use of evocative titles, lines or aphorisms taken from literary or philosophic works. One such case is Fresu’s “Nothing lasts except change”, a work inspired by Heraclitus’ Fragments which the artist showed at the Spazio Mondadori exhibition area in Venice as part of the 52nd International Art Biennale in September, 2007.
As said above, Fresu is an all-round artist with the ability to turn to any art form, thanks to his great technical skill and wealth of inspiration. As confirmation of his multidisciplinary ability we have the works shown in 2007 which include both a solo exhibition entitled “Dissolvence” (“Fade-outs”), entirely devoted to painting on canvas, shown in the refined setting of a tea shop in Prato (“Il Giardino del Thé”), as well as the very large and evocative work shown at the collective international art exhibition entitled “Rivivere il chiostro” (“Let the cloister relive”) held in Florence in July at the Chiostro del Convento delle Oblate (cloister of the Oblate convent).
Again at “Il Giardino del Thé” this artist from Prato, known for his installations of great visual and emotional impact, based on the play between appearance and reality, showed a series of works at the end of January 2007 where, for the first time he left aside sculpture in order to turn to canvas and brushes.
However, Fresu does not use common colours or traditional painting techniques. Rather he begins with digital retouching of photos of some of his three-dimensional installations before going on to print the images using oil-based ink on canvas and finally, painting onto them aluminium- and
iron-based acrylics. The use of metals is one of the features of Fresu’s work, so that over time the metal-covered surfaces deteriorate through oxidisation, undergoing a transformation which enriches and enhances them.
The canvases shown in Prato, realised over the last few months of 2006 and all one square metre in size, make up a sort of photo album of memorabilia: images of past moments which are destined to deteriorate over time just like the materials which have been used to represent them. Ignazio Fresu offers us some highlights from his work, including images of previously-exhibited installations presented under a new guise that are, however, able to render tangible the multiple aspects and infinite number of meanings hidden in his work. Each canvas exhibited at Prato has the same title as the installation that it reproduces. Among these works we find “Nulla perdura se non il mutamento” (“Nothing lasts except change”), a work shown by Fresu in Turin, made up of an intricate tangle of harmless pipes, set at intervals between blocks of cement. The former are really only cardboard rolls left over from textile producing in Prato and covered in a paste made up of metal, whereas the latter are pieces of polystyrene. Or else there is the work entitled “Tutte le cose che abbiamo visto e preso, le lasciamo; quelle che non abbiamo visto né preso, le portiamo con noi” (“All the things that we have seen and taken, we leave behind; those that we have neither seen nor taken, we take with us”), an installation shown at Pistoia in Tuscany which illustrates the aphorism of Heraclitus, relating to the enigma in which our immediate-time response to objects and the importance of our interior response is what counts, rather than the illusory concreteness presented by the outside world. In this work, precariously-balanced rusty stems of iron and stone are actually pieces of polystyrene.
One of Fresu’s most recurring themes is that of precariousness and in the canvasses shown in Prato we find this theme in his work “La Ginestra” (“Broom”- the shrub) which reproduces an installation presented in Florence, openly inspired by the famous poem by Giacomo Leopardi, in which the fragile-looking bush, symbolising Man, manages to stand up against the violent forces of Nature that represent and mirror life’s difficulties.
We find the game of verisimilitudes or semblance of truth in the canvas which reproduces Fresu’s installation entitled “Who What Where”, shown at the collective exhibition “H2O Espressioni Liquide” (“H2O Liquid Expressions”) in Siena. In this work the liquid element is rendered through the use of plexiglas bowls which use the play of refracted light rays together with a careful balance of levels to create water images of extraordinary magic.
Finally, the canvas depicting the installation “L’armonia nascosta è più forte di quella manifesta” (“Hidden harmony is stronger than that which is evident”), a work realised using apples glazed with a transparent and everlasting epoxy resin and hung on nylon threads. In this work Fresu is showing the real nature of the apple, a tasty and fleshy fruit which is, however, destined to rot and decay.
In and among so many fading images of previously-realised installations, Ignazio Fresu gave a preview of a future work, with his “Divenire è memoria” (“Becoming is Memory”), in Prato. This installation was then shown in July 2007 in the collective exhibition “Rivivere il Chiostro” (Let the Cloister Relive), resulting from an idea by Silvia Fossati and curated by the architect Guido Del Fungo, in which 29 artists from all over the world showed what they could do with the theme of the circle.
Ignazio Fresu’s response was to create a large circular installation entitled, as said above, “Divenire è memoria”, which was placed on the lawn of the cloister. It was intended as a magic circle, evoking a sacred aura and made up of 14 white Doric columns, each one a little over two metres in height and precariously balanced. It appeared that somebody had hastily and carelessly set them up, mindless of the need to render them stable. Both from close up and at a distance, one experienced a disturbing feeling of giddiness and precariousness. The onlooker was to feel a sense of frailty akin to that characterising the existence of mankind with the inexorable passing of time. “I am seeking a different dimension from the one we commonly know, along with its changeability, in order to capture a sense of non-conventional beauty”, Fresu explains.
In contrast with the massive-looking structure which it appears to be, the work evokes a strong sense of instability. However, a closer look at the material making up the columns shows that it is not marble, but merely polystyrene coated with stark white sand mixed with epoxy resin.
Ignazio Fresu enjoys playing with and creating optical illusions, thereby showing us that we must learn not to trust our first impressions but must learn to look beyond and find the deeper secret meanings which objects hide and hold.
Sara Paradisi
