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In the last years we have been a witness to an increasing loss of the mythicization of work of art. This has come to pass by depriving it of its “Aura”, i.e. its methaphysical, religious and moral implications, the features that separate the work of art from the real world. By depriving the work of art of such an aura, the present society has shown the will to put an end to the autonomy of symbolic activities such as art and philosophy and, in general, the humanistic disciplines. Artists have become mere operators of the productive system, subordinated to the logic of productivity and social organization. We too often come across these cold and loveless eyes, disconnected from the historical-cultural continuity, indifferent eyes that produce the loss of meaning; the metaphysical research has been progressively fading away to the point of almost entirely disappearing from the panorama of contemporary artistic production. My work tends to settle into the void left by the abandonment of metaphysical reading, seeking visions capable to trigger a process of rethinking and redefining a modern metaphysics. My starting point is that man is a spiritual being, but this spirituality tends not to translate into something religious. Humanity in pursuing goals of a material nature is losing contact with that part of itself dwelling in individuality, its heritage of doubts and questions, its yearning for a deeper knowledge of its own self. Humanity is losing faith in the success of an inner journey to achieve a place in the masses. With my images I make a sort of initiatory travel trying to connect what is in myself with what is around me, meditating and trying to understand that the way we experience the outside world is basically related to the individual, to its personality, a singularity full of unknown possibilities that the so-called progress in the so-called civilization tend to hold up to public contempt and cancel, decreeing the triumph of a mass lacking independence of judgement. And while the nature of this journey is uniquely personal for each of us, the basic objective is the same: to keep the flame of the human spirit alive within us. In my persomal journey I look for situations that seem like theatre side-scenes where the temporal dimension is suspended, where the silence and stasis, indispensable conditions for a meditation that puts in touch memory and the present, the real and what goes beyond it, dominate. Every man is alone when faced with himself and that’s why there are no people in my photographs and they are visible only by the signs left in the territory. Frequently my attention is captured by the works of other artists that I like to consider companions of the same trip, in which I offer my interpretation, right or wrong as it may be. I am aware of the impossibility of giving answers to the questions that I pose, the very same questions that for centuries other men and women before me asked themselves, but as Erich Fromm admirably wrote: “man’s essence rests on questions, not on answers”. This trip will only be in vain for those people who will not listen to their inner selves, for anybody who will not dare know himself and give value to his own individuality, which is certainly perfectible, but nonetheless unique and irripetible.
Metaphysic Questions