Antonio Della Guardia
Index
11.10.2018 – 12.26.2018
Antonio Della Guardia
Index
11.10.2018 – 12.26.2018
Index is a pointing finger, a revealing sign, a hint, but is also the person who reveals or indicates something. The artistic research by Antonio Della Guardia (Salerno, 1990) has the function of indicating, highlighting, revealing the effects of the external factors on the individual and social bodies. Antonio Della Guardia tackles such tensions by deviating the perception of some elements through minimal shifts of meaning. He activates new possible perspectives that, with a subtle yet highly impacting visual synthesis, address some of the most pressing and unavoidable political and social issues of the contemporary world.
In loco parentis (2017) is a photograph of a worker’s hand, a labourer’s hand, a hand marked by a work injury. It seems to firmly indicate one’s own presence, in a polite imposition of one’s self, thanks to a white prothesis created by a 3D printer. The artificial reproduction of the index finger is not necessary for restoring the hand’s motor abilities, but rather for getting back the semiotic and dialogical properties that are inherent in the gesture of exhibiting one’s self, of reaffirming one’s own presence, of asking permission to talk. The apron bring us to the imagery of schools, factories, hospitals, prisons, i.e. the centres of control from which Foucault’s philosophical theories on biopower – life as the object of power itself – originate. 5 euro (2014), is a print on an authentic banknote. Tiny anthropomorphic figures portrayed while waiting become the depiction of a young generation that in nowadays’ advanced societies is striving for emancipation, due to the prolonging of this life phase. Such a phenomenon is probably caused by socio-political and economic factors that delay access to the job market. This delay, in turn, translates into time the apparent effects of the failure of capitalism. Precariousness is the main symptom of this failure, and it generates dependency and welfarism. Untitled (general resistance syndrome) is a mural artwork made in 2017 in Caracas, Venezuela, which is here reproduced in a site-specific form. In this work, Antonio Della Guardia makes use of the diagram’s simplified representation in order to gave a visual form and to clarify the complexity of what is commonly referred to as “stress”. This word, traditionally used in metallurgy to indicate the effects of high pressure on a certain material, was adopted later on by Hans Selye in his theories about the adaptive reactions of a body under pressure and under the influence of external factors. Indexes and scientific data give a visual structure to the so-called general adaptation syndrome, showing three distinct phases: the first of alarm, the second of resistance, and the third of exhaustion, i.e. when the body can no longer hold its state of resistance. By turning the curve of the diagram in the phase of resistance, the artwork appropriates the diagram as a tool that can visualise a shift from the individual body to the social body, in opposition with the current political system.
These are the three artworks attentively selected in order to create, through their meanings, a linkage with the main themes that studioconcreto explores in a theoretical and experimental form. Immateriality, precariousness, performativity, the loss of the sense of community, and the emergence of new individualistic practices mark the urgency to create new reflective approaches that could help analysing and rethinking the dialogue between public sphere and private sphere.
On 23 December 2018 the public program of the exhibition will host the event Photoworks and Photobooks, curated by Tommaso Carbone.