VisionQuesT 4rosso presents the new project by Silvia Celeste Calcagno, VOX LUX, curated by Alessandra Gagliano Candela.
From a series of red-dominant images, evanescent figures of light that are colored in shades of yellow, emerge. VOX LUX a site-specific project by Silvia Celeste Calcagno, documents the phases of a private performance in which the artist plays on the limit between worlds. Inspired by the title of the film by Brady Corbett (2018) of the same name, whose protagonist is also called Celeste, this new series intertwines experimentation with the thermal camera, a tool used in construction, printing on stoneware, in an artistic process that becomes alchemical.
It is, in fact fire, physically present in the performance and an element of Manipura in tantric culture, the key element of this project, with which the artist makes a descent into the Underworld, evoking past moments and a not entirely overcome loss. In the realm of shadows generated by the aura emanating from people and things, soaked in light different shapes are created, in a variable gradation from red to yellow. Silvia Celeste moves in this flaming world, her silhouette takes on a recognizable shape, she sits to observe the fire, moves into the distance, dialogues with her daily landscape, while photography records the temperature changes that become chromatic variations . Around her the world gradually changes, generating unexpected forms, bordering on abstraction.
The creative process is complex: the photographs capture the phases of the performance and a subsequent intervention on these photographs regulates contrasts, lights and shadows. The images are superimposed on the stoneware slabs, then subjected to firing. The result is a series of frames with a disturbing effect, creating a trans media story of great modernity. If, in fact, the photographic medium proves fundamental in recording a visionary condition that reveals the artist’s cinematographic culture, there are many suggestions aroused by this work. The concept of aura brings to mind Walter Benjamin’s seminal reflections, which combined , not by chance with a famous phrase by Virginia Woolf relating to life as a luminous halo, a semi-transparent shell, recreate a permeability between worlds that both attracts and disturbs.
With this new series Silvia Celeste Calcagno reveals the richness and complexity of her artistic research, which starts from her existential experience and draws from situations that become universal.
Silvia Celeste Calcagno : VOX LUX
24 May – 27 July 2024
VisionQuesT 4rosso Contemporary photography
Piazza Invrea 4r
16123 Genova, Italy
Tel.+ 39 010 2464203 – 335 6195394
www.visionquest.it
