“Termoformature” is an exhibition that concludes the workshop “Arte e industria in dialogo”, held by Gino Sabatini Odoardi for a group of about 80 students from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome.
Between 7 and 13 May 2019, the Colleoni Hall hosts some works produced by the students together with the artist. Two common threads were followed during the theoretical-practical workshop: the process of “thermoforming in polystyrene”, with which Sabatini Odoardi transfigures and crystallises the nature of objects; and the theme of welcome, hospitality and migration, to which Massimo Carboni, essayist and lecturer in Aesthetics, with a lectio magistralis entitled The Other Within Us. The two planes are united by the factors of “time” and “memory”, from a conceptual, aesthetic and poetic point of view.
While on the one hand a particular method of sculptural construction was thus experimented with, on the other the students identified symbolic objects connected to the phenomenon of immigration: a journey completed by a visit to the Astalli Centre in Rome, a place of refuge for asylum seekers, led by Father Alessandro Manarese.
The project is curated by Anna Maiorano, lecturer in ‘Decoration – Environmental Art and Experimental Languages’.
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Helga Marsala: Let’s start with the “thermoforming” technique, which you have been using for many years. It is evidently a process that serves a theoretical research on time, memory, and the dialectic between life and death. From the first experiments with vacuum bags to this use of plastic, which becomes a second skin with which to transfigure objects, it seems to me that it is always an attempt to crystallise reality: to immortalise it, so that it does not die. And thus return it to a new life. What is your relationship with these concepts? Is art a way to save the world through its image?
Gino Sabatini Odoardi: The relationship is always necessarily contradictory. Unfortunately, the reality is very sad: one day we will all find ourselves in the same uncomfortable position, behind a small marble wall. The sun will die, drawing a brilliant planetary nebula, and the Earth will dissolve into elementary particles. The natural world is as illiterate as chaos. The masterpieces of Leonardo and Duchamp will disappear. Woody Allen said that artists have the very important task of distracting humanity from the tragic fate that awaits it.
Unfortunately, I can neither distract myself nor perhaps distract others. Everything is unknown, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty and the suspension of judgement appear to be the only result of our most careful analysis. A consensual bewilderment, therefore. Nevertheless, “thermoforming” gives me that sedative and transient illusion that I can entrust myself to a posthumous spectre in a painless way. It has a mechanism with an irreversible charm. It has the great peculiarity of “chilling” the object, giving it that fleeting possibility after the inevitable. I experience the corruption of the moment and the awareness of the imminent defeat. It is one of my many “posthumously conceived operations” as an act of generosity towards the present. What can art do? Escape from a room without windows. In the words of Claudio Parmiggiani, “Art does not need any answer. It is a question that wants to remain a question.”
HM: How did the students approach this type of research, from a technical and conceptual point of view? What interesting ideas came up?
GSO: It wasn’t easy to get the students to understand this type of research. Later, with the help of video experiences, the technical approach was more natural. The conceptual orientation was more complex; after all, discussing the dark is not easy, not least because each of us perceives reality differently. Various ideas came up, especially variables linked to the different execution techniques according to culture and/or custom.
HM: How did you organise the work with the students, from a theoretical and practical point of view?
GSO: Initially, we looked at my portfolio, starting with the urgencies and expressive motivations, and only later did we explain to them the various technical and practical stages of production. Afterwards, in coordination with Prof. Anna Maiorano, we gave the indicated theme, inviting the students to design any proposals, ideas or intuitions on paper, and immediately afterwards to formulate them through digital renderings, collages, models and prototypes. This was followed by a review and oral discussion of the projects received, and any critical issues relating to execution, poetics and content. Finally, the practical realisation of the objects/sculptures in pre-thermoforming on shaped panels (with the corresponding solidifications).
HM: The theme you investigated was that of immigration, the condition of the foreigner, the relationship with the other, the destiny of those who seek a place, a landing place: in this case, what kind of signs, traces and testimonies did you work with?
GSO: Unfortunately, it wasn’t difficult to immerse ourselves in the theme: signs, traces and testimonies are there for everyone to see, indiscriminately. The social, mixed with sand and sea, comes to meet us at every moment without filters. It is petty to speculate on fear. Welcoming is a sacrosanct moral principle. You only have to read the Odyssey, Homer’s poem about hospitality. I remember the episode of Ulysses landing, shipwrecked, on the island of Nausicaa: the hero looks far from reassuring and, seeing him arrive, the princess’s maids flee in fear. But it is Nausicaa herself who stops them, reminding them that hospitality is a duty and inviting them to provide all necessary care for the new guest. From this point of view, we should learn from classical culture.
As Jacques Derrida said, the stranger always brings a gift. In some areas of southern Italy, the custom of giving a gift to the guest still remains, precisely to reciprocate the gift they give us by coming to our home. Unfortunately, the real enemies of society are not those who exploit or tyrannise it, but those who humiliate it. Pain has become a globe, like the Earth: so Fabio Mauri confided to me.
The students, foreigners and non-foreigners, had their own stories to share. Multiple coherent and incoherent visions, ratified by coded object signs. Nothing laudatory, metaphorical symbolism, denunciations. The exercise of a disobedient gaze, the invitation to apply to reality an alternative simulation, equally effective and incisive as the ruthless narration of the truth.
HM: Plastic is a constant in your work. A cold, industrial material, linked to the idea of artifice and seriality, far from the organic warmth of so much research in the Arte Povera style. A material, however, that you somehow try to “warm up”, to bring back to a human and vital dimension, just as – on the contrary – you take life away from everyday objects. What is your relationship with this element and what meanings does it reveal?
GSO: There are many directions, underpinning different parallel readings. The idea of cold/warm runs horizontally through much of my entire expressive quest. They alternate without incident, almost never emerging unscathed. There is no “organic warmth” on the surface, only industrial seriality contradicted by the “poverista” object that has been removed. A kind of reverse Franciscanism.
At the same time, since 2013, following a growing interest in drapery, I have been pursuing a project – desymbolised – called “Tra le pieghe” (“Between the folds”). The drape, which is always present in my quest, has undergone a mutation over the years through the manual transformation of thermoforming. An inherent idea of plasticity, which is configured with harmony, balance and symmetry. A sort of golden canon of sublimation, where the metaphor of the “fold” constitutes an intriguing expression of “accords”, as Deleuze has always rightly maintained. The fold replicates itself infinitely in its unlimited reproduction, stratification and composition in a new harmony. How harmonious can a handkerchief hanging on a wall be?
HM: Another constant is the use of the colour white. A precise aesthetic choice. In this case too, poetic suggestions emerge: is it the immaculate material from which to start the creative process? A kind of ‘tabula rasa’, from which to build new archives, new personal or collective memories? What are the possible meanings?
GSO: Colour is a medium that allows you to exert a direct or indirect influence on the human mind. I chose white, as the mourning of colour itself. Brazen as morality. Intense as absence. White has no boundaries; it is subtraction and opens up to the possible. A possible that coincides with a single vanishing point. Like silence in music.