Serafino Amato e Marcello Sambati a Tuscania
testo di Yvonne Dohna
On hearing Bill Pettit's and Serafino Amato's description of this
project, I immediately wondered whether the public would be able not
only to experience the individual works, but also to get a glimpse
into the particular comradeship between the two artists. I was quickly
fascinated by this artistic brotherhood, initiated recently by chance,
between two such distinct personalities, nurtured by mutual sympathy
and the desire to communicate their poetry.
It's astonishing to list the range of media in which they express
themselves expertly: painting, drawing, photography, video, theater,
poetry, fiction, music. It's not only that they erase distinctions
between figuration and abstraction--by now a common enough attitude in
art--or that they happily blur the confines between art and life, and
the confines between "high" and "low" idioms. Really they are like
those lucky people for whom our usual distinctions between English and
French and Italian simply don't exist: there exists instead just one
big meta-language, and therefore problems of translation and
interpretation are likewise non-existent. They are not conceptual
artists who one day execute a work in neon and the next day one in
fiberglass, relying upon expert artisans to worry about the technical
details. No, they do their own eclectic work, in a spirit of
craftsmanship, self-reliance, resourcefulness, anti-heroism and
anti-virtuosity. Both are attentive to the details of their own lives,
which they cite with unembarassed feeling. This gives a nearly
domestic dimension to their works, and serves at the same time as a
kind of implicit criticism of the empty "professionalism" of the
current art world. Both artists have the strength of faith in their
own artistic sensibilities in whatever idiom they confront.
In Bill's description, Serafino emerges as a kind of sly and
undefinable chameleon, and a font of flowing creativity. Serafino
cultivates an impression of relaxation and elegant casualness. His art
reflects his seraphic smile; he is an artist of the light touch. Yet
Sturm und Drang are part of his artistic heritage: his works are often
composed and inspired by scenes from avant-garde theatre, as Serafino
says, a sort of „performance art, gli spettacoli erano "opere totali"
La voce era quasi "bandita" e il testo era una emanazione del corpo
dell'attore. Suoni più che parole, una sorta di "mantra" talvolta.
Improvvisazione ma anche esercizio di pratiche talvolta più vicine
allo yoga. Le esperienze di Julian Beck e del Living Teathre e nel
campo della performance sonora John Cage, avevano fortemente
influenzato le persone da cui "ero a bottega" per imparare“.
In a typically delicate work of Serafino's (”..infatti è proprio
questo andare dove gli altri non vanno….”), we see a little bird on
the sand trying to escape from the frame of the photo; the bird is a
little out of focus, as if simultaneously still there and yet already
flown off. Life is there, before us in that moment and in the moment
after.
Serafino tells stories. He distinguishes between exterior and interior
events, and speaks about the “discrete” versus the “indiscrete” look,
that is, examining the world more deeply, without however abandoning
reality. (An example: the man with closed eyes). The paradox of
photography is that while it manifestly records exclusively what is
physically real, in the hands of a master photography ends up
representing the metaphysical, the world of dreams, memories, desires.
The artist comments: „Fotografo quello che c'è e ne riconosco la
debolezza e la fragilità davanti alla forza della mutazione delle
cose“.
In Serafino`s words „ Davanti alla natura sei sempre di fronte al più
grande "Testo" che sia mai stato possibile leggere...o forse vedere. „
InTerzo racconto a vegetali (April 2002) we hear the wind in the
grass: „La natura è per me il viaggio infinito. La ripetizione
infinita, che infinita non è, e nemmeno ripetizione poi, semmai
combinazione di variabili infinite sullo stesso tema. Sono interessato
alle variabili di uno stesso tema e al gioco della casualità come
elemento di permanenza realtiva nel luogo. “ Looking at the grass, we
hear the lullaby “Guten Abend, gute Nacht” played by a child, unsure,
insecure and disturbed by little mistakes. We feel a connection
between nature and cruel human reality. “Un ondata in inverno li
trascinerà via” we read at the end of the film, when the flute is
substituted by drums and the grass is filmed in painful close-up. We
are made to experience a mixture of comfortable and uncomfortable
emotions and are forced to acknowledge the infinitely contradictory
aspects of the reality we inhabit.
Painter, photographer, video artist, poet, musician, Bill Pettit
explores tensions and connections between the earthy and the sublime,
pain and joy, the self and the other, city and country. In The
Marriage of Heaven and Hell we feel that the long abstract lines are
in the midst of a battle. The forms smash into each other and
interpenetrate, in the end creating a fluid continuum. The elements
seem to belong to a perfectly organized and articulated world which is
at the same time deeply unstable. It is a battle of energy which
becomes physically visible.
With the "steak" paintings we pass from the non-objective to an
explicit realism, which, however, suggests elements of allegory and
symbolism. The paintings are crude and direct. Bill says: “It needs to
be a surprise, a shock“ to become real. Flesh is a part of our life
and contains a deep truth of our lives. Bill writes “Consumption as a
spiritual act. Physical consumption—eating and kissing—are as close
to the sublime essence of art and poetry as anything else. And they
are also as close to the biological reduction of existence: to survive
and reproduce, as anything else." For Bill, the meat closes the cycle.
It sacrifice gives not just fuel but ecstasy.
Meat requires no philosophical explication; it simply says "eat me,
taste me, I will give you sustenance!" One could similarly say that
the art of this exhibition only asks to be looked and experienced, in
sympathy. "I make paintings and poems like I would write a love
letter“ writes Bill. “I am here wishing, regretting, wanting to…...
but resisting, for a you.“ Both artists reach out to us in a generous
embrace. Their poetic freedom induces in us a parallel sense of
liberation, of flying far away from everyday limits.
Serafino Amato – William Pettit
Quattro pezzi facili – Four easy pieces
Tuscania, 16 aprile 2011 – dalle ore 16 alle ore 20
Dark Camera – I magazzini della Lupa - Via della lupa 10 - tel. 0741 443239
www. i magazzini della lupa.it
Serafino e Bill si conoscono da poco tempo. Un incontro casuale, come ne avvengono per strada e come ne avvengono, inevitabilmente, per le strade dell’arte. Non credono, in fondo, di avere molto in comune. Sono diversissimi per aspetto, età, cultura. Uno italiano e l’altro americano. Uno ha più di cinquant’anni l’altro nemmeno quaranta. Uno alto e magro, l’altro meno. Eppure qualcosa li unisce. In questo tratto di strada direbbe Serafino, che da sempre è affascinato dal “percorso” … chi cammina veloce raggiunge chi sta già sullo stesso sentiero, ma chi per primo aveva intrapreso il viaggio?
Una mostra realizzata più di venti anni fa, esposta proprio a Dark Camera - Roma, da Marcello Sambati, aveva per titolo proprio “Segnavia”. Un uomo viene ripreso mentre cammina nel bosco, ha uno zaino sulle spalle. Un evidente reminescenza Heideggeriana.
Bill e’ nostalgico. Un ex patriota. Il suo percorso è fisico. Come uno straniero attraversa il tempo, il ricordo, riciclando il passato e l'immaginario insieme a tracce, a foto, a cartacce attaccate al muro. Il suo linguaggio è ciclico, anche. Scrive la stessa poesia, canta la stessa canzone, dipinge lo stesso quadro da sempre e non c’e’ differenza fra queste cose. …Tonalità e poemi, una lunga marcia versa casa, prima spinge e poi arretra muovendosi attraverso la leggerezza del tempo.
La mostra è accompagnata da un testo di Yvonne Dohna, Storico e critico d’arte.
Serafino and Bill have known each other for a short period of time. It was a casual meeting, like those that happen on the street, and like those that happen, inevitably, on the streets of Art. They don’t really have much in common. They are different in appearance, age, and culture. One is Italian and one is American. One is more than fifty, the other not yet 40. One is tall and thin, the other perhaps less so. But something brings them together.
“On this stretch of road,” writes Serafino, who has always been interested in the road and the path, “he who walks quickly reaches he who is already on the same path… but who first undertook the journey?” An exhibition of twenty years ago, shown at Marcello Sambati’s Dark Camera in Rome, was in fact titled “Segnavia” (Wegmarke). A man is filmed as he walks in the woods, he wears a backpack. An obvious reference to Heidegger.
Bill is on a similar path, perhaps more nostalgic. His journey is physical, as an ex-patriot, and temporal, through recollection and recycling the past, even if imaginary, parallel to the traces in snapshots and scraps pinned to the wall. His language too is cyclical: he writes the same poems, sings the same songs, paints the same pictures again and again, and there is no distinction between them. “Tones and poems, the long walk home, pushing, receding, moving through the lightness of time”.
The exhibition is accompanied with a text by Yvonne Dohna, art historian and critic.
Video di Serafino Amato
1980 - “DNA code”, già “Paesi Socialisti”, Super 8, 3:20 min
1989 - “Questa è una storia vera”. Su una collina a nord est di Roma. Con Benedetto Simonelli,
2003 - “Ascesi”, con Edoardo Albinati, 12 min16mm, 2:30 min;
2008 - "Ecatombe - I girini della storia" con Lorenzo Pavolini - 14 min
2010 - “Bill Looking” con William Pettit . 3 min (musica di William Pettit)
Videos By William Pettit
Moving, by William Pettit, Video, 4 min., 2010. Music: “Moving,” by Self Fantasy, 2010.
Moving and resting, being here or there, past, present, future, just walk towards it.
Dreaming, by William Pettit, Video, 3 min., 2011. Music: “Fireworks” by Self Fantasy, 2011.
Flashes of loss, a kiss makes fireworks, bright and fleeting, dreams are what was and what will be.
Waiting, by William Pettit, Video, 3 min., 2011. Music: “Seeds” by Self Fantasy, 2010.
Time exists between two heartbeats, the rain, the slow, the stranded, the waiting.
Missing, by William Pettit, video, 2:30 min., 2011. Music: “Albany” by Self Fantasy, 2011.
An imaginary journey excavated from past and future memory, within the confines of a solitary space.
