THE EXIT - 2003

"ETCHING CENTRE ALZAIA NAVIGLIO GRANDE" - MILAN

PRESENTATION : CHIARA GATTI

Let's try to image a single element of a structure (the human being) and let's try now to image this structure made of these elements set each other (the society). Then every element is in contact with other elements (individual family and social sphere). As he sets and codifies with some acknowledgment parameters the elements that surround himself, so everyone of this elements achieves his operation over him. In time this parameters solidify and shape a refractory body, not prone to change.

But the problem does not subsist until the element does not cultivate awareness of his occlusion mechanism. The elements limit themselves to develop and evolve like that, will surely have their specific element's problems but not this, since they not recognize it or if they smell it, they act like nothing never happened and like steadfast sapients they accuratly remove it. So the challenger element has one more problem, but how can he face it? Its own nature limits its borders.

Maybe...imagination marks the problem, imagination resolves the problem.

Fulvio Tomasi, January 20 th 2003

Visions from the other world

Presentation : CHIARA GATTI

"Once upon a time there was a kingdom. A land suspended between reality and imagination. A land stretching from the sharp outline of impassable mountains and the open horizon of a nameless sea". This could be the beginning of the thousand stories created by the light ink and refined touch of Fulvio Tomasi, an engraver from Trieste. But his mountains do have a name, and his sea as well. From the jagged mountain tops of the Dolomites to the eastern shores of the Adriatic sea, Tomasi's tales carry with them the magic flavour of local legends and the bitter aftertaste of old proverbs.

This is the way he loves telling his stories full of liveliness, with sweetness and irony, looking at things wit the curious eye and the sarcastic smile of who wants to find out what lies beneath. What comes out is an unexpected world, dominated by anxiety and imagination, where love has the countenance of a king who has sacrificed his kingdom for it (Domani non più); and fear wears the mask of a puppet observing us while we are sleeping and, during our nightmares, making us tighten our lips and stomach (La Pesantola).

Crowded with visionary characters, fairy-tale animals and odd creatures, these young, mocking story-teller's tales become emblematic images, representations laden with symbolisms, little paraphrases of every sort of absurd madness, of the imperfections appearing every day in that pièce which is human existence. And, behind the scenes, there exists a reality which has taken off the clothes of appearance, thus revealing all deceptions. Tomasi faces these indigestible truths with grace, without sensation or public accusations, by illustrating their sense through his imagery of allegoric stories, crowded with creatures making grotesque grimaces, miming excessively, panting, mumbling, rolling their eyes and coming out from the dark holes of unstable constructions.

He is satiric, but with optimism. In this sense, "shaking to exorcise" might be the slogan of his very personal reflections, swinging between zeal and divertissement, of an existential quest which is not afflictive but helps to understand vices and defects and tries to find out a remedy, with the ironic attitude of someone who is still able to laugh at them. Thus, moods, feelings, ideas, doubts and little manias materialize in shapes that are now funny, then perturbing; goggled personifications of our way of being beyond every pretence. There is, then, who looks at the others furtively and in a cheating way (Un simbolico gatto), who prefers to stay on his own, denouncing every invasion of privacy (Embè?!) or who, on the contrary, prefers to face everything frankly and without mediation (Vis-à-vis).

A multitude of well-chosen metaphors, then, with big eyes "to have a better sight", and mischievous smiles concealing easy lies. Tomasi does not tell us which side are the good and which side are the bad, perhaps he does not know either. However, he warns us even of good intentions and right feelings and, in a world dominated by the chaotic, inexhaustible law of "the big fish eating the smaller one" (Vortice), he suggests a way out, that is, finding the other end of Ariadne's thread. This means going straight to the point, choosing the shortest way and not wasting too many words (Giro d'aria), sort of "empty words" which come to nothing and nourish "empty thoughts", dangerous deviations from the real meaningful way. We have to run along this way humbly, without being frightened by the mysterious presences recording all our movements and ready to punish us when we take a false step.

These presences are the others' eyes: inquisitive eyes, insistent eyes, meddling eyes. There are new protagonists in these more and more disquieting stories, adult stories where the magic element has made way for bitterness and where the soft touch of that refined chasing work, which used to linger over the manes of felines and nice tiger cubs, has become strict and severe, more balanced, among the countless varieties of grey nuances modulating the fleeting surfaces of complex architectures. In this way, with a play of light and shade, an extremely fragile, thicknessless paper castle assumes a shape; a castle where, amid arches and tunnels, silent and totemic creatures are wandering (In sospeso), sinister icons of the last, wholly true, tale.

Chiara Gatti