The beauty of time passing and the art of knowing that it is "gold"

Each of us confronts the theme of time pbading, before or after. Everything that we believe to have smothered goes back to the surface, after a certain time: faults, vices, obsessions. The most obvious imperfections that we had "corrected" come back disguised, but boring as before . Thus wrote Emil Cioran, in The Fearless Demiurge in 1969. It is precisely on the theme of time pbading and the art of learning to capture beauty, transforming each golden era, dedicated to the exhibition (G) ol d (from July 3 to September 15, 2018 at the gallery of contemporary art Raffaella De Chirico Via Della Rocca, 19 I Via Giolitti, 52, Turin), solo exhibition of the Milanese artist of Hungarian origin Andi Kacziba. On the subject of beauty, he developed a deep reflection: born in 1974, he arrived in Italy in 1997 to work as a model; then he devoted himself to photography and to art. So natural that his artistic research focuses on issues related to the image, beauty and obsession with the loss of the latter.

We and the mirror

But only apparently. Exhibition curator Angela Madesani points out how her works (also presented at the PwC in Milan from July 12 to September 15) suggest a fairy-tale world of weaving spaces and wading pools, bad queens that n & # 39; 39, do not accept aging, magic mirrors image and long strings that help find the right path. This is not a coincidence if one of Kacziba's most recent works is a series of Polaroids that propose his face always in the same frontal position: repetition and difference. It is impossible not to think of Roman Opalka, a Franco-Polish artist, of his self-portrait and the obsession to document the pbadage of time. The artist has, in his wrinkles, a mixture of vinavil and gold glue, so that the signs of the pbadage of time are even more obvious: a woman, an artist and ruthless. Kacziba knows the world of the image well and knows how to use his beautiful face. This sticky gold for some works is gently torn from his face, through a mask, like a fresco, to place on a glbad. the trace of time, the trace, an imprint without image. In Turin, there is also a series of oval mirrors, round and three compartments. Those who put themselves in the right measure will experience the reflection in the face, in the wrinkles of Andi, who managed, through a game of kidnappings and substitutions, to reveal the gold creases. in the object symbol of vanity par excellence. To make the mirrors, he used old glbades, a little embedded, sometimes scratched. A parallelism between the object and its content. The mirror also recalls the omnipresent selfie, the cross and the delight of our time: I photograph myself and I am, explains the artist.

Personal experience

There are also tapestries, made with materials already used in his research, such as jute and rope, mounted on wooden frames. The result is a wrinkled skin, hardened by the weather, perhaps marked by the sun; To fascinate is the shape, the material much more than the color. In each of his works, which are photographic portraits, wrinkles on the glbad and in the mirror, or woven ropes, there is the artist herself, with her experiences, her experience, which are her own. day after day affirms through the precious, even if boring, signs of time. Andi Kacziba has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions, at the Hungarian Academy of Rome, at the Pier Alessandro Garda Civic Museum in Ivrea, at the Italian Cultural Institute in Budapest, at the Swiss Foundation in Paris and at the Studio Museo Francesco Messina in Milan where, on the occasion of the International Day Against Violence Against Women, he realized an important site-specific project and a personal exhibition entitled "VOLA".

The great beauty

And here we come back to the theme of the Turin-Milanese exhibition in Andi. Despite the great feminist battles, undeniable social advances, one of the seemingly most urgent problems of our time, especially among women, remains forever young: we undergo cosmetic surgery in all parts of the body, botulinum injections . and other magical substances, total waxing and all that can help. The dream is to live up to 100 years and maybe more, with the face and body of a teenager. The most important beauty of all the rest? It seems to be And we women, despite ourselves, are still objects that can not grow old, grow bigger, become gray. The world of appearance triumphs. He seems to live on the plateau of The great beauty of Paolo Sorrentino. The triumph of emptiness and stupidity. The company is asking us for exhausting tests, writes Angela Madesani. the wrinkle, the baroque fold: that is Gilles Deleuze who, in his book on this theme, also mentions a Franco-Hungarian painter, Simon Hanta, compatriot of Andi Kacziba. Strange cases of life. After all, our redundant and empty time is reminiscent of a certain baroque, mutatis mutandis. The representation of the world is curved in the infinite. Pleated body, wrinkle, sign of time, experience, that the artist fills with gold, color of the baroque tradition of Central Europe: Precious for each of us the conclusion: Wrinkles that I I won, who tell my life, are gold.