|
Original Print
In around twenty
years of work and investigation together with the printer Giorgio
Upiglio, Roberto Ciaccio has blazed an innovative trail using the
original print and its tools in a continuous metalinguistic reflection.
The variety and exceptional nature of the techniques (aquatint,
monotype, monoprint) and the creation of large works/matrices on metal
plates (iron, zinc, copper) has allowed him to produce a corpus of works
characterized by a wholly original thought in its numerous conceptual
and practical aspects, resulting in new stylistic and expressive
possibilities.
Ciaccio’s work gives
rise to a redefinition of the very concept of ‘original’ and of the
processes of serial production and the technical reproducibility of the
original print.
Paradoxically, in the
spiritual dimension of his output, the auratic nature of the work is
intensified precisely where the tools of technical reproducibility — as
Walter Benjamin saw them — seem to negate it. The vision of the work is
driven towards uniqueness and technical irreproducibility.
Seriality is, in
fact, reconsidered, starting from the unicum of his monoprints that give
rise to the continuum of a coming into being of the difference (or
différance in Jacques Derrida’s sense, which is also temporal), although
originating from the identity of a single matrix.
Moreover, it is in connection with the serial
sequences and the intervallic rhythms of his works — various metal
plates and large monoprints — characterized by what Jacques Derrida
called différance, that the relationship with the architectural space
takes place in the becoming into being of the image.
In addition to the
original editions, monoprints and monotypes, the exhibitions also
include large plates of different metals (copper, zinc, iron), which,
with their specific materials, dimensions, weight and brightness, become
matrices and works in their own right.
‘Like all
the great European art from its origins, Roberto Ciaccio’s art is open
to various interpretations: a more ancient layer is formed by the symbol
and the sacred; then the experience of time, which is preserved and is
visible in the work of art; in addition, the importance of the modern
theories of the media and the image, from Walter Benjamin to Jacques
Derrida, and the theory of deconstructionism, as well as of aesthetic
difference; lastly, there is also the conceptual interpretation, the
interpretation of the experimental disposition, the deletion of the
individual — a minimalist variation, as it were….’ - Hein-Th.
Schulze Altcappenberg, director of the Kupferstichkabinett, Berlin.
|
Roberto Ciaccio. A Metalanguage of the
Original Print |
|
The
project for Roberto Ciaccio’s personal exhibition intends to
show the results of approximately 20 years of work done in
collaboration with the famous Milanese printmaker/publisher,
Giorgio Upiglio, with a specific focus on the content and
technical, procedural methods inherent to printmaking.
The broad
range of experience and the originality of their work together
consists of various cycles of works executed with innovative
methods (many of them technical) which reveal a coherent,
unitary course of expression and reflection on the specific
nature of the language itself and on the instruments employed.
Thus Roberto Ciaccio’s work becomes a real metalanguage of the
original print.
Roberto
Ciaccio’s expression of the contents of thought in his works
involves constant reflection and meditation on the constituent,
founding elements of original printmaking language and addresses
certain essential problems and dimensions of that language in a
suggestive, yet systematic way, as, for instance:
- The
intense,
harmonious spiritual and
technical feeling between artist and printmaker.
- The
mirroring plate/sheet - matrix/figure relationship, also viewed
in terms of its paradoxical conceptual and technical
reversibility (the plates in Roberto Ciaccio’s work, above and
beyond their technical functionality, consist of the specific
nature of their own presence and of their own independent
expressivity and identity).
- The
relationship between artwork and origin according to Heidegger’s
thought in Holzwege (“Der
Ursprung des Kunstwerkes”).
- The
concept of "aura" explored and redefined in relation to the
serial nature and instruments of original printmaking (with
Walter Benjamin’s The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical
Reproduction as the point of departure);
the
intensification of the aura’s
presence in Ciaccio’s printed work which
intentionally orients his artwork towards an uniqueness, an
impossibility for being repeated or technically reproduced.
- A
new way of considering seriality, starting from the idea of an
unicum and heading towards the idea of “différance” (as
intended by Jacques Derrida).
- The
continuum of differences lasting throughout the creation
of an image over time intensely expresses the condition of a
figure in terms of its identity/difference or its
difference/repetition, despite the identity of
its
matrix (Gilles Deleuze).
- The
essential nature of a
trace
as a mirroring reference mark as
regards a presence/absence relationship.
- The
problems linked to processes which lead to the “idea of image”
or to the “absence of image”.
- The
essential ambiguity of the presence/absence relationship is
entrusted to a coherent work path whose dimension is the
light/darkness relationship.
The
particular strength of Roberto Ciaccio’s work, including its
philosophic force, has already decidedly involved many important
philosophers in the past, such as Remo Bodei, Jacques Derrida,
Mario Perniola, Arturo Schwarz and others, who have concentrated
on his work at conferences, seminars and round-table discussions.
Roberto
Ciaccio’s work involves a theoretic and philosophical in-depth
exploration of the contemporary problems regarding images and
the processes of original print-making related to current
technologies.
Kupferstichkabinett Staatliche Museen zu Berlin 2006
Istituto
Nazionale per la Grafica Roma 2008/09
Original Editions
|
|