EXHIBITION n.85
EXHIBITION TITLE: Geografia Umana
ARTIST: Silvano Tessarollo
CURATED BY: GIANLUCA MARZIANI
PERIOD: 6 DECEMBER 2003 - 28 FEBRUARY 2004

Ex-serviceman from the success of "Melting Pop" (Palazzo delle Papesse in Siena, Castello of Masnago in Varese) with a sculptured Simpson family in gondola, Silvano Tessarollo returns to Verona for his second personal show at the gallery, La Giarina. The surprise will be great in front of the new stories of "Geografia Umana" (Human Geography). One reviews again those unforgettable large rats with that stretched out nose and high ears, thin legs and arms, imposing feet and a rose coloured skin that recalls their nude infancy. The visual disorientation, the same already appreciated in the monographic volume for 2002 (Cooper & Castelvecchi), repeats itself in this anomalous challenge to the giant plastic of the volumes, to the technical perfections which exalt every detail, colour and profile. The humanity of Tessarollo even though he utilizes the grammar of the cartoon, in reality follows a narration from the theatrical terms, rich in purifying epilogues that condense the memories of classic Greece, without anything comic strip like in the actions of the protagonists. The same modelled technology that irritates the skin and the articulations, the postures interface the memories of the twentieth century, up until he creates a plastic disorientation from the parts of Claes Oldenburg and Dennis Oppenheim. The final forms, greatly enlarged with respect to the archetype, feeding the simulation between true and false. They are strange entities that represent the privileged subject of the creative fantasy; but also the instrument that emphasizes the behaviours of the human species: primary sentiments, emotional contrasts, pure survival instincts. The likeable rats erect busts transform in the stylized mirror of our being. And their light appearance, like many things of civil life, a mask remains to hide the inner drama. An emotional trick, an static simulation that transports us in the daily prose with a loving, attractive and sweet form.

Now imagine a huge vertical sculpture composed of six characters in a pyramid. Here the rats have white diapers and, as in preceding works, the mouth closed with a gauze. Almost infant precocious, without social uniforms while they wobble in an effort of circus like balance. The form a living triangle that overturns the installations stability, putting the spectator in a condition of continuous physical indecision.

Another two figures placed in the rooms: the first interacts with a classical hula-hoop, too fat to make with turn without spasm like efforts; another attempts the go on an a child's kickboard that appears small with respect to the physical capacity. We see the first rat that lays down on the circle, as if catching its breath after vain attempts. The second is on its knees on the kickboard's board, even he is in a muscular depression that calls a new, plausible start. Each has its personality, taking on a pose that identifies them, expressing character in the decisive gestures. Look at them well and understand the sensation that emerges before to a ocean of Chinese. At first site everything is very similar, in reality they outline the character as soon as the first glance trains to the "different".

The same rat with a hula-hoop lives inside a three dimensional video animation where the efforts emphasize, the sounds arrive at the human body, the tensions grow at breakneck speeds during the sketch. Tessarollo's the imaginary plastic arrives like this to the point of ideal completion, closing am individual circle that opens with the design, pass from an acid painting but primitive, then re-elaborate the scene on computer, and then to the sculpture (design on the computer with execution in poliuretano on CNC , machines, polyester, fibreglass, industrial colours and e rubber paint) until the characters become digital photographs and return to a synthetic essence as, exactly, the electronic animations. Tessarollo makes different languages live together but complimentary, moving in parallel between divsionist design, water-colour of overloaded colours, sculptures that use machinery with better perfection, digital prints from the painter effects, simulations giving light to movement. An evident goodwill to make the protagonist breathe, give them dynamism space, almost replicate a life with radical plastic power of the matter. Basically, the struggle of the rats is the same that the author undertakes with the creation: as the animals that declare themselves alive, like this the works desire to a super realism that makes the lifeless believable..

"Geografia Umana" becomes the place of imbalance, of the precarious gravity, of the inadequacy between something too large or too small. Tessarollo's characters continue to experiment impossible challenges, to go beyond belief in themselves, to persist like frenetic athletes of daily life. We know them for years in their stories of wounds, physical struggles, accidents, death and armed threat. Today they dedicate themselves to playing( pyramid, hula-hoop, kick boarding) but their drama is not stupid. Again that life, true or sculptures, remains a little inalienable daily battle.