EXHIBITIONS

Two points of view

In our daily lives, the way we register events through time depends on one's point of view. This point of view or perspective, the starting point for all actions, is key to the construction of variables of a system of thought because it is precisely that which gives anything its meaning; therefore, it is key to any action and explains the similarities or differences in relation to the same act or object. This is most apparent in the succession of a logical sequence of events, where one is the consequence of the other.

However, can there also be a point of view in the act of creation? Creation is an irrational moment, an arbitrary consideration of facts, and with absolute freedom from the analysis of those things that will later be reflected in acts or objects.

Once the system of linear time sequencing is broken, there remains the need to consider the concept of space. The point of view is naturally present since that which is under scrutiny needs to be the same in all its dimensions.

This is the case in this exhibition, where the variation of meaning undulates not only as a result of the use of disparate media, painting and photography, but also as a result of the distance between the artist and the object, which in principle is one and the same.

Franco Lippi, a renowned painter who has just returned from an exceptional exhibition in Italy and a subsequent show in Argentina with the Italian sculptor Jano Sicura, has now invited the photographer Luis Falduti in a joint exhibition in which the product is a response to Lippi’s paintings, a metalanguage that unveils the infinite universe behind any artistic creation and the multi-layered meanings embedded within.

Jose Maria Paolantonio

PERSPECTIVES: Franco Lippi and Luis Falduti

Hidden symbols and secret codes have been discovered in countless art pieces crossing myriad cultures and millennia. Many of these artists, both ancient and modern, have included in their pieces elements that were moved or removed for one reason or another. In some cases, scandal forced artists to correct controversial details; in others, the artist simply changed his or her mind. Instances of painterly corrections which expose previous versions of the design are referred to as pentimenti, from the Italian “to repent,” essentially because the artist has “repented” for a choice made earlier in the creative process. At other times, images were intentionally left somewhere in the painting as a hidden message. Many years later, these hidden elements were discovered using special cameras and techniques such as spectrography to reveal a world of images and messages that were hidden behind the painting.

In this exhibition by Franco Lippi and Luis Falduti at the Embassy of Argentina in Washington, DC, and at the General Consulate of New York, we use the medium of photography to temporally expose the enigmatic layers of Franco Lippi’s paintings to disclose its hidden messages. The efforts by these two artists is to reenact the complete chain of events in which one painter and a photographer collaborate, creating two separate bodies of work, each from his own point of view and yet, from one referring to the other, allows one to reveal the essence of the other. Art is the unique ability to describe the indescribable, where ideas, color, expression, and representation are elements and tools artists use to create environments that cross space and time, inner and outer worlds, the seen and unseen. Franco Lippi presents a new series of pieces that, with Luis Falduti, is redefining the language of painting and photography, a concept based on the idea of ephemeral color and space treatment where vast and complex compositions from Lippi become realms to be discovered through Falduti’s lens, and in turn create new dimensions between the works of the two of them, traversing between two worlds.

Traveling inside the layers of Lippi’s paintings into the very essences of his canvases, one discovers the universality and interconnectedness of life where shapes and colors unveil an endless voyage across new frontiers inside our minds. Falduti captures and exposes Lippi’s process, penetrating the deepest parts of the surface of the painting, not only with great technical knowledge, but also with the mastery of his critical eye, bringing the hidden messages Lippi created inside his paintings into our realm. The result of this collaboration is alchemical, where the works of the two artists, through the combination of light and color, create something altogether new, an unveiling so deep that we are looking into the soul of the artist.

To view this process in a more pragmatic way and more directly in line with the title of this show, these disparate views of the same work create two parallel lines of perspective. In planar geometry, one learns that two parallel lines meet at infinity; in other words, those two lines never actually meet. However, Franco Lippi and Luis Falduti have challenged this notion of planar, non-intersecting perspectives and have warped space and time through the collective visions of their mediums to create points of intersection that enlighten and delight the mind and spirit.

Alfredo Ratinoff Curator