Davide Dall’Osso
In un mondo “perfetto”
3 june – 31 december 2022
Castello Maniace, Siracusa (Sicilia)
Violetti Arte Contemporanea is pleased to present Davide Dall’Osso’s exhibition “In a perfect world”, curated by Maria Vittoria Gozio and Elena Violetti, within the exhibition spaces of Castello Maniace in Ortigia, Syracuse (Sicily).
The artist Davide Dall’Osso has created an installation of more than 70 sculptures through which he wants to tell of the possibility of a world in which gender equality is implemented.
Entering the Hypostyle hall we hear the voices of women. They are the voices of the sculptural wave, a light but unstoppable female wave. It is Arethusa who welcomes Desdemona, Griselda and all the other female figures of literature who, having ‘experienced’ gender-based violence, from their brutal experience offer us a possibility of change that can lead through ‘truth to love’ or to gender equality in a “perfect” world.
This sculptural wave (like almost all of the works created by Davide Dall’Osso) is made entirely with scraps of a plastic polymer, polycarbonate, from industrial recovery. The figurative sculptor Dall’Osso has been working on these materials for 25 years for a green and circular economy idea.
For Davide Dall’Osso each installation is a drama that tells of our contemporary split between the dreamlike and the material, which takes shape in the space and in the emotions of each of us. The artist comes from the theatre: the emotional tension that bursts out of each of his works transforms the space into an existential proscenium.
The meeting with the opera director Rosetta Cucchi two years ago led the artist to collaborate on the scenography of Scarlatti’s Opera “Griselda” where gender violence is told and this year in Rossini’s Opera “Otello”, always for one of his directions, where we talk about feminicide. The opportunity for confrontation with the figures of Griselda and Desdemona laid the roots of this installation. Aretusa represents the trait d’union to be able to talk about emancipation from gender-based violence through a sculptural installation.
A wave of female figures, like ballet dancers, bursts into the Hypostyle hall. Dall’Osso chose the sculptural representation of the tutu because, in the collective imagination, this dress embodies lightness and determination, body and technique, art and narration and reinforces, in the installation of the wave, the idea that it was born not from a momentary impulse but from the strength of a meditated life experience.
Dall’Osso’s sculptures are projected in a precise direction and seek a reason for existing through the relationship with light. They give the impression of being always in motion, offering a vision of continuous metamorphosis with respect to space.
The calm but determined, unstoppable wave, where every drop of blue is the voice of women born from the words of novels, dramaturgies and opera librettos, from the writings of poets, women who have suffered violence or feminicide.
The artist’s choice to give voice to the female figures of literature stems from the need to be able to show a posthumous vision of the violence itself, where the women who have suffered it can tell their story and tell us about a possibility of change, of how to stop that evil that marked the history of each of them. Their liberating, powerful voices break the muffled walls of our existence.
The blue wave of the nymph Arethusa bursts into the Maniace Castle and guides us through the Hypostyle Hall. A quiet but powerful wave that tells her story of her, of how she was transformed into a source by Diana to escape the passion of Alpheus, son of Oceanus, and how he, in the form of a river, thus joined her . Her imperishable and inextinguishable movement welcomes other women’s voices that are reflected in Frederick’s columns. Dancing, they ask to be heard, strengthened by the unity that words create. We hear the words of Desdemona, the kind wife of the Moor of Venice whose mad jealousy led to the woman’s murder. Griselda tells of the strength with which she resisted the domestic violence perpetrated by her husband Gualtiero, Marquis of Saluzzo.
Alongside the large faces of women who observe the dance of the wave, with their impalpable transparency, take on consistency in narrating and listening to the stories of the violence suffered by others. Through their voices comes the reflection and urgency to achieve gender equality.
Outside, material faces, strong, statuesque and blindfolded, as they are unable to see and fully understand, waiting to listen. And suddenly we realize that it’s all of us. Urgently, we find ourselves asking those voices of women for the formula to emancipate us from violence.
Davide Dall’Osso has never sought confirmation of his being by imposing his own thoughts, he has never backed down in the face of situations that jeopardized his certainties but, finding himself faced with the chronicles of gender-based violence, he admits that he I realize I’ve taken a step to the side. A step to the side not to be really touched by it, so astonished that I can’t find a way to respond.
The artist then asks himself what must be done to react; for him the art of hermeneutics becomes the art of knowing how to listen, not as a simple passive situation, but as a dynamic and intellectual action, which implies the ability to understand what is transmitted with words and with the body. Stretch all the senses, see the other and reach out to help. Remove the blindfolds that obstruct both sight and hearing and join our words to the chorus of voices to find new answers; begin to face this evil that wounds and bleeds the life of each of us, as an individual and as a community. This is the formula: don’t take a step aside so as not to be touched but make yourself available, welcoming.
Emancipate, therefore, together. The feminine and the masculine united for a utopian “perfect” world. Equality is proof of Love and it is of this Love that the artist speaks.
The narration of these women is their advice for us; the path they show us towards a “perfect” word.