TRACING TRANSITION

curated by Eric Aichinger

Exhibition: 28 March - 30 April, 2023

Opening on Tuesday March 28th 2023 at 6pm

Heraclitus' saying "Panta rhei" or "everything flows" perhaps best describes the flux of life we experience every day. Even more so, these days, when we struggle to reason about our world in common sense and science. From generation to destruction, peace to war, quantum physics to consciousness, artificial intelligence to feelings, organisms to societies, energy to climate change or from spacetime to beauty. If we admit that ever-present change is the essence of the universe and the basic entities of our world are processes, it is crucial to look into transitions. The processes and periods of changing from one state or condition to another. Yet, how can impermanence best be described and visually represented?

The many forms transition can take have been scrutinised and traced in a month-long workshop of the photography master class and visual design and communication master class of "Raffles - Istituto Moda e Design" under the supervision of Eric Aichinger. The ten students Roberto Artifoni, Nicolò Dall'Asta, Alex Garelli, Daria Masorina, Alice Piccin, Sohan Sam, Annalisa Scialanca, Teresa Strolz, Michael TenBrink and Marco Usala have now produced an exhibition in the lobby of the private design college. The many-faceted results range from multi-media installations to "pure" photography, from interactive objects to living sculptures which all instantiate the dynamics of flux and transition.

In a complex procedure, Roberto Artifoni has gilded a block of A4 copy papers. Each of the 1200 sheets has been serially numbered by the artist's hand and is open to be ripped off and taken away to further use. There is always a golden lining to a yet blank tablet that challenges completion.

Nicolò Dall'Asta finds our visual sense to be the essential capacity of experiencing our world in flux. His experiments result in a photoshopped sequence of six photographs which defy our naturalistic tendencies to define a world beyond mere impressions of light and color.

An egg, it's just an egg! Or rather, a small photograph of a yolk of life and its large-sized one-to-one rendering in digital code. Alex Garelli's diptych makes explicit what our world is build off: cells and bytes and the question, how images of the world come about.

Daria Masorina explores the roots of the human condition by exposing four narcissus' bulbs encapsulated above shallow water. Eventually, they will grow together to be entangled forever. Another root system that can be interpreted transcendentally.

What if gender was no longer a binary category? What if the media and its users could no longer tell the difference? Alice Piccin aims at the center of the discourse on the hypersexualisation of young girls when showing gender ambiguities.

Straightforwardly, Sohan Sam, addresses our human capacity to feel empathy with our neighbour.
In his five-piece photo sequence the very same model is presented in transitioning states of happiness, anxiety, sorrow, anger, and sadness. If only, we were able to shift our emotions back and forth like in this sequence.

Annalisa Scialanca work was inspired by the fact that light has a speed that defies our common sense understanding. Her interactive installation allows us to create many-coloured reflections with a translucent resin sphere. Fleeting images created by a deliberately manipulative hand.

In her autobiographical work "November-March", Teresa Strolz reflects on her move from the Austrian Alps to Milano and the rollercoaster of feelings that accompanied it. The installation consists of five commercially available boxes of different pasta, the backs of which she has modified. After all, what could better represent longing than the exact right mixture of Farfalle and Tortiglioni?

In troubled times, Michael TenBrink finds solace in stark and rigid objects. His vertical grid of 3x10 black and white photographs of power poles that surround and supply Milano quietly urges us to think about renewable resources that are naturally replenished on a human timescale.

Finally, Marco Usala, finds transition in deterioration. Experimenting with different kinds of mold he applied a solution on to the surface of a photograph of building rubble. Very soon, the image and its physical support will become a fertile ground to spark a discussion on our environmental role as human agents on our planet.