Parolacce is the new exhibition by Alek O., curated by Massimiliano Scuderi in the spaces of Fondazione Zimei (Pescara, Italy). The artist has been included in many projects, and in several solo and group exhibitions in Italy and abroad. On this occasion she confirms her preference for the more material aspect of the object. The challenge she engaged in with the bricks, the wood and the dilated atmosphere of the villa, returns an aesthetic path of deconstruction and reassembly of volumes, more or less planned.

Her work has an artisanal identity that is intertwined with the ready-made, recovering various types of objects that totally subvert both appearance and function, reworking their known patterns in different structures. Alek O. is interested in the ‘things’ as entities that possess an affective dimension, symbolic, and that maintain it, although remodulate, giving it the opportunity to transform them, starting from a deconstruction. The process is exactly the opposite of that of creation, to which we often refer, and it does not aim only to produce something new, but to highlight its impact on time. The object is investigated and reversed, and its significant implication is rediscovered with another value, highlighting what it represents in the flow of everyday life, and how it is interpreted.

This intangible sphere is closely linked to the individual, and his way of conceiving the tools he uses : each of us surrounds himself with things to which he is attached, to which he assigns a specific and personal value. The material that Alek O. retrieves from the Grand Hotel Adriatico (Pescara) has been deposited over the decades and forgotten there during the renovations.

The Minecraft sculptures (2022) installed in the large hall, thanks to the balance between the multicolored reserve tiles, compose all different blocks, which, as in the video game form three-dimensional agglomerates. The six light sculptures that flank them are instead assemblies of ceiling lights, partly abandoned but in some floors of the hotel still in use, put into operation using standard ball bulbs. The warm or cold light that is inserted inside allows a chromatic contrast between the two lamps, however the external color is exactly the same.

More radical is the work done to realize Pubbricità (2022), in which the thread that traces the floral fabric of the tarantine blankets, typical of Abruzzo region, is used for a new minimal matrix weaving, which however fully preserves the echo and tradition of the original object. The bright colors of the blanket threads characterize the hand-embroidered and framed tapestries, outlining fluid and linear profiles. The artisanal temporality is also perceived in the process of disassembly and reassembly from which Grand Hotel (2022) springs, a corpus of 15 canvases in shades of blue, emerging from the brick wall. The series comes from the dismantling of discolored tarps taken from the top floor of the hotel. They were unstitched, cut and reassembled by the artist to obtain the final group, assembling each piece according to the streaks and lines produced by the sun. The result is dynamic, each canvas attracts the eye, bouncing from side to side, trying to capture images hidden in the shadows of the blue.

The design of the created shapes evokes that of familiar elements, which nevertheless surprise us in a completely new presentation. In Parolacce the artist alters a static comfort zone putting us in front of a concrete reality but reinterpreted in an abstract and geometric key, following his vision and the concept of ‘classic’ module. The artist takes from things the material qualities, questioning not only the physical element, but also the creation one, which implies a time not to be lost in the reworking of the object. The result contains both, but it shows them quite as exceptions, they unexpectedly become something else that we recognize.

Cecilia Buccioni

Alek O., Parolacce
9.04.2022 – 9.07.2022
Fondazione Zimei
Via Aspromonte s.n. – 65015 Montesilvano (PE)
fondazionezimei.it