Fluid create life from life. There is transcendence in this concept, a mixture of existentialism and phenomenalism traceable to all spheres of knowledge. A plane of development from which things take shape and reform again. Dust is a positive vanitas: persistence of life in continuous transformation. Nothing is lost in the dust, nothing is forgotten, indeed, it is remembered, accumulated, weighed. History is inscribed in that dust, it belongs to an infinite and infinitesimal world never disconnected. Each speck possesses a mixed identity where common language fails because it is different in each place.
Alice Mestriner e Ahad Moslemi, memoriaplastica, installation view at NAMI Gallery, photo Ludovico Brancaccio, courtesy NAMI Gallery
Alice Mestriner (b. 1994, Trieste) and Ahad Moslemi (b. 1983, Tehran) make this transcendence their aesthetic analysis, breaking down a commonplace, energizing an imperceptible but not nonexistent element. Plastic memory coined as a result of dust marks time, describes identity, communicates language, in apparent silence because it is alive and active. How much beauty is inherent in matter, how much refinement in plastic art refers back to past, present and future life, not cyclical but revolutionized and transformed. It is astonishing to think about this difference because it draws one deeper and deeper into the knowledge of existence, of an unknown but present life, with its transposition into something material and memorial.
Alice Mestriner e Ahad Moslemi, Cromie, microscope photographs, 7 x 12 cm, 2023, photo Ludovico Brancaccio, courtesy NAMI Gallery
The artists – assisted by young curator Massimiliano Bastardo – land on Parthenopean land at NAMI Gallery with their first solo exhibition entitled “memoriaplastica.” in which dust is the atypical medium and generator of a series ranging from installations to paintings, sculptures and watercolors. Each individual work is based on research that goes beyond the sphere of aesthetics: aspects related to the chemistry and physics of the elements, philosophy and psychology are analyzed, with the aim of unifying the element of dust with the persistence of life itself and what forms it, from the abstract to the concrete. The mutability of this singular matter establishes an archaeological and anthropological dialogue between what has been and what will be.
Alice Mestriner e Ahad Moslemi, materiaprima, life dust sculpture, 2021, photo Ludovico Brancaccio, courtesy NAMI Gallery
Work like Time Line and Entropy – repetitively a ten-meter pink thorn paper installation and a kinetic sculpture made of wrought iron from the 1800s – underscore how the cyclical nature of time fails at the moment of its change. The various natural elements that make up these two works change physiognomy and form emulating the existence of life itself, evidence of a passage made up of entropies and relationships.
Alice Mestriner e Ahad Moslemi, materiaprima, dust surfaces on frame, 50 x 70 cm, 2023, photo Ludovico Brancaccio, courtesy NAMI Gallery
The three sculptures materiaprima emphasize the energy-dust-life relationship due to their scientific workmanship and refinement: these works are made by compressing various natural elements, accumulated and mixed with sugar, or that primordial element at the basis of every biological process that enables, precisely, existence.
Alice Mestriner e Ahad Moslemi, Timeline, powder on thorn rose, 10 m x 1,5 m, 2022, photo Ludovico Brancaccio, courtesy NAMI Gallery
The exhibition expresses what Alice and Ahad call the aesthetics of immortality through a language that draws on matter rather than word symbolism. Dust is analyzed, synthesized, perscrutized in every single part to tell the Whole. Lavoisier teaches that nothing is created and nothing is destroyed but everything is transformed: well dust is the transformation of life into life, a seesaw sign of order and disorder, form and formlessness.
Info:
Alice Mestriner e Ahad Moslemi. memoriaplastica
a cura di Massimiliano Bastardo
16/03 – 16/04 2023
NAMI Gallery
Via Carlo Poerio 9, Napoli
www.namigallery.com
Actor and performer, he loves visual arts in all their manifestations.
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