Topographies, Faculty of Fine Arts in Granada, 2018
An active gaze (between topos e typos)
The idea of layering is implicit in the concept of place: every place is a concentration of traces that call on us to take part in person, to recognise things we already know deep down, to activate memory, affections and reconnections. The very affinity between the Greek terms topos e typos confirms their inseparability: place is imprint, trace, figure; what is decisive in a place is its distinctive character. Every place is that particular place, not just any place. The places that Sandro Scalia offers to our gaze are strongly characterised, enjoy their own autonomy and deliberately resist any unifying point of view.
We can read them by surrendering to the game of juxtapositions, in the relationship between the image and its double, in a play of mirrors where the new resulting image adds gaze to gaze, connecting the now hidden, now visible threads of the two component images. It is an open investigation, in which the attentive eye delights in formal suggestions that become occasions for new meaning; it is up to each of us to retrace these fine threads and follow their weave. Topografie is the apt title of this exhibition by Sandro Scalia, opening at the Faculty of Fine Arts in Granada, which investigates both the writing of places and our capacity to rewrite them. The only prescription: an active gaze
[text by Rosa Maria Mancuso]
