Young Italian Artists. Danilo Sciorilli

Today the first appointment of “Young Italian Artists”, conceived by Antonello Tolve, curated with Elena Giulia Rossi. Started during the health emergency that has changed global dynamics since March 2020, it is projected to become an ongoing archive that gives space to key players in the contemporary art world, who are under 35, and introduce the public to a creative perspective that works, that questions and reflects on the present, that establishes a connection with things and wants to distance itself from what is fashionable, hurriedly contrived – the thorny muddle that distinguishes the weak empty artistic output of today. Danilo Sciorilli starts building the space with his reflection:

The word imprisonment comes from the Latin recludĕre, which has two contrasting meanings, opening and closing. While I was attending the Academy, several years ago now, I experienced a period of great crisis: I didn’t know how to express what I wanted to say. In Urbino the Academy was established in a former convent and the cells where the monks stayed are used as small studios; I had one of those rooms and I decided, at a certain point, to barricade myself

For a year I spent almost all my time in that room outside time, in limbo, until I created what I like to consider my first artwork (Gimme fuel, gimme fire, 2016). After completing this task, I removed the cardboard from the glass. I no longer needed to lock myself in from the inside and I was able to really look at myself for the first time in the world, to open up.

This is how art is made. It opens a window onto the world and, for this very reason, our imprisonment is needed in order for art to emerge. Each and every time. In short, I work on the concept of ending and attempts to overcome it with various aspects that are part of it, such as the question of time or life, reality and fiction.

Just last December I started working on a new video-animation. I’m often inspired by films which, from among my father’s thousands of VHS cassettes, I watched as a child. These have a personal meaning for me and this time I was inspired by decontextualising one of the last scenes in The Truman Show – let’s set aside for now the lengthy debate on the relationship with the pre-existing image that starts with Plato. To be exact, when the film’s main character discovers that – spoiler alert – the sky is painted and is the limit of the television studio in which he lives.

Usually when I make an animation I draw each frame individually, but for this animation I drew the sky once for each frame because I wanted it to remain still, to take body and shape. I’m in the video, walking on the border of the sky, going up some stairs to find myself in front of a door. I open it and inside nothing, it’s all black, so I wait. One deep breath and I decide to dive into the darkness, almost as if I have no choice.

I always need to add something to every video. Often something that is real, an object. I nearly always leave the video to “steep”, even for months, before I understand what is needed. A few days ago I understood and immediately completed the project: the video projected on a wall will have a window next to it, exactly as big as the rectangle of the video itself, from which only the sky can be seen. This work is called Cause all we got is here to lose.

(Danilo Sciorilli – traduzione Madrelingua)

Danilo Sciorilli is born in Atessa in 1992. He currently lives and works in Turin