With a self analysis, Iacopo Pinelli and his work join the project «Young Italian Artists. Contemporary Art Stories», ongoing space and archive dedicated to key players in the contemporary art world, who are under 35, conceived by Antonello Tolve, and curated with Elena Giulia Rossi.
I believe that by working on the ego one can reach a better understanding of oneself both in terms of individual and collective action. What interests me most are the social, political and relational issues that accompany us in our everyday life.
One of the first research projects that I carried out on these topics focused on “tension”, revealing the transformations human beings are exposed to by the active tensions in contemporary society, exploring the social and relational problems which cause discomfort, anguish, marginalisation and self-exclusion. The research I carried out has led to an analysis of the loss of the unconscious.
From this starting point the series of works called Defunctional Bodies was conceived, where what counts is not the sentimental story the object can tell, but the operation of displacement, of gradual alienation of the object, of the loss of its utility value and, therefore, the acquiring of another significance. A metaphorical journey that relates habituation and detachment of affectivity, confrontation and participation in reality, emphasised by the identification of the body with the object, of existing bodies that no longer perform any function, remaining helpless, passive and unable to react to the conditions and issues of the present time.
I’m currently working on a series of works titled Structures, a natural outcome of previous studies on the defunctionalisation and dematerialisation of objects.
The series I’m working on considers architecture through the writings of Jacques Derrida and the reproduction of building materials. The structures I create are skeletons of buildings, transparent ghosts of unfinished architectural projects, ruins erected as a reminder of human fragility and their works. Anonymous and timeless constructions, disquiet and emptiness are the sensations they produce. The complete absence of form underlying beauty suggests the idea of the loneliness of a whole entity conceived to sustain with strength, but now forced into inactivity. I’m referring to architecture not as a construction technique but as an element with which to metaphorically and philosophically investigate the human condition, as Derrida did when theorising deconstructivism.
A deconstruction of human experience aimed at bringing to light those hidden but essential frameworks that strengthen the structure and the foundations that support it. However, even “load-bearing structures” actually have their own intrinsic fragility.
Iacopo Pinelli, April 2020
