curated by Lorenzo Taiuti

Thursday, 13th April 2006 the exhibition Infrared by ELASTIC group of Artistic Research, curated by Lorenzo Taiuti, will open at Velan, 52, via Modena. The artists will present for the fist time in Italy the video Carillon (2002) created using infrared lights. The video installation, including also a photographic sequence from the video, proposes the theme of the contemporary portrait side by side with the theme of the ambiguous relationship between the photographic ‘still frame’ and the video as expressive form. The Elastic is a duo which becomes a group thanks to various cooperations according to the works they are taking on, performers or persons chosen as ‘typologies’ to be video taped. In the experience of this group, short in years but already wide in works as well as in exhibitions, infrared rays remain one of the most interesting expressive element. The infrared allow to stylize the image from the moment of the shooting and to modify reality according to the project. Places, images and faces take on a green luminescence, unexpected reflections, deceptive transparencies, a ‘Matrix’ not too futurist or the dead of the film ‘The Others’ by Amenabar, where ghosts are still living creatures, or better they are  the living creatures. All the series of portraits taken on in these years by the Elastics reflect the loss of recognizable characters to be part of an alien inventory. The work is ambiguously looking for a ‘different’ dimension or rather a representation of the ‘others’,  who cannot be represented because they are not understandable, irreparably ‘different’. The work ‘Carillon’ is a few minutes ‘loop’ video where a face made green by infrared rays appears and looks around (a man or a woman? Young or old?) he does not lament (as a dead should do) and he doesn’t accuse. He just looks around incredulous (or emotionless) in a ‘scanning’ of reality leading to no solution. The audiovisual equipment, deriving from plastic arts, purposely does not have a precise linguistic status. It is fluid expressive media which is strategically at the borders of plastic arts to filter other languages and adapt them to particular expressive processes. Since the first art experiments in the Nineties, in general the video installation is exhibited side by side with large format photographs, for example by Vanessa Beecroft or Mariko Mori. It is an attempt, from a visual and commercial point of view, to put the fluidity of a video in the more reassuring quality of ‘static object’. At the same time the function of the photo-video print takes us back to the use of the video in the years of the conceptual art, with the custom of fixing the performances with videotapes, a sort of memory-process which created a ‘video-form’ stylistically recognizable even after years. ‘Infrared’ is part of a research and of a series of exhibitions with the programmatic title of ‘still frame’ which I’m taking on recently. The photographic sequence accompanying the video stops it but extends the single photographs to the imperceptible repetition of the frame and in this visual circle another linguistic hybrid comes out between ‘moving image’ and plastic image. Infrared confronts the videos by the Elastic with their own fixed image, time and non-time in confrontation.

Alexandro Ladaga (I) and Silvia Manteiga (E) work using digital media, video, sound, animation, to create site specific installations and public art mixing together the most recent technology languages with the philosophic thought. Alexandro Ladaga (graduated in Philosophy specialized in Aesthetic) and Silvia Manteiga (graduated in literature with a specialization in Cultural Studies) founded the ELASTIC Group of Artistic Research in 1999. Alexandro Ladaga and Silvia Manteiga give life to electronic complexes, with solutions, hypothesis and themes which weave indissolubly, binding genres and procedures. The research by ELASTIC appears to be in tune with the research by young artists of the new generations who, as emerged in the latest important exhibitions (from the Expo 02 in Switzerland to the Eleventh Edition of Documenta, Kassel, to the latest editions of the Biennale in San Paolo, Venice, Istanbul, Berlin and the Quadriennale in Rome), wish to surpass the usual limits and feel the desire to open a confrontation with the public. Ladaga & Manteiga develop these intuitions in public art, site specific installations and videos with the purpose of registering the faces of a world where camera is conceived as a computer mirror, a Narcissus looking in the pool of our time. The ELASTIC Group of Artistic Research work using digital media and create site specific video installations, public art and video performances mixing philosophic thought and technologic logos. Invited to numerous international exhibitions in public and private locations in Italy, Germany, Spain, Portugal, France, UK, Austria, Netherlands, Poland, Bulgaria, Turkey, Brasil, Canada, Japan, China, USA: the BAUHAUS, Festival Temps d'Images, the Biennale di Venezia, The Kitchen Center for Video & Performing Arts (New York) the Quadriennale di Roma, Museo de Bellas Artes de La Habana, The Spanish Institute (New York) Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago. They created two video installations, commissioned by Julian Zugazagoita, curator at the Guggenheim and Director of El Museo del Barrio in New York and are authors of the book Moving Layers: Contextual Video in Art & Architecture for the Birkhauser Pubishers. We thank Regione Piemonte, TNT Global Express, NIKON Italy, YASHIC Italy, RAS Insurance, Pinerolo, for their contribution. The exhibition will remain open from 14^th April to 12^th May 2006 form Tuesday to Friday from 4.00 to 09.00 pm.