Santo Cielo, solo show at Galleria Patricia Armocida, Milano – 20.09 – 30.11.2018
SANTO CIELO*
*Italian popular expression:
goodness [ interjection ] (also my goodness) an expression of surprise etc
heavens [ interjection ] an expression of surprise, dismay etc
Aldo Sergio explores the duality spirituality and symbolism in his latest exhibition “Santo Cielo!” Playing with the concept of sky/heaven and its influence in Italian folklore he draws the connections between human and divine both deeply and superficially. Milan-based gallery Patricia Armocida allegorically occupies two floors to host the dual universe of Sergio’s imaginary. Almost half a dozen paintings in various forms and sizes create an experience of the sacredness of the little things.
The first section of the exhibition depicts pop and ironic connotations of the expression “Santo cielo!” Sergio’s trademark pixel technique matures sparking shared collective memories and playing with iconography and rational cognizance. Pixelated Mc Donald’s fries, an avocado (the ultimate millennial emblem), or the ever-present Padre Pío portrait, are deconstructed in colorful squares forming a tension between tradition and technology. The contrast between realism and the pixels is a stylistic quality of the artist, with which he cultivates multiple metaphors of the essential hieratic nature of life and the need for several perspectives to achieve any understanding. “From the point of view of the fruition of the work, the alteration of the image through the pixels allows to place a certain distance between the spectator and the pictorial work. On the contrary, realistic elements contribute to attracting the observer” explains Sergio. And just like this the artist manages to spark two movements, a vertical one on the mind of the spectator, ascending in response to the content of his work, and a horizontal one physically stepping closer and futrther away from the canvas, in an effort to find a clearer visual experience of the image.
The second section descends upwards towards the depths of the sky/heaven, or more specifically, the artist’s own Santo Cielo. In this other space of the gallery, the exhibition’s narrative plunges into his spiritual subconscious with images that stem from within and represent fundamental human tendencies towards the sky. Every object has the potential to be sacred. As Parmiggiani aforementioned, the art piece stems from the prayer, it being the original form of artistic creation as invocation of an “other” to succor us here on Earth. Aldo’s silent visual prayers suggest the mind’s perpetual effort to find place of truth and belonging, quieting the outer noise.
The quotidian becomes sacred and the sacred becomes mundane in an analogy that exposes impressions that vary from childhood memories to somewhat dadaesque versions of everyday objects. Here the artist gifts animals, people and objects with what we all always wished for: wings. These are objects we are surrounded by, those we memorize, love, use, find, hate… and with wings and our thoughts we make them sacred. Sergio unravels our essential aim towards the skies by creating an ultimate connection between the physical and the ethereal. To take ownership of the objects around us and fill them with meaning is to transform them into a path to meet our ends – il cielo.
Dipped in intricate sacrality, the parallelism between the two series of icons reveals the density of our spirituality and its effect on everyday life, merging the banal and the metaphysical. Icons that come from outside, that we consume with our eyes open. Versus the icons that come from within, and that appear only when we close our eyes and look up, verso il cielo.
Sara Catalan