The wood is certainly one of the
most favourite materials used by Antonio Baglivo, who has been
capable to create with it a new derived relation, which goes far
away from the traditional preliminary options.
Anyway, in a different way from
what some philosopher assert, the realisation of a work is never
an easy work of pure execution, and it is not the mere
translation in the empiric world of the beautiful and completed
images, which the artist has in his mind.
"Umori
Pompeiani"Wood, 1991 (Cm
118x65x7)
In Baglivo’s work it seems difficult not to
consider his capability in adhere the processes of his
fantasy with the material experience, his continuous
experimenting the material grade of resistance and its
inexhaustible expressive flexibility.
Between the artist and the
material there is a dialogue, which intertwines advises,
sudden provocations, silences and lightened
astonishments.
The way in which Baglivo
approaches to the peace of wood is not that of create pre
organised shape just removing the excess of material, but
it means to renovate every time solutions and risks in
his relation with material.
This relation includes
moments of extreme kindness and insistence, with
merciless gestures that caress and smooth the surfaces.
These movements thin, engrave and plot nimble signs,
which vibrating penetrate into the material, till the
very deepest part of its body, till piercing it, and
provoking violent swallows of emptiness in its plastic
shape.
Sometime you have the impression
that Baglivo makes his sculpture born from the very profoundest
part of the material, now following the lines of fibres and the
movement of grains and knots of the wood, and after forcing them
to assume other, unforeseeable configurations.
In that way, someone said, this
artist seems to show his acquisition of the artisans’ old
tradition, capable to discover and to exalt the natural qualities
of things.
However, there is something
different from old traditions on the works of this artist. First,
in his signs we can find an adventurous way to experiment the
expressive possibilities of materials, which is not comparable
with the substantial repetitive work of an artisan. Secondly, the
idea of nature that we find in his works is not only relegated in
the background of human events. His works have not the purpose of
showing something to be addict as a benefit, instead, he
doesn’t want to modify the structure of the object but
promote its anatomy as the structure of the image.
"No title"Sculptured wood, 1997 (Cm 24x24)
It will be ingenuous to assert that Baglivo only
wants to revaluate the aesthetic natural qualities of
things, because he has a great feeling in the sense of
human participation in nature’s life.
At the beginning the nature of
his works shows itself as an intuition of procedures,
which cannot be easily classified. There is an intuition
of a universal metamorphic process that expands during
the time and the space, combining the boundless
complexity of geologic stratifications with that of
galaxy nebulas. It is possible to feel the quiver of
cell-tissues in a stellar night.
During this aesthetic
experience, the relationship with the world of nature
exceeds the obviousness of common experience, which
intends only to classify and make a distinction between
nature and human life; different but indissoluble things.
In one of his last year works we can precisely understand the
growing up of a mood, which goes from an organically vision,
especially expressed through a fluid and plastic coherence, to
cosmically breaking images, where the same quiver of the past is
now translated in a tight agglomeration of wood plugs, used in
such a way to give as much different brilliant effects, as to
create the impression of silent distances. This kind of images
are not created to reveal our irreparable extraneousness, but to
renew our deep and original belonging to the world of nature.
