La Ferme de

Gianluigi Maria Masucci

Transcribing movement

For Alberto Giacometti “bodies are never a compact mass but are transparent constructions”. While an immobile figure surrounds itself in a closed space, he explains, a mobile figure opens up space. Gianluigi Maria Masucci’s paintings are composed of ideographic movements enlivened as much by the energy within them as by the space which surrounds them. His compositions, set out in dense and noisy throngs, sketch interior forces and open up perspectives. Signs are not merely lines, they are intense witnesses of the artist’s relation to art since childhood and of an acknowledged debt to theatre, architectural studies, painting and a strong interest in digital art.

The strokes or signs are witnesses of the artist’s internal adventure, they reflect the way the world is perceived by a young Neapolitan artist. On the workbench of his studio neither mescaline nor suffering is needed to transcribe his familiar writing gestures similar in appearance to the work of Henri Michaux – known for his metaphysical anguish. Gianluigi Maria is not desperately searching for ways to escape, on the contrary, he is profoundly attached to the world. The camera allows him to capture his immediate environment: in Naples, the camera is trained on the upper levels of the streets to capture hanging washing, or on chattering and dancing people. In Geneva, the camera records the incessant and powerful flow of the Rhône. “Exterior” journeys allows the artist to experience “interior” journeys later. In his workshop, paintbrush in hand, he reproduces the intensity of the emotional experience and its vital energy. Whether described in video or ink, each has its own autonomous existence. Independently or placed together in an installation their moods multiply – a murmur, power, threat, enthusiasm – in a rhythm that is dry, nervy, hesitant, vibrant. An inventive and repetitive syntax, free and animated which revives the interest in movement of the artists of the 1960s. “No walk, no work” insisted Hamish Fulton. Like him, Gianluigi Maria Masucci makes movement an inviolable foundation of his work. Movement and travel are the essence – because to walk again and again is to remember, to glimpse, to forget, to insist, to rediscover. “Know that it is due to this multitude of small things that the illusion is maintained; it is difficult enough to imagine them, even more to portray them. A gesture may sometimes be as sublime as a word, then it is all these detailed truths which prepare the soul for deep impressions of great events” (Eloge de Richardson, Diderot). The signs assembled in the works of Gianluigi Maria open a space beyond the support and clearly create an event, a promise of change./ Karine Tissot

/// Gianluigi Maria Masucci