NY Arts Magazine

Summer 2009 Editorial Preview

With braided rope anchored to opposing walls of the gallery, Mimmo Roselli transforms the OK Harris Gallery into a dynamic theater of mismatched vanishing points. Moving under and around the taut hemp rigging, visitors must interact with this work, which effectively divides and subdivides the space. Triangulated spaces emerge between strands of rope, creating many dynamic and interesting perspectives depending on the viewer’s vantage point. The ropes also suggest continuity beyond their length in the room. Some of the divergent lines trace directions that could never cross while others seem bound to intersect at an invisible point beyond the wall. Roselli, who hails from Florence, Italy, views these trajectories as abstractions.

Mirrored Beauty

I have regularly appeared in my work from my earliest photographic projects. In regards to this recurring theme art critics have a tendency to hold a view diametrically opposed to mine. I think that my self-portraits shouldn’t be judged separately, but as part of my whole practice. I enjoy posing in front of the camera; I make no apologies for this: the camera’s ability to put order into chaos, to define the details of a made-up reality. Behind this rite of self-annihilation and rebirth, your everyday self is shattered into smithereens. Self-portraiture in art is a topic that brings out irreconcilable differences. Some support this idea of the artist as his/her own muse, a status that photography elevates to myth, the idea of someone ditching the restrictive conventions of society to transcend appearances.

The Land of the Living

On April 18th, 2009 I would turn 34; I live and work in Milan, Italy. In my pictures I deal with eroticism. I often perform my fantasies or situations from my imagination. The characters you find in my photos are imaginary. I do not make portraits; the models become actors of a personal fantasy. Having said that, I don’t mean there’s no change. Sometimes the image I create, even if it has been projected before, modifies spontaneously when I shoot, absorbing external stimuli from the atmosphere at the location of the shoot, or the feeling among the people at the set. My pictures are erotic, and I don’t mind at all if you can find them more on erotic Web sites than on artistic ones. I don’t want anything hidden behind eroticism. This “other” belongs to me, to my life, to my cultural background. I observe a lot of things: photography, cinema, art, but, more than anything, life.

Tipping the Scale

These drawings are derived from actual locations. When drawn, the image begins to operate as a screen or a membrane on which the view of a surrounding condenses and congeals. Here the picture plane acts to extend the delay within which sensations begin to take hold, prolonging the flicker between a moment before-ness and a meaning-reflex. The drawings, wedged between “abstraction” and “place,” engage the viewer in a patient perceptual movement within the presented space by informing the threshold within which our surroundings always unfold as “making sense.” The drawing format operates on a scale that relates to the viewer’s body. It is no longer a “picture” to behold, but rather a space within which both the image and the observer emerge intertwined from the act of viewing itself.

Across the Continents

The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860-1989 at Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum traces how Asian art, literature, and philosophy were transmitted and transformed within American cultural and intellectual currents, influencing the articulation of new visual and conceptual languages. The exhibition explores how American art evolved through a process of appropriation and integration of Asian sources that developed from the 1860s through the 1980s, when globalization came to eclipse earlier, more deliberate, modes of cultural transmission and reception. While Europe has long been recognized as the font of mainstream American art movements, the exhibition explores an alternative lineage of creative culture that is aligned with America’s Pacific vista—Asia.

No Invitation Required

Divine Revelation

My latest projects are called Spirit Flow and Floral Explosion Series, which study the idea of the inspiration in relation to our organic growth as human beings. My inspiration comes from the Greek word, “Theopneustos,” which means God-breathed. I describe this creative process as an effortless finding instead of a conflicted rational proposal. The Floral Explosion Series is related in a way to the process of music composition. A basic structure that consists of flowing lines (which could probably represent time) and improvisation in design, typically about flowers and other organic patterns (which could probably represent sound, chord, or melody). I try to stick to a selection of colors, typically black, white, and red to support the whole concept, and not an emotionalist’s approach to color. With the series Spirit Flow, the final product is photos.

Brazen It Out

Decadence and relevance. It's about conflicts and contradictions. Duality intrigues me, surprises me, amuses me, and even disgusts me. But then I realize that everything has a dual nature. Even electrons, the particles at micro level, exhibit properties of particles and waves. Art, for me, is anything that attracts my attention, holds it, and engulfs me. It may be awkward or ugly for the majority of people, but this is what consumes my time by choice. It could be the red light at the traffic signal illuminating the unfinished flyover, ignored sides of a building with trash on its edges, puddles of mud, distant look in the eye of a street urchin. The paradoxical extremities of my city excite me and instill in me images of love, hate, passion, desire, reflection, neglect, and a myriad of diverse emotions.

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Summer 2009 Editorial Preview