Deborah Schamoni

The paradox of the space without edges. The mono-surface object enigma. The non-euclidean overlapping of two points of view to generate a new, unique – unattended – panorama.

Flush with NENA is the title of the Davide Stucchi’s artworks series produced by THEVIEW Studio for Sant’Ilario Pavilion. Realized by Albissola artisans and set up on the floor of the small pavilion architecture, the body of works is formed by a series of glazed ceramic vases – glossy and opaque – that lays on cotton and polypropylene cushions. Black landscape of glazes and fabrics.

The artworks, indirectly inspired by the italian designer Antonia Campi’s sculptural attempts – between body and nature – belonging to DDD Vittorio Dapelo’s collection, are designed to be seen from below, to be explored through the expanded and open eye of a GoPro camera that – carried on the shoulder of a dog – will smell the artworks and the landscape, street’s edges and ceramics, synthetic cushions and asphalt. Observed by a dog and conceived for a dog – Nena is the producer’s family small companion – Stucchi’s artworks blend shape of the ceramic production with abstract forms and designed geometries of cuts of dressings and possible animal prosthesis. A vitrine of precious designed objects and a micro-gym for sporty dogs.

The word “Flush” etymologically refers to the flow of a full river. “Flush with” is about designing and assembling parts to compose coplanar surfaces to be gazed leaning the half shut eye on the work surface area, to be perceived leaving to glide the hand on the without fold body of the object.

Among the artwork production, its display, documentation and story-telling, the multiple points of view of the entire project have been conceived by the artist as a never ending overlapping of gazes, a designed cross of different observation points. “Flush” is in fact the cocker spaniel name of a Virginia Woolfi well-know novel protagonist – a dog biography – where the animal and its owner gaze – the poetess Elizabeth Barrett – seem to overlap, where the English author life dedicated to art and poetry is told exactly from the uncanny point of a view of her faithful domestic friend. A landscape of swishing fabrics and farming lawns, countryside corners and ancient Victorian’s rags. Using a plot dense of references and inspired by the precise intention of presenting a work to be observed through an ambiguous and deformed point of view – the project has its own origin in the choice of a GoPro camera to shoot a film, crossing life and collection of the THEVIEW producer, indirectly hinting to the pages of a novel where the eyes of a woman-animal- poetess merge – Stucchi keeps going with this contribution to the Sant’Ilario Pavilion series, his investigation on the relation between documentation and presentation, sculpture and photography that started with artworks as Lady Dior as seen by (2012), Mathilde Agius (2012), or Gap’s eye (2014). The artworks presented in the pavilion – hollows bodies, emptied, opaque and shiny – slip away to a full gaze. The viewer’s eyes, invited to position themselves “flush with” those of Nena’s and its GoPro, try to decipher the artworks nature: ceramics shaped to appear as leather or anodized high-tech steel, bright vases and dog suits at the same time.

Within the context of a project as Sant’Ilario Pavilion that draws – among many issues – on the experimental idea of inviting artists to try to understand how the artwork production could be influenced and expanded – in its conception – by the possibility that its public presentation could be a film, the Stucchi’s artworks for THEVIEW – Flush with NENA (2015) – shape a panorama described through curved and analogue spaces, cut landscape fragments in direct drive that appear as flash-back – NENA (2016) video – and invite the viewer to question himself on the possible truthfulness of his own gaze.

Text: Francesco Garutti
Photos: Sant'Ilario Pavilion