Mark Hachem Gallery is proud to present the exhibition “In Sospeso”, from May 26th to June 16th, gathering the work of two established Italian artists – the sculptor Stefano Bombardieri and the photographer Matteo Carassale. Two views on the contemporary world, which invite us to reflect upon the notion of time: a time that passes and the immediacy captured by the artistic form, in this case represented by photography and sculpture. The two artists create a universe suspended between the real and the absurd, questioning the laws of given reality.
A rhinoceros suspended in midair, a sumo fighter literally hanging by a thread. The imposing masses of both are crystallized in an absolute and timeless immobility. The plunge of two swimmers is frozen in time, the fleeting moment of suspension is captured, conveying the paradox of a motionless dynamism. It is this very state of physical and temporal suspension, which brings into question the two fundamental canons defining the human relationship with tangible reality as we know it. The points of reference of existence are reversed, at times annihilated. The spectator is disoriented.He is invited to enter a new fantastic dimension, which however appears even more truthful than reality itself.
Bombardieri and Carassale build an oneiric narrative, taking inspiration from everyday life and tangible reality, which is then transcended through a masterly play of light effects and perspective, and througha play on thecontrast between a hyper-realistic aesthetic and a dimension of absurdity that permeates the characters and situations portrayed.
Carassale’s photography and Bombardieri’s sculptures perfectly blend together, in a perfect alliance that aims at a common objective: theaesthetizationof nature transcending all the established conventions that define reality. The spectator is left “hanging” in the midst of a reinvented timeless reality, in which the natural meets the absurd and Realism is transcended, through a play of light, contrasts, angles and ironic decontextualization, in an attempt to exorcise reality with a smile.
