RENDERING MULTIMEDIANIC ART

Paintings are artificial plants born from the seed of Vision one has in one's mind. The practical gesture of moving the brush upon the blank surface of canvas recalls that one of tattoing the pale skin of a dead body. Visions to me are so cruelly concrete that painting them has the same value of giving life to their spiritual flesh. Now the cyber space, the high definition technology, the virtual realities, the digital film-making,the 3D and 5.1 audiovisual experience are announcing the end of the “Multimedia Era” and the beginning of the “Multimedianic Age”. Therefore, even when I just paint, what I unleashed on the surface is nothing but the “imprinting” of these medianic visions which contain all the hig definition realities of the Invisible. Visions mean listening to the images and watching the sound.

Living for art is nothing but living for Visions.

ALESSANDRO FANTINI

TONY TAGLIANETTI and ALESSANDRO FANTINI

Alessandro is an artist. He’s always been an artist. He never decided to become an artist, he just was. Others may take up the pen or the brush or the camera late in life and make a choice to become one. Not Alessandro – he was born one. This isn’t hyperbole just a statement of fact. You see I watched Alessandro grow as a writer, a painter and most recently as a filmmaker over two decades. I saw how he turned a family house into a Renaissance like gallery with a plethora of exquisitely painted visions, single handedly creating a new reality with its own vocabulary of recurring motifs and symbolism. If Alessandro was just a painter, that would be an impressive enough accomplishment, however Alessandro has attempted to transcend a variety of medias. His attention to details and single-mindedness often made me envious and spurred me to challenge my own creative skills. About four years ago, perhaps more I made a visit to Abruzzo to see Alessandro and to collaborate on a multimedia project. We didn’t have much time I was only there for a few days to remember how beautiful a place The Sangro Valley was. You see living in Tokyo you kind of forget what old buildings, European countryside, and history feels like. We wanted to make a short film together using some of the key topography of the small town of Piazzano. The place has so much local history, you can’t help but be inspired by relics of previous generations who’d fought battles, loved and lived there. We spent a couple of days shooting some video based on a brief story outline and then I watched Alessandro play magician as he cut the raw footage together, splicing seconds and minutes of film into a narrative filled with his artistic ethos. You see whenever you watch an Alessandro short film or stare into one of his paintings you’ll be confronted with a dialogue with a Madonna of unearthly ethereal beauty. You’ll see transmogrifications of form into surrealistic shapes often with Lovecraftian overtones and Gigeresque undertones. You won't feel very comfortable staring into these worlds and one can only wonder at the dreams that Alessandro dreams. But you will go away thinking about this; even though they are impossible things that only Alice could try to believe before breakfast why do they look so real?

Lorenzo Fantini (writer and perfomance artist - Tokyo - september 2007)