Andrea Nacciarriti at Kappa-Nöun, Bologna

As long as one is not dead, one pretends to die.

An old dinghy, resting against the green backdrop of an imposing display the green screen, stands alone in the exhibition space of Kappa-Nöun. It's an unusual image that surprises the viewer: it appears as a stranded figure on an unreal expanse, abandoned to itself, without specific elements that speak of its history and destiny. What are we seeing? The wreckage of a life of labor, the trace of deterioration and the brutality of time? Or are we simply spectators of a view, a portion of the world left to itself, feigning the sublime violence of truth within the realm of art?

Even the title of the work, installation view, contributes to the ambiguity of the situation, challenging the viewer. The apparent eloquence of the title sounds provocative, devoid of poetic resonance, as cold as a technical descriptive word accompanying a new kind of still life that does not contemplate the element of humanity, to be observed from a distance as if it were truly a painting, in the safe, protected, and depersonalized position of the observer: the viewer's distance from reality.

The use of the chroma key, typically used to merge different images into a single vision, isolates the object from its surroundings, solidifying the sense of estrangement that exists between us and the wreckage. It's a relationship of solitude that is also a metaphor for our condition: the dinghy is, in fact, an image of an elsewhere that does not touch our lives; it is effectively a document of a story out of context, installed in a space untouched by drama (the exhibition space of art) and in a timeless, non-phenomenal time, far from the true existential scene.

Irreducible viewers of the distance that our screens place between us and the brutal substance of life, in front of this new imposing work by Andrea Nacciarriti, we perceive a feeling of disorientation and uncertainty. The absence of a direct confrontation is accentuated by a second perspective on the work, from above to below, only visible by accessing the first-floor balcony. Leaning over the railing, where two polished steel bollards are placed, we are spectators of a delayed scene.

Andrea Nacciarriti's installation is a paraphrase of the spectacular space we have constructed to observe the world in its visual appearance without the risk of confronting the virulence of life, further sublimating the age-old quest for security. But, as G. Didi-Huberman notes, "to show something to sight always means disturbing seeing," still being affected by it.

— Marinella Paderni