'Low' by Paolo Bufalini at Adiacenze, Bologna

Paolo Bufalini (Rome, 1994) interprets the exhibition space as a place where one can create dilemmas by using rare and unusual objects as well as everyday objects, which are put together according to their forms and colors. The objects are arranged in space in a way that creates a dialogue between the single works and what surrounds them. The meaning of each single unit becomes secondary, while the subtle and estranged atmosphere, created thanks to the perfect balance between the occupied and empty spaces in the rooms, is the most important component. The site specific approach alludes to sculptural practices. A lot of attention is dedicated to the light and to the right combination between the position of objects in space and the objects themselves. This approach is often used in contemporary art: one recent example of this is the exhibition Even Sculptures Die that took place in Strozzina in Florence in 2015. 

Paolo Bufalini’s exhibitions in some ways are always similar. Each of them represents a sort of archeological research rooted in the present that creates an attitude akin to the idea of deterritorialized aesthetic. This concept contains all the confusion and fragmentation of our modern life and represents an aesthetic condition in which a human being is always somewhere in between the society and oneself, the material and the symbolic, the collective and the individual. 

The current impossibility of establishing common models and the complex nature of the individual’s relationship to society, which is progressively more divided into small groups ruled by the tribal logic (each individual has to stand out in order to belong), are the two elements that inspired Bufalini to create works that are devoid of one unique meaning. Rather, they point to the fragmentation of culture, where even the images are broken down into puzzle pieces. Low is an English term that connotates a context at the level of the ground and indicates the creation of meaning out of apparently ordinary objects. “Are we facing commercialization of culture or culturalization of products?” – sociologist Vanni Codeluppi wonders. This doubt is present in Bufalini’s works and is reinterpreted from an aesthetic point of view: a modern dilemma of a society that is mostly based on the values that the objects represent.

— Davide da Pieve