“Is It EROS?” the two-person exhibition with Marzia Gandini at the atelier of Palazzo Taverna for Rome Art Week develops a reflection by the South Korean philosopher naturalized German, Byung-Chul Han: “Eros tears the subject from itself and turns it towards the Other… The narcissist sinks into the shadow of himself, until he drowns in himself…”.
Byung-Chul Han, author of Eros in Agony, is a professor of Cultural Theory at the Universität der Künste in Berlin. His thought addresses the desire to know, to open oneself to the other and the different: an inclusive and sensitive gaze that does not start from dogmas and does not develop barriers.
Marzia Gandini’s art, matured and developed on both sides of the Atlantic between the Old World of origins and the multicultural New York, crossroads of the contemporary, confronts Eros from a continental perspective: there is nothing of the Mediterranean Bacchic rite, of the exuberance of colors of a Dionysian dance. It is a meditation lasting a lifetime, from the sculpture studied at the Academy to the refinement in the marble workshops of Carrara, to the large American oil paintings, on the meaning of the body-space relationship.
Sculpting or carving a figure, in fact, goes far beyond the technical exercise of verisimilitude; depicting a body in painting also means having to contextualize it in an environment: this analysis is an invisible but essential part of Marzia Gandini’s creative act. The artist, in this case, does not work from a project, she possesses the technical abilities to shape the form — with pigments or volumes — but waits for reality to suggest the moment of contact, a moment she will then capture in the finished work.
“Today,” explains Marzia Gandini, “we live in a global society where everything is the same and standardized; even Eros, the vital desire, struggles to manifest itself. In this way, people are increasingly isolated, despite being constantly hyper-connected.”
“Is It EROS?” becomes the culmination of her research: capturing those rare moments when exchange and interaction occur. From the body, it draws out those parts that surrender to contact: the closeness of faces, the warmth of a simple presence conveyed through a hand cupped, protective, and reassuring. There is no interest in narration: her sculpture is neither heroic nor symbolic, the subject does not become a model of virtue but presence. The painting seeks to purify identity from confusion: the figures are not alone because they are maladjusted; they are cleansed of everything transient that might disturb the Artist’s gaze.
The emotion that most spontaneously arises in front of Marzia Gandini’s works is the human empathy for one’s own fragility and that of the other: seeking a bridge of glances between unknown beings — three worlds as different as human, animal, and plant — means seeking something beyond the hyper-connected normality analyzed by Byung-Chul Han. There is a universe made of silences, memories, unexpressed possibilities, and stories never lived but potential, therefore truer and more vivid than everything that inevitably passes, gathers dust, and disappears.
Marzia Gandini manages to rediscover in the contemporary the measure of classicism, deliberately erasing all those centuries of reasoning and studies that propel us forward with knowledge, deceiving us into thinking we can overcome the natural limits of our delicate physicality. A butterfly’s flight becomes the measure of the unmeasurable, of life that briefly settles on us without being governed, planned, or forced into the cage of reason.
Eros, the desire for a true and profound contact, requires a predisposition: listening, astonished attention towards the unpredictable that may ignite before our eyes. One must be open-hearted for wonder to make its way and become tangible, capable of shaking us: in the technological banality of the present, observing Marzia Gandini’s works brings sudden humanity even to the most distracted passerby.
Marzia Gandini has brought the message to its essence, finding the courage to admit that everything — in interaction — is fundamentally a pure desire for contact.
Massimiliano Reggiani
in collaboration with Monica Cerrito