A Selection of Works.
“In a decaying society, art, if it is truthful, must also reflect decay. And unless it wants to break faith with its social function, art must show the world as changeable. And help to change it.” — Ernst Fischer.
Which child has not identified a water tower with a UFO (Unidentified Flying Object) after watching “Star Wars”? Partly wizards and partly children, partly reseachers and partly environmentalists, certainly political, Madvision duo focus on issues troubling the Planet nowadays (environmental and economic crises, wars, desperate search for the last available resources, corporations’ control over individuals, people modifying the environment to the extent of modifying themselves, etc…) and inspect the hopeless drift of human condition.
Their reinterpretation of real facts by means of the laboratory of art, stimulates (even childish) fantasy and encourages reflections on the state of modern society, modifies the DNA of the examined subjects and generates new genetically-modified organisms. Science-fiction is reflected in reality, when the frames taken from real-contemporary situations are under the eye of the beholder, and perceived through a ‘critical’ journey by the consumer, worn by media overexposure now. With the same weapons being used to activate the (new) perversions of a society that is based just on decayed values, “mad” fantasy redirects and offers a new point of view to raise awarness.
«There are just two kinds of people: those who are bad and those who are very bad. But we’ve come to an agreement and the bad guys are called the good ones and the very bad guys are called the bad ones». This line by Fritz Lang, taken from “The Big Heat”, one of the fundamental film noir of the 1950s, is clearer than any phenomenological theory in providing the perception of what is all around and within us. The ‘agreement’! In other words, the general acceptance of codes that, since are “different” from our natural experience, change and forge our own perception of things and circumstances.
At a first and quick glance, our work can be considered provocative, and it is actually. Nevertheless, it is not meant for that quick glance, but for a deeper one, for those who want to understand what the exhibited work really means. Our ‘provocation’ does not draw from the eminent fathers of Dada, as regards the act of shocking, but it aims at triggering, in the beholder, some reflections on life, on the (real) perception of facts. “It is not matter that generates thought, it is thought that generates matter” stated Giordano Bruno, in the second half of the XVI century, and nothing is more appropriate for Art than this sentence, from Duchamps on.
It is not a drawing, a painting, a sculpture or a photo generating thought (or its critical study) but it is ‘thought’ that generates art, ‘conceives’ Art, in other words. Art is conceived by thought. As such, it communicates with thoughts. This is its democracy. Communication as a form of democracy, not as some commodity-related obligation.
Just like our ‘landscapes’, polluted by the polluting presence of ‘objects’ that at a first and shallow glance may seem something ‘unknown’ but are short circuits of codes, and forces you to constantly hold the other glance: a way to recognize a constantly manipulated reality. Our aim is to express a concept through an image, and not an ‘agreement’ on codes, that would go unheard and unnoticed, as a matter of fact. Just like our concrete panini, that cannot solve world hunger.
Nature and artifacts, artifacts for survival purposes and the (mis-presented) ‘reality’ of their transformation, due just to Capital profits. As it is for some performances, which were designated to others — performers with ‘a licence to kill’ (“killing” actually stands for “establishing individual ‘differences’”), authorized to manage pain and the lack of cultural foundation, or, better said, the fact that institutions are giving up on culture, in terms of essence of social transformation throughout History (‘memory’ being abandoned) and current times (research being abandoned).
Our own performances, not deriving from the happenings of the American avant‑garde, are pieces of research for the future, guidelines to find a way out from the undistinguished and constant ‘noise’ overfilling people’s perceptions nowadays. Just like the portraits that we have presented — portraits revealing the ‘private’ and personal Dorian Grays (totally deprived of the necessary communication between individuals) and hide (but not enough, for those who do not agree upon ‘codes’) behind behaviours and glossy (all identical) official pictures of the ‘great’ ‘masters of steam’.
In conclusion, we believe that our own artistic research embeds the sign of ‘detachment’. There is no ‘innocent’ individual, there is an individual that is the outcome of a thought (still with his/her personal choice) or a political ‘awareness’, either a corporative or personal profit, the latter triggering the end of humanity, the end of everything human; in that universal short circuit not leaving anyone aside, just fading away in the void. “We are the revolution” as Beuys used to say…
we are
MadVision was born as an arts group in 2005, in the field of film making; the participation in some Piedmont’s movie festivals such as “Val Susa Film Festival”, Piemonte Movie, 50 ore Film Festival, over the years, resulted in recognitions, awards, honorable mentions. In 2009, two members, Tex e Traum, continued their journey together, and pinpointed other forms of expressions, heading towards a wide range of possibilities, including photography, installations and performances.