Gino De Dominicis "The Immortal"

GINO DE DOMINICIS

MAXXI, ROME

May 30 - November 7 2010

www.fondazionemaxxi.it

by Sara Pelliccia

Looking at Gino De Dominicis’ exhibition at Maxxi is like making a journey into the illusionistic interior world of this Italian artist- a disorienting and ambiguous arrangement of installations, videos, photographs, paintings and sculptures expressing the tensions and the expectations of contemporary man. His show “The Immortal”, which incorporates works of different periods from 1960 to 1980, represents a reflection on the primary thematic issues confronted by De Dominicis: the immortality of matter and entropy, the visible and the invisible, the real and the unreal, irony, and suspension between past and future. Although the exhibition is not based on a linear chronological evolution, but on a circular conception of time, the evocative force of the works joined with the particular spatial qualities of the museum, contributes to visualize the challenging and suffered path made by the artist in his research for eternity.

Articulated in three successive areas, “The immortal” opens with an installation (Cosmic Magnet) representing a gigantic skeleton lying on the floor of the Maxxi square. The work refers to the reality of human condition who, thanks to his clairvoyant skills, comes into contact with mysterious cosmic energies . Except for its long nose, a recurring motif in De Dominicis’ iconography and emblem of man supernatural power, the skeleton can be interpreted as a scaled huge version of Homo Sapiens symbolizing man’s possible achievement of immortality. The gold rod, suspended between earth and sky, expresses the force that connects man with interstellar space where it is possible to transcend the human limits and overcome death.

The itinerary goes on in the Claudia Ferrari Room where the theme of immortality is developed in its complexity and absurdity. Fly Trial, a video in which De Dominicis simulates a flight leaping from a wall for five times, represents the artist’s attempt to challenge the laws of classical physics through experiments created to contrast the principle of entropy and the inescapability of death. The reference to the flight of Icarus is emblematic of human being’s desire for confuting the thesis of irreversibility of phenomena through the choice of impossible actions. As a result, art becomes the ideal space where the artist experiments the boundaries of human nature and achieves eternity. Statue (1979), located in front of Fly Trial, is strictly related to the theme of art as means of elevation, because it examines the fundamental concept of invisibility. The work consisting in only a hat and sandals focuses on the power of the work of art not to be corrupted by space and time. With Necrologio announcing De Dominicis’ death, he confirms the achievement of a condition of eternity through his artwork, the only antidote against the passage of time and corruptibility of matter.

On the other hand, the search for fantastic visionariness characterizes the second section composed by the Devils that, along the stairs, emerge from the irrational darkness of a disquieting space where the sound of a laughter produces a deep echo. A label, printed with the word D’IO reveals De Dominicis’ choice of using irony to stress the ambiguity of the title (Dio means God; Io means I)in order to emphasize his closeness to the divine. The search for immortality continues in the third room dedicated to the rediscovery of Sumerian culture and a fascination with the interstellar universe. Here, a gallery of portraits recalling Leonardo’s Mona Lisa celebrate in an alchemy of bright colors the triumph of timelessness and eternity. The work Urvasi and Gilgamesh, depicts Gilgamesh, king of Uruk, as he searches for immortality, and Urvasi, the Indian deity whose beauty was the source of her immortality. The two figures symbolize the harmonious union between the masculine and the feminine, between the artist and beauty.

The structure of this exhibition characterized by the display of the works perfectly integrated in the intricate space of the Maxxi, is the visual representation of the artist’s visionary mind. Just like in a dream, the images succeed one another without any chronological order, but in an alienating process involving the unconscious and memory just like in a De Chirico’s painting. Every recurring motif in this show could be part of a fairy tale where long noses, cyclopes’ eyes, enchanting women, ugly men and wizards, are the protagonists of a magic world. Like Walter Benjamin, De Dominicis believed that every mechanical reproduction would deprive the work of art of its “aura”; for this reason, He opted for a method of presentation based on the conception of the artwork as “divine apparition” and his ability of producing an unprecedent reality reflecting his total anti-conformism towards the Contemporary art trends.