Una questione privata

Una Questione Privata (A Private Matter) is a series of sculptural elements and related photographic images. These works are part of a larger body of work that investigates the relations between gravity, form and perception.

The sculptural elements are constituted of found pieces of board and wood, reworked by the artist; parts of the surface get smoothed, rubbed up and painted, although the flip side, the inherent materiality and original roughness of the wood stays half hidden, but always visible. Piangiamore describes them as necessary objects to deform space - subtracted to their state of inertia they become catalysers of gravity. The pieces are precariously balanced, and a minimal shift in positon would jeopardize their ability to stand. Sottratto all’inerzia #1 e #2 – (subtracted to inertia #1 and # 2) are in fact the titles for two of the sculptural elements. Non si teme il proprio tempo, è una questione di spazio (you don’t fear your own time, it’s a problem of space), is constituted of two parts, two flex thin pieces of wood with sharply shaped extremities which obstruct the entrances to the second room where the artist’s self portrait - Io a 31 anni considernando un nonno falegname e uno ingegnere (me at the age of 31 given a carpenter and a engineer as grandfathers) - is shown. The photographic images are the result of a form of ‘attraction’, a similar phenomena to gravity, towards an inert object exposed to a specific light. The appearance of the subject matter is distorted by the light, which abstracted from its context catalyses our gaze. Both titles - (generalmente) un fatto di gravità (generally – a matter of gravity) - refer to Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity, specifically to the ability of gravity to deflect light, acting as a lens that may distort the global geometry of the universe – therefore the appearance of what we see. A small photograph is placed at the far end of a room – Una condizione remota (a remote condition) – reveals the underlying process of Piangiamore’s new works. Framed with the very same fragments of wood that appear in the image, the size of the print dictated by their actual length.

The rigour and and the subtle subversive nature of Piangiamore’s intent coexists with an irony that pervades all of his practice, a synptom of the misunderstanding between appearance and potentiality, between concept of truth and relativity.

“I appropriate daily life objects in order to elude a direct vision of things and to be balanced between the apparent certainty of things and what could be”.