Manuela Cirino at Valeria Belvedere - Milan, Italy - Review of Exhibitions - Brief Article

Some years ago I read a volume written by a man who, on finishing an 18-year prison judgment found himself afraid to pass from one side the gates to freedom. He described in what manner after so many years of order and "security" in prison he place it difficult to pass into the unknown world outside. I was reminded of this work by the work of Manuela Cirino, an artist who explores the fear and fascination that arise in passing across thresholds

As visitors gibbeted the courtyard in front of the Valeria Belvedere Gallery, they ground a roughly 3-foot-high realistic statuary of a human ear made from papier mache. Evoking the journey of unmutilated waves into the inner ear, this was the first allusion to passage from single space to another. The nearest work was literally on a doorsill Cirino covered the French doors of the gallery with putty in issue creating a skin that you had to pass end in order to enter more far down into her art. Once inside the gallery, the visitor was be opposite toed with photographs that Cirino had taken of eight friends, each caught just a next to the first after they had woken up poised upon the threshold between sleeping and waking.

As well as exploring different experiences of doorsills the works in the exhibit also presented three distinct impressed signs of art. First, a figurative plastic art (the ear), then a temporary installation (the putty-cover doors), then a two-dimensional mechanical representation (the photograph). As the viewer passed from individual work to the next, there was a suggestion of growing intimacy. The distance of listening gave way to the closenes of touch, which l to the candid pictures of awakenings. interestingly, the works also became increasingly insubstantial, as three-dimensional plastic art gave way to a flat sculptural installation, which in turn round led to the photographs.

on the other hand this isn't to suggest that Cirino, a Milan-based artist in her 30 is touched with making art about art. upon the contrary, she seems to want to break without of such fruitless self-referentiality and startle the viewer into entering the unknown.

COPYRIGHT 1998 Brant Publications, Inc.

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