Roberta Bertozzi interno 38

The discipline of the cartographer
Excerpt from the catalogue of Federico Guerri’s personal exhibition “SENTIERI INTERROTTI” ("Interrupted paths")
Galleria L'Affiche, Milano 2010

abstract

When standing in front of Federico Guerri’s paintings, one gets the impression of being taken in a swirling movement and is forced to look at rapid dislocations, the eye absorbed in the attempt to vehicle the irradiating beam of signs within a unique spectrum. Such movement is a kinaesthetic effect that derives from the very nature of the composition: similarly to the volutes of arabesques, to the mosaic grids, to the alveolar soul of the inlays, this image is immediately imprinted into the hinge of each single element, as it reveals itself uniquely through both the elements’ succession and mutual relationships. The observer’s eye follows this unfolding, by chasing the grafting of one segment into another, as well as the whole system of junctures and intersections where every feature expresses the elongation of a possibility, providing a fundamental answer to the void.
All the circumscribed hypotheses for a figurative representation are affected by this evolution: here is a dome, a vault, a major road, there appear spires, capitals, roofs, the vertebra of a wall. Having been identified according to some kind of aerial blueprint, every conception of territory – whether this is urban or wild, verisimilar or imaginary – dissolves in a structure made of waves and refractions in which every line does not represent anything but the energy of propagation.
Along this incessant anamorphosis, the architectural form tends to contaminate and to coincide with certain vegetal geometries: the helixes and the sinuosity of the climbers, the venations of the quartzes, the knots of the barks, the fragile skeleton of leaves. Such form enters the molecular physics of signic traits that is alien to all defect of stillness, as it generates a surprising process of hybridization among the representative models of a structure. It is as if a giant cathedral, or a majestic book made of stone and sand, were displaying before our eyes: a forest of symbols, a swarm of fibres and sparkles torn out of some kind of universe that keeps on concealing its radiating fulcrum, a focal point of representation that remains forbidden to us, similarly to the hollow space of the temple.

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