Cala la note n.34 Print

THE NIGHT FALLS DOWN “The night falls down”is the name of a work-on-paper sequence, that is the result of a long project course lasted 6 months, in which Gec collected, using the web and the direct research, 12.000 used scratch cards. A collection that saw the whole national territory’s tobacco sellers, private users e artist’s supporters helping Gec to build up his last adventure of community art. Even a group of mathematicians, “Fate il nostro gioco”, had worked alongside with him to realize his artistic challenge. This group has been studying the probability calculus of gambling’s victories and losses from quite a long time and now, thanks to Gec’s project, it’s promoting the results of many researches, that show up and bring awareness about the risks, the pathologies and all the related problems that legalized gambling may cause. The major work of the sequence “The night falls down” (6×3 meters) includes indeed this data, collected and calculated from the mathematicians: – 2073 scratch-cards used in the artwork – 10387€ spent to buy this 2073 scratch-cards – 32.5 sec used to spend 10387€ in scratch-cards – 082% the probability of a 10000€ prize out of 2073 scratch-cards This massive work on paper is made with a collage of scratch-cards whose shining reddish colours delineate a sunset. In this emotional twilight, the silhouettes of buildings, cranes and drill rigs, traced with spray cans, stand out to reveal an urban landscape: the picture of a huge construction site, of a work-in-progress city, perhaps the symbol of a rebuilding era post disaster. This is not the first time that Gec creates an ironic, suggestive image, that is anyway open to different interpretations. The private gesture of scratch-cards use seem to acquire, in the creation of this coral project and in his last message, the dimension of a collective neurosis, of an obsessive attempt, held in trust by the fate, to turn life around, to achieve unexpected money wealth, craved as the solution to ultimate happiness. Thousands of broken hopes in the shapes of scratch-cards, thousands of wasted money that build up a decadence scenery, tracing a future that is all but shining for stubborn gamblers in a Nation where gambling in dramatically spreading. A future on which slowly “the night falls down”.