DAVID'S PLANT 1 Print

REVIEW BY ALICE DE VECCHI The tradition of the urban landscape in contemporary art history has many examples, among the most famous one of Mario Sironi. The leaden atmosphere, gloomy view of the city at night and in its most degraded and desolate suburbs, refer to a metropolis as huge disturbing and impersonal machine in which man has waived its social role succumbing to alienation determined by a modern industrialized society. Cinema has tapped into these urban settings stored in tank of images of memory when he had need to create backdrops distressing stories of replicating or men-zombie survivors of an ‘apocalypse subway’ In Blade Runner and 1997: Escape from New York, an elephantine city, slow and heavy , moves under the skin of history with its heavy body of rubble, dark corners and remnants of post-humanity The works of Alessio Privitera series of ‘Personal city’, in my eyes, evoke this atmosphere of these abandoned cities to a destiny of degradation where man is not oversees the urban everyday life anymore. This is what my eyes see: buildings and deserted streets, giant robot-men who advance leaving behind a trail of destruction, planes flying over the dark suburbs , almost as if the vision of these contaminated cities it is only possible from a secure distance of 2000 feet. However, the eye is betrayed by the nature of what that predisposes Privitera. Meanwhile, with the precise aim of a trap that makes us reflect on the power of the image, the artist uses photography, technical means which promises maximum fidelity to the truth, in which adds the drawings in order to change its meaning. Macroscopically photographing the inside of a pc: circuits, chipsets, ethernet gateway,USB and connections for ram and microprocessor are scrutinized by ‘photographic eye of the artist from perspectives that distort the normal vision, producing an alienating effect. The use of the macro, the very close perspective, transforms an ethernet gateway in a building gutted by violent explosions or by a devastating earthquake, ram gateway and other motherboard in big barracks as neighborhoods dorms. To strengthen the deception, Privitera intervenes on the photograph styling elements that bring to mind the already mentioned cinematic masterpieces of science fiction. Emerge from every corner replicating robots or shreds of humanity, cranes and scaffolding climb on buildings in eternal yards, a reconstruction that does not see an end.