THE ART OF GAZES: THE EMPATHIC EYES OF ALE GUZZETTI’S ARTWORKS
by Martina Capelli
Visual Cultures e pratiche curatoriali
Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera, Milano
The Sala Nevera at Casa Morandi presents Quando i Robot incontrarono gli Antichi Dei (When the robots met the ancient gods), an exhibition that combines the distant concepts of art and technology by artist Ale Guzzetti. The exhibition chronicles the artist’s work from 2012 to 2022 with a wide range of installations, colours and interactive features. The exhibition’s itinerary is divided into two levels that allow you to grasp themes and lines of research explored during his activity: an art that presents sculptures capable of sensitivity, which aspire to disorientate the individual in order to confuse and offer an invitation to engage in the search for a corresponding connection that overcomes constraints and possibilities.
The artist from Varese uses technology as a device for philosophical and scientific analysis to probe the questions of mankind: space, time, God, environment and cosmos. Each technology brings with it spiritual traits in search of otherworldly motivations. It is possible to find common historical roots, shared methods and synergies between art, technology and spirituality. His first exhibition of interactive sculptures was entitled Oggetti che osservano (Observing Objects); oriented towards the theories of Heinz Von Foerster to emphasise the connection between things, the environment and the observer.
Knowledge is the recurring connection between these three elements. In his works, the contrast between the seriousness and sacredness of the work blurs, between the materials usually sanctified for art, and those of industry and mass consumption, between the uniqueness of art making and the reproducibility of technology, between the reproducibility of technology, between detachment and play. In addition, the development of an intrinsic autonomy to the works, the emergence of these as technological organisms capable of animating themselves, converse, and probe their surroundings.
In traditional Japanese culture, with the flow of time, things come alive until they become spirits (tsukumogami). The eyes of the works are meant to foster this idea. The work resembles us, calls to us, and is about us. We relate to it and it to us. For the artist, every object is endowed with a soul. The ‘things’ that surround us observe us, let us touch them, help us in our fatigue, keep us company, allow us to create new goods and even accompany us for our entire lives.
The robots lent to art provide an opportunity to think about the humanisation of science and technology. Interactive sculptures scrutinise and react, sometimes speak, making it impossible not to attempt to establish a discourse with them. Thus begins a role-playing, interactive game of glances towards an observer who reciprocates each attempted approach in a unique way. In the exchange of intentions lies the hinge of the research underlying the works: the link between technology, art and the human being. Ale Guzzetti’s robots do not seek consent but an empathic relationship with other sculptures, and in the game of cognitive flirtation, with us.
In the series entitled Robots portraits, framed and lined up on the walls, profiles of robotic caricatures of illustrious characters, real or imaginary, bring the past to life in the observant eyes of Cyrano de Bergerac and Federico da Montefeltro, of Cleopatra and Venus. The concept of the hybrid emerges, establishing an unprecedented relationship between what is considered the medium of painting par excellence and materials nuances and somatic traits peculiar to an unusual artistic world.
These faces made of resin and electronic circuits are equipped with large technological eyes, capable of empathy, which explore the wonders created by man through art and, at the same time, observe man himself.
To achieve this, it is necessary to have sensors capable of intercepting stimuli coming from