EX STASIS – TISSOTROPICA

multimedia interactive installation

2009 UNCENSORED

KunstArt Bozen, Bolzano (I) curator Valerio Dehò

2008 DARKNESS IS NOON -Tina b, Iternational Contemporary Art Festival Praga (CZ); curators Monika Burian Vernon Gallery, Prague, Michaela Giovannotti, Rosa Anna Musumeci, catalogue

Since changing the perspective is the key aim of the artwork, Contino chooses to alter, indeed to reverse, the most cherished popular taboos: that miracles are unrepeatable and inexplicable events. The artist shows how they may be scientifically reproduced by a thixotropic material (a solid substance – blood or ketchup – that turns into liquid when shaked), thus unveiling the spectacular tricks of morbidly mediatized events like the weeping Virgin or Saint Gennaro’s miracle. By a borderline procedure – something in between science and the magics – the artwork thus manifests its ability to keep together two parallel worlds. In this project, moreover, light is antithetic to vision, as the latter becomes visible in the dark. Images disappear when people try to get nearer and thus activate an automated switch, and reappear when they depart. Far from illuminating and allowing to see, light blinds. The observers are thus driven toward the crucial dilemma: either losing themselves in the dogmatic brightness of whichever faith (be it religious, political, scientific), or waiting for twilight in order to perceive the deepest meaning of things.