If you search on Google "polaroid artist" you have two possibilities: you can come across Andy Warhol or Maurizio Galimberti.
If you do the same test on Onstream Gallery however, you will find yourself in front of something new on the Market, worthy of deserving attention: Alex d'Aquila's polaroids.
Alessandro is the new entry in the stable of Onstream Gallery and can boast so far to be the only one to act on a very iconic medium, the polaroid.
There are many things to say about him, but by now we have studied him enough to define him in a very precise way: he is the only artist in the Gallery who manages to work by subtraction and addition on the same objects at the same time.
He works by subtraction when using braille, the traditional form of communication for the blind, a distinctive feature of each of his artworks.
We will have the opportunity to go into this choice in more detail, for now it is enough to know that it is the desire to expose the viewer, challenging him in his lack: what do you think when on a Polaroid or a canvas there is something written but you do not know how to decipher it? So when was the greatest form of visual communication, the letters of your phonetic alphabet, taken away from you?
An interesting topic that deserves a separate title on this blog.
Alex, on the other hand, works by addition when he decides to take polaroids and act on them, altering reality at will.
It is precisely here that Onstream Gallery has decided to focus its attention, not on all the polaroids of the artist, but on one series in particular, of which it can boast the exclusivity: The Floating Polaroid.
Surely the most affectionate Art Lovers and Collectors have understood that the title cannot be casual, and in fact it is not. We are in front of a series of polaroids that immortalized the very famous Christo installation on Lake Iseo in the summer of 2016.
The Floating Piers is one of Christo's largest art projects on Lake Iseo in 2015, creating platforms on the surface of the lake between Sulzano, Montisola and the Island of San Paolo.
The most attentive will remember that it was a real sensory experience: visitors walking barefoot from the mainland to the islets of the lake.
Just imagine: it's June 18, 2016, opening day - it couldn't have been otherwise - the sun is shining in the sky and the June summer air caresses the faces and bare feet of curious visitors.
Christo is in their midst with his red jacket and among them there is also the young Alex d'Aquila walking on the floating, orange pontoons designed by the Master.
A tactile experience that today we find ourselves talking about with nostalgia for reasons that we would never have imagined, not even in our worst fantasies.
Imagine now bare feet flush on the crystalline surface of the water, in a shared atmosphere of excitement and feeling, something we might imagine at the Venice Biennale or the Tate in London.
Alex d'Aquila thus decides, that day, to fix in time this multitude of sensations, managing to go even further.
If the Polaroid represents the snapshot of the artist's amazement, what Alex decides to do by addition is the reason why we chose him.
The artist in fact acts directly on the surface of the photographs, going to expand that concept of amazement that he loves to talk about when he tells of this artistic, sensory experience.
Just like a worthy heir of the great masters of impressionism, he decides to tell his reality, different for each of us.
Who said that the human eye looks at the surrounding reality in the same way for everyone?
Alex d'Aquila's eyes have seen their own reality, their own amazement, and the artist has decided to give it back to us: it is precisely this addition that makes The floating Polaroid a series that we would define as unique in our curatorial choice.
The eyes of someone who sees something for the first time are not those of an ordinary person, they are those of an artist who has decided to immortalize this moment to give it to others.
Who are the others? Those who had the good fortune to live his same moment and those who didn't, for one single purpose: to preserve a physical trace of one of the greatest works of art of the masters of the 21st century.
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