1996 – “Tendenze del contamporaneo” XXVI Biennale d’Arte, Alatri, Chiostro di San Francesco
cm 300 x 900

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di Micol Forti

The experimentation of different materials has characterized the research work by Fiorenzo Zaffina since the first years. An intellectual curiosity as well as a technical, aesthetic, content emphasis and formal one. The works which the artist presents in this exhibition are linked by a common denominator: the almost surgical investigation of the support material that from a mere static auxiliary is transformed into the absolute protagonist. Tables, headboards, woods of every kind, sponges or else directly the wall itself are all excavated, made naked, stripped of their optically official state, of their patina of presentability. What is contained inside is unknown. This first of all applies to the artist who on having caused the new surface to emerge exalts it with garish chromatic coverings. He ‘inhabits’ it with small technological elements. By way of the old gestalt play he renders it no longer a background but a figure. The space loses one of its fundamental characteristics, that of limit, inviting the spectator to perceptively go beyond whatever boundary.

by Micol Forti