Paolo Scirpa lives in Milan. His research goes towards a dimension in which light and space become spectacular and immaterial protagonist.
The artist is interested in representing not the real light but the “ideal” light, that is the idea of never-ended concept and for this reason he uses luminous pipes and mirrors.He realizes the “ludoscopes”, tridimensional art works that propose the perception of false depths, in which any limit between what is real and what is illusory is abolished.
The monograph, just published by the publishing house Mazzotta, documents the intense production of Paolo Scirpa with two hundred images with colours or in black and white. It has also a critical text by Marco Meneguzzo (), a selection of texts of Paul Scirpa and a rich critical anthology (of Antonino Uccello, Gabriel Mandel, Vittorio Fagone, Pedro Fiori, Carlo Munari, Domenico Cara, Roberto Sanesi, Corrado Maltese, Miklos N. Varga, Demetrio Paparoni, Carlo Belloli, Marco Meneguzzo, Gillo Dorfles, Silvio Ceccato, Bruno Munari, Alberto Veca, Luciano Caramel, Annette Malochet, Riccardo Barletta, Pierre Restany, Daniela Palazzoli, Rossana Bossaglia, Carmelo Strano, Francesco Poli, Marina De Stasio, Cesare Chirici, Maurizio Vitta, Antonio Musiari, Andrea Del Guercio, Giorgio Di Genova, Flaminio Gualdoni, Francesco Poli, Claudio Cerritelli, Giorgio Seveso, Daniela Lussana, Emanuele Zucchini, Ginevra Bria, Ornella Fazzina). There is also a biography, by Margherita Scirpa, a list of the personal and collective exhibitions and a bibliographical synthesis, by Carla Corrà.
VIEW OF INFINITY
(…) “Ludoscopes” are three-dimensional works with geometrical neon light sources, built from 1972, and therefore they were contemporary with Scirpa’s work on consumerism. Over the course of the years, they were accompanied by a series of paintings – oils and acrylics on canvas – that seem to be their two-dimensional portraits or depictions. From the very earliest “ludoscopes”, the artist consciously restricted his alphabet to three geometrical forms, square, circle and triangle. He put these forms into movement, with infinite repetition in space, by means of mirrors: a real space, because the work is three-dimensional and the light is generated by a bulb, but at the same time it is a simulated, depicted space, almost a two-dimensional surface. Substantially illusory. Scirpa himself pointed out to me, as if surprised by this realization (renewing one’s understanding, seeing something that had already been seen before), how in the concentric neon circles one finds the forms of the “scalea,” the seating steps of ancient theatres, Ancient Greek theatres, the theatre that he himself had seen, or rather experienced, in his native Syracuse, as if this were a sort of indelible imprinting, culture becoming part of biology, of his DNA… His chosen form is multiplied by means of a series of translations and intersections that suggests the work’s potentially infinite propagation in space, far beyond its actual physical dimensions. In this sense, the decision to use a light-emitting source, such as a neon tube, is only natural, because it is justified by an inner, idealistic need. It denotes the artist’s real and profound adherence to his deepest motivations for the chosen direction of artistic research: for Paolo Scirpa, the quest for light as unifying element of reality (or, in more religious terms, “of creation,” as perhaps he himself would say).
(…) Paolo Scirpa on the other hand studies the wholly transcendental question of “light”, in the sense of that idea of which real light – produced by media that he also uses – is nothing but a reflection. This means that what he is truly interested in is ideal light. In order to express this interest, and the importance of that light for himself and for the interpretation of the world mediated by an artist, he is willing to utilize the inadequate physical means available in the real world, though in the conviction that such media are nothing but the shadow, a depiction, an imitation, a reflection, of that much greater meaning.
In this sense, Scirpa wholly belongs to the tradition, even the mediaeval tradition, according to which light is not just an optical-perceptual phenomenon, but above all a mystical experience. We could say that Scirpa is far closer to Beato Angelico than to Lazlo Moholy-Nagy! If we adopt this point of view, Scirpa’s entire work can be located at different points along the same axis. This fully explains, for example, the peaceful coexistence of painting and neon lights, because in this case, the question is not one of replacing the “object depicted” (painting that imitates light) with the “real object” (neon, which could be considered as real light), because both these situations just remind us of that transcendental light which is uppermost in Scirpa’s thoughts. In fact both media, namely painting, and the technological medium of an excited gas that produces physical light, are nothing more than a visible, or depictable, phantom.
On the subject of Scirpa’s theme of interest, we could go so far as to suggest that his ultimate goal is not in fact light, but rather something that is hidden “behind” light, in other words the concept of infinity. This would explain, for example, the artist’s natural preference for mirror surfaces, both in the “consumerism” cycle, and in the long series of “ludoscopes”, and again in another of his earlier experiments, made in the early 1970s, when he painted on sheets of mirror steel. After all, the artist himself has suggested this interpretation on many occasions. For example, he stated, in a brief text explaining his “ludoscopes”, that the “infinity of simulated space is an idea that has long stimulated my thoughts and my inner dimension.” (…)
Milan, 28/05/09
Marco Meneguzzo