COSIMO TERLIZZI: : REVEALED

di Isabella Falbo

Through an artistic practice that privileges the body and recoding visual languages taken from ancient and contemporary symbolic iconography, Cosimo Terlizzi’s work features an innovative language within which “the aesthetic” appears as the primary element of the

communicative intent.

According to a multilayered logic, where different levels of communication - scientific, emotional, narrative, intellectual, etc., - are enclosed within cross paths between photography, video, fashion and social-anthropological investigations,  Terlizzi’s artistic project appears as a parallel platform where the message sent by the artist is deeply cryptic.

The new location of the Mirra Arte Contemporanea, Cosimo Terlizzi shows for the first time in Bologna the triptych The veil and the sculptural video installation Regina Irena Radmanovic.
The nature of the installation reflects the artist’s intention to overcome traditional categories by the recreation of a sort of home environment within the everyday dimension representing

the roots of today’s world and life in progress.

The triptych, comprising Damien, Frankfurter Allgemeine; Muna, breakfast and Gigli, photographic prints on aluminium 70x100 cm, develops the theme of "the veil", interpreted by the artist as momentary concealment of the person in the action to protect oneself and investigate the conceptual reasons for covering and discovery of actions, pursuing one of the most dear issues developed by the artist, "the protection of the body."
In these shots, set in an aseptic location as a places “stranger” to tragedy and joy, is the hidden element of wind that occurs as an improbable cover up of the subjects face, as input

for art work decodification.

 Damien, Frankfurter Allgemeine tells us about the need to preserve ourselves from world- every day- tragedies offered by the media, to be able to live lucidly and create our own future.
Magnifying daily life and objects by a continuum of concepts and mixed symbols, in Muna, breakfast, the veil represented by a paper napkin, hides all the complexities of an investigation

on social direct to an ethical/aesthetic dialogue.

In Terlizzi’s poetic the body is always an object to be protected as the symbolic bouquet of 

lilies, the noble flower emblem of purity and strength, in Gigli.

Regina Irena Radmanovic was born as performative work from which the artist draws photo

frames and video.

The video here is presented in an installation where the core sculpture is a TV screen and a cabinet filled by all materials used by the performer, as a sort of a ready- made.

The poetic of this work is to deal with the issue of consumerism as a social disaster. The artist does it by representing aesthetization of daily life through the symbolism of the “dress” and, in a larger sense, using a fashion semiotic meaning of “cultural object”.
Following an anthropological view where focusing on modern consumerism products, the video takes place following a slow narration and a light rhythm where Irena Radmanovic is building her kingship with small and sensual gestures following logic of “plastic aesthetics”, through the use of casings arising from contemporary protective packaging. Products of our time, used to protect or cover objects and usually discarded after use despite their nature of “indestructible alien matter ", are here recovered and processed by the artist through a new kind of trans-substantiation into something spiritual.

ISABELLA FALBO, critical text related to the exhibition REVEALED, Cosimo Terlizzi’s solo show, curated by di Isabella Falbo, Mirra Arte Contemporanea, Bologna, 2008