I wish to share this work of art with friends and followers of NoisyVision.
It might seem born from the connection between the themes addressed in the last two Facebook LIVE of Yellow Happy Hour.
We talked about Accessible Art and DescriVedendo with Rosa Garofalo and about colors and rainbows with Marta Telatin.
Arcobalegno (Rainbowood) is a colorful and accessible work of art, as it can be easily imagined by the blind, it can be touched and, as Marta says, with a particular sensitivity one can perceive the different vibrations of the colors.
The pieces of wood are placed side by side creating joints that give them a tactile perception.
They are all rectangles of different dimensions and thicknesses, so that the overall surface is uneven, like the texture of the different paints and wood finishes.
The surface of the aluminum profiles that make up the frame is cold and smoot, albeit humpy.
In short, touch and imagination can easily appreciate the work, which among the many meanings found in retrospect also has the expected advantage of being universal.
Here is the presentation text:
Ladies and gentlemen, I present you the Arcobalegno (Rainbowood is a good English translation)
A decorative design work, completely handmade.
Twelve pieces of wood plus a heart of gold. They are all pieces that I had in the cellar and they were composed to form a 107 x 73 cm rectangle with only 5 saw cuts.
The different pieces of wood are arranged in geometric intersections that could recall a Mondrian painting.
Made at zero km, horizontally. I did not leave the house to buy any of the pieces, colors, tools or small parts.
The frame is made with profiles for plasterboard, these too remained in the cellar for several years.
There are 7 colors of the rainbow plus white, gold and natural wood.
500 m. They are the vertical height difference covered to go up and down from my apartment to the laboratory cellar.
360 cm is the perimeter. I guarantee that I didn’t do it on purpose. It came like this.
And this speaks about the totality. Not even if it was round it would have this number …
Zero. The injuries I have suffered, which is always a great achievement for a visually impaired person at work.
In a period in which we cannot move from home, I wanted to create a work that was born from the transformation of what was already in the house.
Just as we, secluded in the houses, should somehow transform ourselves, into something beautiful, or at least, we have the opportunity to do so.
From pieces destined for waste, forgotten, a colorful work was born, which starts from the rainbow hanging outside the balconies of millions of houses.
It was the symbol of that everything will go well that we are no longer even sure of.
In those days the aim was to exorcise the storm, reminding us that in the summer storms are short and then the rainbow comes out.
What is nothing more than a sign of color destined to last a few moments.
The wood, however, lasts. Will last.
And it is not made of light, but of matter, living matter, or what was alive.
The tree does not know if it will become a table, a house, a boat or if it will die in the woods. He simply grows.
So we cannot know now how and where we will be.
We can already be sure that it won’t be all the same.
It cannot be everything as before, just as we cannot forget the other big events in history.
There is this period, it will have been, but humanity will continue to live it.
Whatever our form will be, we will be different.
It’s up to us to build from the remains or disused pieces, a better shape than us.
And so Arcobalegno is not a symbol of “everything will be fine”, but of “it will be”. Full stop. Or at best, if we really want to add a little hope, “everything will be better”.
I started the work the day after Easter, as if it were the symbol of my rebirth and I finished it on April 16, the day when a circular rainbow enveloped the sun.
Berlin, April 2020
To my father, patient master of transformations
