The video installation and site specific project Posthumous by Corpicrudi designs an articulated symbolic narrative. Its unitary sign retraces itself in the archetypical figure of the cycle, continuous, infinite, of the eternity of being. Where the flourishing, unarrestability of the pronouncement of nature, rhythmical, is time in its double negative. Death.

Posthumous (from Latin, postumus) presents six black and white films. Works which trace a symbolic apparatus of representation, coherent and stratified. The first three, entitled studio number one, two, and three, originate from the project cycle The Virgins, and open a sequenced narrative addressing the theme of threshold and of limits. Then, two videos pieces follow of the Symphony in White minor. And, finally, an unpublished work, The Ascent (post.). Works, these last, that ritualize the idea of departure, of the voyage and raising. Figures that, intended in a purely symbolic sense, reaffirm the sense of cyclical continuity, as in eterno ritorno.

The presentation of these three filmed blocks, takes place synchronically, adopting three points of projection, and, consequently, three diverse screening surfaces. Identified by the precise architectural conformation of the exposition space.

A unitary organism of significance takes form. A story, continuos, circular, of transfiguration and of rebirth.

Specifically, the first unit, divided into three video fragments entitle The Virgins, paints three distinct portraits.Three bodies, young, of woman. Isolated, evanescent, fixed, that, lying on a grassy mantle in the open countryside, allow themselves to be filmed in a fragmented sequence, spasmodically. Here emerges, slowly, the hard eroticism of the land, intended as parent. Mother. Which convulses, and eternal sensuality arises as limen, sacral symbol, to exceed.

These first three works construct the first station of a path of initiation, that continues in the cycle of the video pieces of the Symphony in White Minor. In which, stands, preemptory, the circular symbol. The infinite circle, without limits, of the classic iconography – the circle of the three Gracies - moving, sweetly, along soft contours. Dancing in a round. That, then, moves its own tension in a rectilinear movement, in the video The Ascent (post.). Here, the three young women march, ascending along the ridge of a grassy slope. They climb the mountain. The gnosis is consumed as they rise. Ritualistically.

The alchemical work concludes in the last video, which resolves the negritude of the earth, property of the initial mystical path, begun in the first of the video cycle, in the diaphanous fixity of the three faces. It is the morning sky that dazzles the gaze. Enlivening and rendering it bright.

Immobility, magic, that prelude, inevitably to the next, yet another, inevitable departure from the motherland. The humid ground upon which the bodies in the initial video are poured.

Posthumous describes, in this way, a symbolic cycle, of concatenations, of postponement and of delays.  An Ouroboros, closed on itself, that traces a mystic path of images.

To then open itself to the research of a philosophical stone, incorruptible. New symbol of beauty and of life, in its eternal repetition.

Curated by and text by Fabio Campagna.

Corpicrudi is a visionary artistic project by Italian artists Samantha Stella and Sergio Frazzingaro (Genoa, they live and work in Milan, Italy).

The artists’ work has been shown in international contemporary art galleries, museums and theatres; they work with writers, poets, choreographers, stylists, visual artists, composers and cultural magazines and networks.Their artistic careers have evolved over the years through the different idioms they use directly - photography, video, installations containing structural and bodily elements – revealing their reflections on the body, death, beauty, harmony and eternity.

In addition to solo and group exhibitions in art galleries, including Sinfonia in Bianco minore with artist Daniele Giunta at the Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore and Traffic Gallery in Bergamo (2012), Le Vergini in Guidi&Schoen gallery in Genoa (2011) and Aeternitas at the Cathedral in Molfetta (2012), the ancient prisons of the Cittadella in Alessandria (2011) and Castello Aragonese in Taranto, home of the Italian Navy, with scientific direction by Achille Bonito Oliva (2010), projects presented at Galleria Civica in Trento, Centro per l’Arte Contemporanea Luigi Pecci in Prato, Musei di Strada Nuova in Genoa, Auditorium Parco della Musica in Rome and Auditorium Mart in Rovereto. They have participated in international premieres with choreographer Matteo Levaggi and Balletto Teatro di Torino with Primo Toccare and Le Vergini in the theatres of New York, Lyons, Belgrade and Miami as well as prestigious Italian theatres such as Teatro Comunale in Bologna. Reviews of their work have been published in the Financial Times and The Brooklyn Rail in New York; they have been the subject of a documentary which aired on Sky Classica TV in 2011 and a publication for Les Cahiers Européens de l'Imaginaire 2012 at the Ceaq-Sorbonne in Paris.

Corpo 6 Galerie
Herzbergstrasse, 55
Lichtenberg (Berlin) 10365 Germany
Tel. +49 (0)174 6598464
fabiocampagna@yahoo.it
www.corpo6.com

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