AQUA AURA
EPHEMERA

Curator: Alessandro Trabucco 

Opening: September 25th 2014 - from 7 pm 

September 26th - November 29th 2014 (Wednesday to Saturday 3.30 pm to 7.30 pm and by appointment)

Ephemera is an insect that lives only one day, its life takes place in  just 24 hours, going through all the stages and completing its journey  in a very short amount of time.  The name itself, in English Ephemeral, has become synonymous in common  language as something temporary and evanescent, whose inconsistency  demonstrates the total precariousness of its total physical state. Aqua Aura with some of the photographs in the exhibition, gives us his  personal interpretation of the contemporary world, both from what first  could be defined as a sociological point of view and  second from a more  specifically poetic one.  In their objective and even disenchanted vision of our times, these  photographs are the perfect metaphor for a condition that could have two  distinct, but somehow equivalent meanings, depending on the assumptions  on which their actual essential significance is based upon.  The artist first places emphasis on the positive (and aesthetically  poetic) qualities of what may appear transient and rarefied, as if they  were features indicative of a situation of total lightness and  temporariness, a type of homage to the fragility of things, their  inability to stay in the world and their inevitable and inexorable  decline. The other meaning, if we are to see it from a negative point of view, is  inspired by the theories of "Liquid Modernity" by Zygmunt  Bauman and then it further expresses a deeper and more personal  reflection on the production and use of images in our so-called  "social" era; the speed of change and the need to maintain  a constant, if not greater, visual tension, compromises  its  intrinsic  quality so much so that it no longer allows the creation of potential  "icons" of expressive and unalterable power resistant to  the passage of time, but it instead gives place to an undifferentiated  mess of mediocre representations that actually reveal all their  inconsistency of content and meaning, not so much in the forms they  suggest but rather in the lack of real expressive needs from which they  originate. Aqua Aura seems to therefore demonstrate, through his work, this  dissolute and fleeting tendency;  his works represent shapes that are  both well-defined and smooth (spheres and ovals) and irregular, like  soap bubbles generated by a light breath  that in his imagination  enclose, as precious and fragile transparent troves, soft and fluffy  clouds, whose compactness and strength depend only on the gust of the  wind or a slight change in energy, on an alteration of pressure or even  just a simple desire to dissolve into the surrounding atmosphere, as if  to want to annul themselves in the  air and be part of a larger and  invisible reality, the whole universe, the real and physical one but   especially the mental one arising from the creative will of the artist.  This solo exhibition, taking place at VisionQuesT contemporary  photography in Genoa, is a concrete example of the impermanence of form  and transience of things just as the artist imagines them. The figures  created by Aqua Aura become the very metaphor of continued mutation,  these are impalpable and soft objects floating in the void,  paradoxically light, because they enclose well defined distinguishable  worlds and realities that are at the same time evanescent, solid oceans  in perpetual transformation. The very exhibition set-up becomes the  testing ground of this physical insecurity. The contrast between the  static position of the photographic images presented by the artist and  the mass of balloons floating in the exhibition space, make the  transformation, which is only symbolic, of the work visually  challenging. In this sense the time factor becomes crucial: with the  passing of the days the air of these more or e less spherical forms,  will lose its centrifugal force by continuing to change their overall  perception, thus becoming a trace and memory of an aesthetic experience  that no longer exists. The balloons will completely deflate, will loose  their shape and will lie on the ground, as a memory of an event  experienced only by the exhibition first viewers, leaving to the  imagination of each of the subsequent viewers, the mental reconstruction  of what has been and is no longer. This strong contrast is, in the economy of the exhibition, the  cornerstone around which the peculiar poetics of the artist, rotates,  perhaps an allegory of life, the fragility of earthly existence destined  to last only for that same moment in which we become fully and  consciously aware of it   Technical Information:  Fine Art  prints on Bright White Hahnemuehle cotton paper, gold leaf on  frame. Various sizes , Edition of 3 and 5    Bio  Aqua Aura was born some time ago in Vimercate - Milan, where he lives  and works. In 1988 he graduated from the Art School of Bergamo. In 1992  he graduated in painting at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera with a  study and a thesis on "Anselm Kiefer - the other   Baroque", a look at the contemporary German expressionist art, he  then ...... continued his education around the world.  The Aqua Aura is the result of a physical-chemical process, a precious  transformation due to a heat treatment of gold with vapors capable of  changing the external appearance of the color of a natural crystal  (quartz) without affecting its shape and just imperceptibly its  consistency. In reading the process, as presented in the descriptions  found on the net, the operation may closely recall the  ancient practice  of alchemy, perhaps more valid for the activities of a smoky forge in  the fifteenth century, rather than for a production of contemporary  images. The journey  seems to be traced by a pseudo scientist in the  field of natural philosophy,  searching for and extracting  new orders  in matter, floating between the physical and metaphysical reading of  things. This is the evocative artifice that inspired Aqua Aura to  describe and assert his artistic transformation, which occurred after a  period of creative accomplishments and exhibitions  on the field in the  nineties - working closely with Italian art galleries and curators,  participating in various group and solo exhibitions -  followed  subsequently by a period, of  about twelve years, spent at a safe  distance from the art world, living  only as a researcher a spectator  and traveler. Aqua Aura is therefore a (re)birth, which occurred through  a slow and conscious metamorphosis that generated a new creative  stimuli and a stronger thematic urge.