Mahon,
For Felice Varini, there are many possibilities for interpreting a space depending on the point of view from which we observe it, and this diversity of interpretations is the key to his work: installations deployed in architecture and based on the anamorphic distortion of the forms that comprise them through a strategic application of perspective. This Swiss artist, born in 1952 in Locarno, believes that every space is a space of representation and, therefore, susceptible to being intervened, in his case playing with the aforementioned perspective, two-dimensionality and three-dimensionality.
His paintings, as he himself refers to his installations, are projected onto walls, floors and voids, which contribute to forming and deforming, but in any case they completely modify our perception of the whole: once his interventions are finished, everything we see will be that painting and so will our experience when we move around them, always, therefore, in movement, although not in a literal sense. Completely freed from the canvas, in this case this discipline speaks entirely of itself, it does not refer to other narratives but becomes a complete gesture, a gesture that, however, changes and plays depending on the room where it is presented; each new project implies for Varini an exercise of rethinking and reproducing something, taking as references, among others, the extensive mural drawings of Sol LeWitt, the in situ creations of Daniel Buren, kineticism or optical art.
To open the space that he has just opened in Mahón (Menorca), located in a large stately home opposite the Teatro Principal in that town, Albarrán Bourdais is showing us until October a proposal by the Swiss, colourful and geometric like most of his compositions, which he has not only shown indoors, but also in streets, building facades and public monuments once he decided to abandon the flatness and limited format of the canvases and engage in dialogue with the enveloping dimensions: the diversity of possible approaches in contemplation favours constant dynamism.
Photography also plays a very important role in the study of his works over time: although Varini considers it a partial document of these, available to anyone interested once the exhibitions have ended and suitable for promoting their dissemination, its role goes further, by giving an account of the time and place that were part of the reason for the existence of the pieces and by being integrated into the very discourse of any site-specific materialization and, therefore, evanescent when it is temporary.
Albarrán Bourdais also emphasises the links between the works of this author and the theory of phenomenological perspective of Maurice Merleau-Ponty, a philosopher who formulated that perception does not derive solely from obtaining a mirror image of things, but from vision linked to movement, that is, from our capacity to explore space in active and not passive participation. The development of this capacity would be the reason for the impact that the public finds when immersing themselves in the spaces that Varini intervenes in: they invite them to intensify their awareness of the environment and to confront the uncertainty that underlies projects that escape the defined framework or stable support.
Felice Varini
ALBARRÁN BOURDAIS
Deià Street, 51
Mahon, Menorca
From July 6 to October 26, 2024
