The poetical Geography of Marcelo Moscheta
Matteo Bergaminni
Independent Art CriticsTerra Incognita (Unknowns Landascape) is the title of the first Italian by the Brazilian artist Marcelo Moscheta. A series of works as it should see more often: rigorous yet poetic, visionary in a simple mood, delicate.
"Terra incognita" was the ancient name receiving the territories not yet explored on the maps, designating that region of the world which was not possible to know anything, the ground on which they lavished the most diverse fantasies. Today, the common perception is tha
t the unknown lands have literally disappeared, that every little corner of our little planet has been mapped from top to bottom removing any mystery around everywhere...yet, on closer anyone, knowingly or not, has its own fantastic landscape for soul and mind.
Moscheta’s Terra Incognita is represented by Italy, land of his ancestors and of contamination cause we found in the geographical range of beautiful watercolor paintings on old postcards fused, which is the title of the exhibition.
My wonderland could instead be, for counterpoint, Brazil, part of the world that I see through the combination of images without consequential derived from television culture, novels, works of art; and again, the mysterious land of a child met in India by Ettore Sottsass is Europe: "Where are you from sir?" - "From Italy" - "Ahh, Paris is a beautiful city." A confusion of genres that form a new body in the perception of those universes which are our common ground that become liquid, small, distant and often useless than an alien point of view. The mental and the romantic plane are confused, hybrid: the italic peninsula in the eyes of the foreigner is a sort of grouping random images that come from stories or from the media, the idea that we have around "belpaese".
Marcelo Moscheta makes it extraordinarily present the concept of unknown land and hybrid landscapes of Liguria with the view of maritime cities of the South Peninsula, create imaginary island with stretches of beaches, greenery and umbrellas.
Suggestive pictures and variables such as the idea of nature that meanders throughout the show: small pictures of some of the beautiful trees Milan Pre.Position.Post installation, simply drawn on squared paper, make a new map of the city of Milan between driveways, parks and gardens.
On the back of the drawing you can read the coordinates in which the plants are located, and then place in space: in a Google Earth time is easy to approach disproportionately from one point of a distant satellite of the Earth at a close-up view of the crust in a few click, but as the artist says is difficult to recognize at least the same tree represented: the climate changes, changing seasons, the leaves fall or grow the branches, the gardeners will prune some parts; Moscheta gives us a snapshot that will never come back, an unknown universe because its elements are constantly changing while the images remain static.
The video Hic Svunt Leones is proof that often the idea or popular belief is diametrically away from reality; a landscape and melancholy autumnal air should not contain specific pitfalls, yet it is an ancient land of fear. Hic svunt Leones was yet another entry that was posted at the edge of unknown territory as a danger to point out that you do not know but that was expected.
The Brazilian artist brings in the gallery a portion of the universe consists of heaven and sea, mist and hills, rocks and meteorites...a universe that has to do with the soul of the components of our land and that in some way contributed development of our lives.
Stratification reverberate, not for coincident, in the diptychs entitled Strati, where the topographic maps of some hilly areas on which shows the heights of the highest peaks, are associated with the same vision of the landscape, even in this case the scientific quality of the means of orientation and morphology of the graph merges with the vital issue of "view" which is a fundamental part of the image of Italian, Flemish and German art in the world.
The beauty in the works of Marcelo Moscheta opening a drift into what are the pictures of our pre-knowledge: we wonder that the island of Capri can be associated to the Romagna’s beaches because it is usual to think about their world as center of a universe that can not be confused in they symbols, in recognizability.
An exhibition to be seen because, wich ask in another installation the artist, if they sent the man on the moon because you could put the meteorites in a gallery? Clear statement that art and artists are given permission to be free from clichés and continually give us visions of strange and fascinating worlds.
