Alessandro Vicario. Along the Wall. Berlin 2009

The artist focuses his attention on people passing by the remaining parts of the Berlin Wall. The images play with the contrast between the human shape, evanescent and dynamic, caught in its movement before the camera, and the sections of Wall in the background, always sharp and well visible. "Vicario's blurred images - notes Roberta Valtorta in her critical presentation published in the catalogue - have an existential, psychological, even sociological value. They express a tremor, an instability; they show the attempt of the contemporary human being to get in contact with the world he lives in, to understand what changes faster: the places around him or his own life." Along the Wall. Berlin 2009 represents the development and completion of a former project by Vicario, Die Berliner Mauer. Completely centred on the materiality of the Wall, that former work was presented last year in an important institutional exhibition held at Castelgrande (Bellinzona) and is now recalled through five images exposed in this new exhibition.
The setting also includes a video installation entitled Raw sequence, underlining the serial character of the project. All photographs shot by the artist are shown here in a fast loop, accompanied by the obsessive, almost hypnotic techno rhythm of Berlin composer Paul Kalkbrenner.
"Alessandro Vicario - writes Giovanni Pelloso at the end of his review, included in the catalogue - has the merit of asking himself questions without any taxonomical urge, and of gazing, with full knowledge of his action, at the signs of history and at the life that flows inside them".
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