SOGLIE
L'idea di Soglia appartiene in forme diverse a tutta l'opera di Silvio Wolf, sia nelle immagini ispirate all'architettura (Le Due Porte, Doppia Scala), sia in quelle apparentemente pi&Mac249; astratte, in cui l'oggetto della rappresentazione È il linguaggio stesso della fotografia (Orizzonti). In tutti i lavori sono centrali i concetti di limite, di vuoto e di altrove, espressi attraverso metafore dello spazio e simboli dei luoghi.
Nelle immagini architettoniche la soglia Ë individuata in luoghi reali, che l'artista interpreta come modelli della realt‡, limite tra interno ed esterno, presenza e assenza, qui ed altrove, in grado d'indicare strade, esperienze e alterit‡ possibili.
- In Le Due Porte l'arco Islamico e la porta Occidentale separano e allo stesso tempo congiungono due luoghi diversi. Uno spazio intermedio privo di luce, costituito dal nero fotografico, È il limite che unisce e separa, creando l'idea di passaggio: uno spazio cieco e latente che genera e annulla l'interno e l'estero.
Lightscape
La luce si specchia sul fianco d'un grattacielo.
Il contatto tra il corpo e la luce genera la forma simbolica della casa, l'immagine dell'uomo è rappresentata dalla sua architettura. L'edificio appare e scompare, schermo che irradia e riflette.
Grande Myhrab
Il Myhrab, nicchia Islamica della preghiera, è una pura direzione dello sguardo e indica il luogo più sacro dell'Islam.
In questa sua rappresentazione fotografica può essere percepito sia come forma concava, sia convessa, in un caso è un'assenza, nell'altro è un'illusione. Il Myhrab é il frutto d'una doppia percezione e d'una doppia negazione, perché non è né un luogo né una cosa. Esso manca allo spazio in cui si trova e quest'assenza rappresenta un luogo altro da sé, lontano e non visibile. E' il luogo della virtualità, un vuoto che indica un'altrove.
Il Myhrab è il simbolo che dona all'uomo il potere dell'ubiquità, perché permette -al credente- d'essere qui è là nello stesso momento. E' un atto di fede, è l'illusione reale.
Skylight 03
Lucernari attraverso cui penetra una luce bianchissima.
Lo spazio interno e quello esterno non sono visibili, il luogo è ridotto a soglie che galleggiano nel nero fotografico. L'architettura si smaterializza, lo spazio svanisce, l'esterno irradia l'interno, la luce è la soglia.
Le Due Porte
In un luogo desertico due porte e un passaggio. Un arco Islamico ed una porta rettangolare congiunti e divisi dal buio profondo d'una stanza nera. Questo spazio invisibile é la soglia tra interno ed esterno, tra vicino e lontano. E' il buio il vero soggetto della fotografia, lo spazio latente, il luogo di transizione tra due limiti estremi.
Lo sguardo coglie la presenza di ciò che non può vedere e forse intuisce la chance del suo possibile attraversamento.
THRESHOLDS
Thresholds are a choice of works from 1980 to the present. They address the issues of limit, absence and elsewhere.
Most of these works are architectural pictures: images of real sites. The places depicted are places of experience: symbols of the space, metaphors of the places.
Thresholds are conceived as transitional sites, places that unite and divide at the same time, simultaneous visions of the inside and of the outside, of here and there.
Most places that I photograph are uninhabited: they are still, timeless and meditative icons of the Real. It is as though man were ingrained in the places that represent him without ever being explicitly named, as though these places contained him and were his spatial emanations.
I conceive a Threshold as a real place as much as a model of reality that may show possible routes, visions and otherness.
Everything that joins can separate: the threshold is a border kingdom overlooking two worlds, which could not exist should one of them disappear.
Thresholds may show us a new dimension of experience made possible by the specific quality of the photographic medium.
My predilection for the zones of transit might be seen as indicative of the fact that photography, considered as a whole, can be intended as a means of representation and also as a threshold between the Real and its levels of interpretation.
WORKS
The Two Doors 1980
It is an emblematic work on the theme of threshold. This work represents the East and the West at the same time, two doors that unite and divide two different places. The black room, the place of blindness captured by the photographic eye, creates the possibility of a direct passage between these two apertures. The architectural limits outline the place to search, the latent space that indicates the elsewhere and the present, the blindness that allows to see through and beyond.
Large Myhrab 1989
The Myhrab is the Islamic prayer niche: it is a pure directing of the gaze that indicates the most sacred place of Islam.
In this work the niche may be seen as a concave or as a convex form; in one case it represents an absence, in the other an illusion. The Myhrab is the fruit of dual perception and dual negation. It is neither a place nor an object; it is missing from the space in which it finds itself, and through absence it represents a place that is something other than itself, faraway and invisible: an emptiness that points elsewhere.
The Myhrab is the symbol that gives man the power of ubiquity, because it allows -the believer- to be here and there at the same time. It is a place of virtuality, an act of faith: a true illusion.
Skylights 2002
The dazzling white light that penetrates through the Skylights dematerialises the architecture, reducing the place to thresholds that float in the photographic blackness, while every other clue of space vanishes. It is an in between architecture: a window that becomes a door. Nor neither the inside, nor the outside are shown, just the penetration of light is made visible.
Lightscape, 2003
It no longer meets a two-dimensional image but a body, the house, the icon of man and his architecture. I don't perceive destruction here; this ray of light does not annihilate the body, it barely skims it, it illuminates it in part, is reflected in it. We could be blinded as much by the surplus of light as by its absence, but I feel that it leaves that body its imprint; the visible trace is like a form of writing.
(Lyle Rexer, from the catalogue Le Due Porte, 2003)
Treasure 2006
It represents the entrance to a vault seen through the reflection of its inner walls: a binary code of shining and matt stainless still surfaces. Light creates an aperture in the negative photographic matter.
Apse 2006
It is the detail of a church built with a pattern of almost black and white stones. This picture is the positive enlargement of a negative image. It is a binary architecture: a very real illusion of an existing space.
Yellow 2006
It belongs to the Horizons series. The photographic film, self-exposed while loading a camera and randomly processed by the chemicals, reveals a threshold: the clear limit between light and darkness, between matter and language. Light radiation acts directly onto the photosensitive material before and without the intention of the photographer. This series addresses the concept of photography before the picture, of photography before time. It is a representation of the architecture of the medium, revealing the threshold between light and dark, black and color, pure chance and arbitrariness, latency and revelation of the image. A Horizon is a light echo, the zero degree of the photographic writing.
Canvas 2006
It represents a large piece of canvas hanging in the apse of a protestant church.
It's a sensual image conveyed by the symmetry and by a state of imperfect perfection, as something had just happened or just about to happen. It resembles an Annunciation, a sacred image. It recalls the image of the tent hanging over the pregnant Madonna in the painting "La Madonna del Parto" by Piero della Francesca.
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