«anima ludens»

Radical subtlety gives grandeur to form. Sironi teaches this in painting, where his figures replace description with the construction of a bare, powerful form. Synthesis is also the poetics of this surreal work by Antonella Iovino. A single portrait that stands out like a secular cathedral, white and firm in space. The androgynous and hieratic figure of a young adult, dressed in a transparent cloth and a corrective corset pulled from the bottom of an old trunk, faces the spectator. Restoring an atmosphere poised between normality and provocation, she intends to shock with an image that is both exciting and disturbing, poking the morbid side of the viewer.

Anima Ludens, thus the title of the photograph, does not belong to the fast art of our liquid times, does not follow the dynamics of fashions or trends, but rather history and with it groups and currents. Inserted in a classic tradition such as the portrait, Iovino focuses on feelings. She transubstantiates the idea of the past, of childhood evoked with the “let’s make that I was… and that you were”, in a creature whose forms emphasise the disturbing sense of naturalness and vitality. She defines curtains that, from a timeless and metaphysical space, full of disquieting ambiguities, open dreamily as in a children’s game, theatres of knaves, queens, knights and kings. Iovino’s work is an enigmatic story, devoid of an unambiguous and linear narrative, telling us probable tales of love and juggling, exploring infinite possibilities of the imagination. A fantasy world that helps us develop our imagination and nurture our dreams. [P. Casulli]