Nicole MoserlePortfolio2014

In my artistic research, I explore the nature of the visual mental imaginary and its representations within multiple layers of reality.

There is a direct link between culture, art, nature and reconciliation. Much of my visual investigation and eclectic studies have focused, in various ways, on exploring and revitalizing this connection and its relationships, at both a phenomenalistic and institutional level.

When the “poetic spirit” lives within us, even objects do not appear as mere things; our eyes are trained on an inner spiritual reality. A tree is not just a tree. A rockfall is no mere clump of matter under the skies. Our gaze fixed on a tree or the rockfall; we intuitively perceive the unfathomable bonds that link us to the world.Mental images have the power to “retune” and reconnect a discordant, divided world. True artist stand firm, confronting life’s conflicts and complexities. One who offers people lexicons of courage and hope, seeking the perspective - one step deeper, one step higher - that makes tangible the enduring spiritual realities of our lives.

In the attempt of doing so, sometimes I am a picture and video maker or I point up anonymous photographs doing collages. Other times, I create installations or environmental situations. According to the message under assessment it happens to cultivate the photographic medium differently.

Tapestry

2013

The time that passes, the roads taken and madeGrudgingly abated, the memories of olden days

Cast before us now the worn tapestry of timeA diagram of choices, of weeks and years gone by.

(P.M. Linnet, 2003. Tapestry of Memories; Winds of Time)

Cultural memories such as museums, monuments, films, and other memorials offer the possibility of transforming the way in which both the past and the present are conceptualized. In this way, the collective memory is understood as a representation of the past shared by a group or community.

Historical memory begins when social traditions are broken and living contact with the past has been lost; all that remains are fragments such as artifacts. So it is the wallpaper presented at FORMA Foundation for the exhibition about Trompe l’oeil (French for “deceive the eye”); where the picture of a worn tapestry -that had been hanging on the wall of a destroyed building- is reproposed in its natural scale. Hence, the illusion of reality itself is shown through the ambiguity between the photographic (historical/cultural) means and that of the gap preceived by the viewer after the first sight.

Exhibition’s Installation ViewDigital Print on Blueback280x300 cmFORMA Foundation, Milan 2013

If it is true that the environment can influence us either positively or negatively, it also works the other way round: we can influence and change our environment. This is because human beings and their environment are inextricably connected.

This belief is rooted in an incredibly profound theory known as “the oneness of life and its environment” (Japanese, esho funi). A Nichiren Daishonin’s Buddhism principle which firmly places human life as an integral part of the vast physical universe. However, it is not merely a passive statement that we are all ‘part of nature’, rather it should be used as an active tool to overcome problems in our own life and the world.

At a fundamental level there is no separation between our internal life and our immediate circumstances. This is further clarified by examining the doctrine of three realms: the realm of the self, the realm of living beings (society) and the realm of the land (natural environment).

In this project comes evident that natural life somewhow resamble human life. Plants and human beings have the same accomulation of worldy experience and have the possibility to emerge from any kind of envainronmental condition.

2013 on going

Towards rockfallsNormandy

Towards Rockfalls 10 Fine Art Prints300x420 mm+ study for a wooden installation

“Milanofiori is a housing estate; strategically located at the intersection of Milan western bypass and the Milan-Genoa motorway. It was constructed with the idea of the tertiary sector in mind. It was situated in this strategic location, so its perspective would exempt it from the danger of becoming a dormitory in reverse.”

When I clicked on milanofiori.net website, these first lines on the home page struck me. I did not understand the meaning of “dormitory in reverse” and, I remembered about this place when I was leaving Milan traveling to Liguria few years ago. Huge pioneering cathedrals that seem impenetrable, rise and sparkle into nothingness. So, I took the undergroung to Assago Forum and after thirty minutes of darkness, light appeared. Green fields and water of the ancient canals resurfaced. You exit from the underground station and it seems as if you arrived to a space base which leads directly into a planet which is “other” - where the horizon is not there. You are surrounded by large office buildings and shops never fulled or vacant, abandoned restaurants and large banners saying FOR RENT. The few passers-by appear ghost-like.

I could only try to record the feeling of emptiness aroused by a place so surreal. A dimension that can be found in a video-game level where the programmer has decided to delete the characters and their adventures step by step. Perhaps the imagened programmer realized that in this place progress without human wisdom is not possible.

2013on going

Dormitory in ReverseMilanofiori

Dormitory in Reverse 12 Fine Art Prints300x420 mm+ study for printing on glass and an installation

Displacement is not only the moving of something from its original place or position. In psychoanalisis it is an unconscious defense mechanism in the attempt to avoid emotional conflict and anxiety by transferring emotions, ideas, or wishes from one object to its substitution that is less anxiety-producing.

This oeuvre constitutes of photographs (297x420) where each one is respectively obtained by a collage: images collected from old magazines that are, at first, deconstructed on an A4 black cardboard and reassembled with another one with the use of masking tape. The collage pictures are taken and printed of the same size to melt together in one shotcreating another new reality. Thus, Displacement explores the ropture of an unconscious obssesion which inhabits a place; a mental block in shifting space and time. The images transposition is not immediate, as well as that of the entailed disorientation. As a result, new clusters of places can be experienced by one’s own viewer background.

Displace-ment

2012on going

DisplacementFine Art Prints (obtained from photo-collages)297x420 mm

Still-Ness is a still footage. Here a video in loop that focuses on a secular weeping willow. An enquiry on the impasse of the nature morte. Which is something more than the depiction of an inanimate subject. The still-life nature, and the quietness that characterizes it, suddenly become to live.

The suffix -Ness presents in the tile emphasizes, according to the English grammar, the way in which adjectives form the meaning of nouns when it is appended to them. It is “the state of...”, “the quality of ...”, or “the measure of...” intrinsic to the Thing that is under process. Thus, Still-Ness does not mean only stillness, but more subtly goodness, happiness, and at the same time theirs opposite meanings, such as badness and sadness.

Even the subtitle, a quote by Catullus Carmen 85 Odi et Amo*, which stands for “I do not know (what it is), but I feel it happening to me and I am burning up”, highlights the generative power of the paradox itself, negation/acceptance, that it is perpetually inherent in the still-life.

Selected by Fondazione Bevilacqua La Masa (Venice) for the 95th YOUNG ARTISTS COLLECTIVE

Available on http://vimeo.com/69972875

Still-Ness

2011

Nescio, Sed Fieri Senzior et Escrucior

* Odi et amo. Quore id faciam, fortare requiris? Nescio, sed fieri senzior et escrucior.Leterally: I hate and I love you. Why do I do it, perchance you ask? I do not know, but I feel it happening to me and I am burning up.

OMOVA is an artistic and curatorial project focused on the creation of a new prototype of museum: two shopping windows in Venice, respectively dedicated to a temporary exhibition and a permanent collec-tion; two events and the participation at Inventing Venice at Claudio Buziol Foundation - the final exhibi-tion of a workshop led by Lewis Baltz at IUAV University. This project was born as consequence of a reflection about the status quo of Venice and its imagery. Considering both the cultural offers and auxiliary services in the museums (such as the bookshop), which contribute to the growth of an increasingly spectacularization of the city. In addition, sites that deal with “contemporary Venetian art” are few. In Venice there is a real danger that it will remain only historicized and glamorous art, making to vanish the underground-research.

OMOVA, placing itself in a new and proactive way towards the citizens and tourists -by capturing the gaze of passers-by- had led to a direct interaction, a non-dogmatic and constructive confrontation with them, stimulating their curiosity and their ideas.

OmovaOutdoor Museum Of Venetian Artwww.omova.wordpress.com

2010

The second step (April 22nd): it consisted in an event that put an emphasis on OMOVA: the museum that reflects about itself and about showcasing. Thus, in this occasion it was “revealed” the true attempt of the project, exhibiting an image of the museum in which there were applied a little photo -Claire by Riccardo Banfi- and a mini-poster -YO! by Roberto Fassone-, and a photograph of OMOVA with Droste effect.

First vernisage (March 17th): a large part of the visitors focused on the institutional apparently aspect of OMOVA -created with the deliberately “misleading” intention-, therefore evaluating the picture and the collage by the artists invited. They were convinced that the space would be a place somehow between a gallery and a no-profit space.

Picture with Droste Effect, Digital print on Foamcore Board420,5x594,5x0,5

Displayed in Permanent Exhibition

Final phase (May 20th): the exhibition Inventing Venice, showed that OMOVA was born from the challenge launched by Baltz’s University seminar. In this occasion, the museum had been presented at the reception of Buziol Foundation promoting itself as a viable solution. There were informative booklets in a dispenser, a front-desk banner and a background picture, together with a video of interviews collected during the second opening.

Nicole Moserle © 2014. All rights reserved.