edited by Giuliano Menato
«The more we own reality
the more we created poetry»
Novalis
The sense that illuminates Gilberto Perlotto’s work is “Giving body and soul to things” in his action of designing and executing the work, in his willingness to rejoice and suffer with it. Many of the current trends in artistic experimentation offer information that is not information but only their simulation; they propose playful forms that have nothing to do with the game but are only simulation of the game; they produce objects that are not objects but only resemble them or the labile documentation of paradoxical performances; they exalt operational processes that are not operations but only a gestural ritual. Perlotto’s sculptural work bears witness to a counter-trend line of contemporary art because it recovers those ethical and aesthetic values considered lost, such as craft traditions and regional roots, where rural culture and popular elegance are combined, pride in his history and openness to a style closer to his sensibility. After the affirmation of the informal lexicon and the exponential spread of conceptual art, the artist from Vicenza enhances the use of techniques and materials more traditionally identified with artistic craftsmanship in the realization not only of objects but of complex compositions and installations. He uses iron, the medium favored by a fierce group of Italian artists – like the Venetian Murer and Benetton – who in this material recognize an expressive instrument of great versatility and communication. Other artists in recent years have woven the work of artistic invention with the technical-material experience of the decorative arts, further demonstrating a gap that has been overcome and a vision that is no longer idealistic or exquisitely conceptual of contemporary art, but, on the contrary, of a research conducted through materials and techniques that have rediscovered their full meaning. The artistic product that Perlotto gives us, the fruit of his talent, has the fundamental element of the representation in the object. It is not simple mimesis, that is imitation of reality or something that acquires value following an operation of the mind. For Perlotto, realism does not mean accepting reality passively, but problematizing it, confronting the other with us, knowing that the truth is discovered in the collision. Whoever examines his works in the variety of their articulations understands that they belong to a creative process that does not end with the poetics of natural beauty, indeed, the artistic beauty prevails where the mimesis as in the Crepe gives way to invention.
When the problem of art has more to with the issue of the project, everything melts into the expressiveness of the form. And the work becomes an absolute value, separated from the low and vulgar terms used in today’s worldliness to indicate value. His sculptures, however, are able to shake the insensitive body of the public, to awaken it, to stimulate it. And to see if there is still a glimmer of vitality. Perlotto’s artwork recovers the artistic and aesthetic dimension through the pleasure of deep and lasting identification.