Fisicofollia

Opening today, Monday, December 16 at 1:30 pm at LEA6, as part of the LEA Full Sim Art Series, is Giovanna Cerise's Fisicofollia, which will remain on display through the end of the month. The artist states that Fisicofollia refers in a free way to the Futurist theatre and especially to the Futuristic artworks by Enrico Prampolini, Giacomo Balla, Fortunato Depero and Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, whose 1909 Futurist Manifesto, published on the front page of Le Figaro, launched the movement. Taken literally, "fisico follia" means roughly "physical madness" or "body madness," and was a term Marinetti first used in the 1913 manifesto Del Teatro di Varietà (The Theatre of Variety) to describe his highly stylized way of addressing audiences, convinced that he had developed a declamatory method that could more effectively incite the masses.

How the term fisicofollia literally applies here I'm not certain, but one can see stylistic connections with many of the paintings and other artwork by Prampolini, Balla, Depero and Marinetti, ranging from the early Futurist years up through the 1950s, by which time the surviving artists had moved in different political directions. In particular, there are two large areas (second image detail) that are curiously evocative of Futurist artworks, and here, as elsewhere in the installation, Giovanna's use of semi-transparent grids, spaced closely together and at slight angles, produce moiré patterns that appear to move as our field of view shifts. A central feature in the installation is the repeated figure of a man ("uomo che tende il filo," or "man who tends the wire") constructed of pastel blue and violet tetrahedrons—the standing form gestures forward, as if beckoning.

Giovanna adds, "It is designed as a multi-dimensional performance space, in which light and shadow, color and movement are the protagonists. The scene expands to create a multiplicity of perspectives in a continuous emotional tension. Lines, planes, shapes and colors combine, alluding to an invention related to childhood and madness. The visitor can interact with the environment simply going through it, resulting in different visual impressions. It is recommended to activate the sound, to catch the auditory sensations in the scene."