A Room with a View: Christian Fogarolli on his isolation experience

Dear My Art Guides Readers, 

I’m an Italian Artist, my work is focused on the relationship between art and scientific theories and disciplines and how the latter has made use of creative means to lead to progress. My interest lies in questioning the links between normality and deviance. 

My work process often develops from historical research through the archive in relation to modernity, giving life to works including environmental installations, photography, sculpture and video. 

I am spending this time of isolation in Trento, where part of my studio is based and where I have immersed myself in a space-time capsule made up of introspective research on my own work, whilst reading, experimenting and cooking. I was about to leave for Berlin to open a solo exhibition but this was impeded by blocking of the borders. 

From an emotional and psychological point of view, I can personally say that a feeling of fear in me does not prevail, but rather a feeling of anguish. Fear is an easy choice of word and is often abused, a word that doesn’t accurately represent the current situation. Fear is an extraordinary means of defence against something concrete, determined and known but in this case we do not precisely understand what we are up against. Thus anguish takes shape, created by the absence of a specific object to defend ourselves against. Some events in their negativity are incredibly useful in the understanding that the certainties on which people live are minimal and that not everything is guaranteed, these periods will be the basis for a continued awareness of precariousness and transience; concepts that contemporary society remembers only for economic and financial issues, but never as a way of existence. Most people in the western world have been living and working as if they are immortal. 

I am writing these lines whilst listening to Riz Ortolani and the books I’m reading at the moment to accompany my work include: ”La giornata d’uno scrutatore” (The Watcher) by Italo Calvino, “The subject of passions” by Charles Le Brun and the resumption of “Ensaio sobre a Cegueira” (Blindness) by José Saramago.

Many find themselves disoriented and bewildered, myself included, as if caught in a continuous passage from Dr. Jekyill to Mr. Hyde (a book that relates well), but this state can be used as a moment for reading, a time to hone in on goals and interests and as an occasion for both reflection and confession.

good luck to all, 

Christian Fogarolli