As scale and reflective sheen reach their apex in contemporary culture, this second solo exhibition by Carmelo Tedeschi playfully addresses the organic maximum dimensions of his medium of predilection, leather, as well as ideas of values while using leftover whole animal skins coated in platinum and silver.
Based in Fez, Morocco and Berlin, Germany, the artist of Italian origins confronts the Occidental visual insistence of his early education with the non-representational tradition of Oriental culture. Beginning with the Renaissance, European aesthetic sensibility has been predominantly based on the eye; emphasizing appearance and has persisted from perspective to hyperrealism. In contrast, Oriental aesthetic sensibility resides more in the realm of the invisible, relying less on a visual representation and more on intuition.
Origami of a sort, the slabs of leather are expertly folded, revealing on their edge the biomorphic shape of the animal, then formed around a skeleton made of ropes. Scratches and imperfections allude to the corporeal provenance of the material and experimental manipulation by the artist, a wonder in regard of the usual spotless manufacture of a ubiquitous texture.
In counter point, a single work from the series of “Rocaille”, never previously exhibited, demonstrates the ability of the artist to understand and control flawlessly this natural surface.
If perspective is the art of situating; at once a technique of drawing and a cosmology, in this exhibition, the art of visual perspective is transformed into a perspective of the mind – of intuition.
An exhaustive ensemble of works by Carmelo Tedeschi is currently on view at Daimler contemporary Berlin, till November 2, 2014. A publication on the artist’s work is to be released on this occasion.
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