In relatively recent times artists have begun to rummage through the non-artistic world, salvaging an immense vocabulary of materials and going on to recycle this vocabulary, putting it’s elements to use in their own artistic language. The work of Margherita Marchioni, Materiamorfosi, falls within this context, constituting a project that spans almost a decade and which has seen her explore the vast possibilities offered by a wide variety of materials. The predominant aspect of her work involves the use of recycled materials as components of the work of art: leading to an ironic and irreverent process of reinterpretation, through the use of incisions, lacerations and recomposition in which the objects find themselves transported into a new dimension, completely decontextualized while leaving their original nature perfectly intact. It is almost as though these objects had discovered their innate and predestined order in a new form that allows them to fully express themselves.
Marchioni does not transform materials, but rather she encourages them to ‘experience’ their most unexpected visual possibilities, leading them towards their extreme consequences, deconstructing and reconstructing them at will, recreating a ‘sense of order’ while avoiding the danger of interfering with their original order and maintaining a healthy respect for their integrity.
Time is an integral part of her work, the creation of one of her pieces requires an enormous amount of discarded material. One should remember that these objects are effectively parts of the industrial system, they are products that must be bought and consumed, they must be ‘lived’ by other people before they reach Marchioni’s studio, lived by the very same people that collect and conserve pieces of their daily life for her (the bottles holding the water they drink, the caps of the detersives they clean with…). These objects are then kept and stored over the years by the artist, waiting to be reinterpreted, to undergo a nontransformation.
Together with time, the concept of repetition is another fundamental aspect in the understanding of her research: the underlying idea is that of the search for an ideal module in which to conceive of the work of art, always a single material, never contaminated with other forms. Aesthetically, the use of recycled plastic is a strategy with which to take plain reality by surprise, making use of a material whose absence of worth is in itself a state of liberty. Through the artist’s intervention, this material is neither thrown away nor destroyed, but is ensured a new life that does not involve recreation, demonstrating that every object holds hundreds, even thousands of possible reuses.
This young artist responds to a world that discards and forgets it’s possessions with her project, Materiamorfosi, reminding us that every discarded material possesses it’s own subjective energy, and is able to give rise to infinite creative solutions.
Lavinia Lais
Marchioni does not transform materials, but rather she encourages them to ‘experience’ their most unexpected visual possibilities, leading them towards their extreme consequences, deconstructing and reconstructing them at will, recreating a ‘sense of order’ while avoiding the danger of interfering with their original order and maintaining a healthy respect for their integrity.
Time is an integral part of her work, the creation of one of her pieces requires an enormous amount of discarded material. One should remember that these objects are effectively parts of the industrial system, they are products that must be bought and consumed, they must be ‘lived’ by other people before they reach Marchioni’s studio, lived by the very same people that collect and conserve pieces of their daily life for her (the bottles holding the water they drink, the caps of the detersives they clean with…). These objects are then kept and stored over the years by the artist, waiting to be reinterpreted, to undergo a nontransformation.
Together with time, the concept of repetition is another fundamental aspect in the understanding of her research: the underlying idea is that of the search for an ideal module in which to conceive of the work of art, always a single material, never contaminated with other forms. Aesthetically, the use of recycled plastic is a strategy with which to take plain reality by surprise, making use of a material whose absence of worth is in itself a state of liberty. Through the artist’s intervention, this material is neither thrown away nor destroyed, but is ensured a new life that does not involve recreation, demonstrating that every object holds hundreds, even thousands of possible reuses.
This young artist responds to a world that discards and forgets it’s possessions with her project, Materiamorfosi, reminding us that every discarded material possesses it’s own subjective energy, and is able to give rise to infinite creative solutions.
Lavinia Lais