Anomalous Presence

 Anomalous Presence

The title is a little disturbing: Anomalous Presence or presence of Irregular Beings?
The idea of the exhibition’s curators, Carmelo Iaria and Giancarlo Catta arises from the wish
to build dialogue attempts with ancestors and their time. To do this, they introduce, among
archaeological finds collected in Museo “Sanna”, some “objects” created by the students of
Liceo Artistico “Filippo Figari”, in a sort of connection between the present and the past.
From 19th May 2012 to 31st August the museum audience will be allowed to admire
handmade products coming from the several workshops that characterize the Liceo
Artistico learning curricula: Figurative Art, Architecture and Environments, Design,
Audiovisual and Multimedia, Graphics.
The dialogue that the curators want to create comes through the anomalous presence of
“strange” evidences, and it is clearly determined to provoke a shock capable to enliven a
place, like the Museo Sanna, intended, since its beginnings, to preserve works of
historical, artistic, archeological and ethnographic value.
The anomalous presence are here represented by odd art works, sometimes little
“grotesque” sculptures, belonging to an immaginary world, sometimes “refined” works as
result of an accurate project based on the use of fine modern materials, and they all stand
by the gravity and the solemnity of the antiquities dating to our remote past.
Part of the temporary exhibition is formed by some prototypes of daily usage tools, as
scissors, forks and knives planned by shaping solids software and realized in wood or
corian with the aid of prototyping machine; manufactures made by multilayer wood units
worked by “traforo” (fretwork) technique or arranged by fixed joint method (without glue or
screw) that reproduce expressive of plastic and architectural values lamps; an
architectural model created keeping as aim a sustainable housebuilding project, titled
A functional employment of an unrestricted area of town (Sassari). The model arranges
recreational facilities for young people, and has covered spaces to be used for cultural
meetings and exhibitions. There is a library, there are cycle paths among green and water
courses.
Continuing your visit you can also run into paper sculptures - origàmi - inspired by
Alighiero Boetti’s works.
It is clear that you are not called to follow an itinerary on theme or on time of each object
showed, but you can get from them and from their unusual association, the sense of
surprise, of estrangement from the real world.
Visitors are invited to move along different visual spurs arising from the temporary show of
handicrafts and they are brought through an immaginary and amazing journey crowded
by “little astonished faces that stare at them from the showcase”, or they can be startled
by an “improbable” paper dress. Some of the dresses displayed for this occasion in the
Museum rooms, are not made of precious cloth but of recycled materials, as lace find in
granny’s trunk, or old curtains, all of them embellished by waste of plastic that substitutes
shining paillettes. But there are also original works of the loom that preserve strong links
with traditional Sardinian weaving.
Undoubtedly students’ choice is not completely fortuitous, since objects, even if “different”
from the contest that hosts them, adapt themselves to the layout of the archeological
evidences collected in the Museum. Alongside the little idols representing the Dea Madre
(Bonu Ighinu culture), you can admire little terracotta statues, polychrome ones in some
cases, that propose an interpretation of feminine beauty in a contemporary vision: “veneri”
strictly bounded to fertility and maternity concepts are expressed in steatopygy forms,
others, showing a more romantic femininity, allude to women dressed in traditional
sardinian costumes, with their pure colors.
Among all these elements that refers to a sort of oddness for such “differences” put
together, you can find, close to an acephalous marble sculpture, a plaster head, that even
though it has not any stylistic link with the ancient statue, for just one time, while you are
looking, it becomes one of the protagonists of exhibition, together with the archaelogical
finds. The “anomalous presence” grow as natural elements of the museum show. The
same happens for the works that reproduce cartoon characters as Pen or The Simpson.
It is clear that the idea was born not only as an artistic action but as an opportunity to
make clear to the observer the relevance of “manual” making of the artist-artigian, of the
sculptor, of the painter, of the architect, of the graphic designer who has to face with
contemporaneity. As a matter of fact, and in spite of new technology, contemporary
languages continue to make use of the artist-artisan millenary knowledge; as in the
2005 cartoon Corpse Bride, the artist has to use the whole of his professional competence
to create a plasticine puppet with a “deformed” head.
Young people are being increasingly attracted from media, so that it has become
necessary to teach them the “game” techniques. The publicity languages have assumed,
by now, a central role in mass comunication; from this awareness arises the need to work
on objects that serve as examples of packaging, aimed for serial production, that have a
protective purpose besides representing icons of products.
Anomalous Presence wishes to re-create a magic atmosphere between past and present
traces, but it also aims to awaken in young people the will to rediscover a place, the
Museum, too often forgotten or, maybe, never known. Through this process comes the
reappropriation of their cultural heritage.
Liceo Artistico “Filippo Figari” students made their works keeping in mind the problem
of the “changing” of the artistic action, using at their best, as in the different artistic fields,
their creativity in the production of handicrafts and pictures.

The Liceo Artistico “Filippo Figari” is an important creative place in the heart of Sassari; in

it teachers can be considered the transmitters of “knowledge” and of “manual making”,

students are the real makers of “polyfunctional” objects and responsable for their artistic value. 

Moreover, school becomes, in this way, their “artistic library and laboratory”.

Testo originale di Franca Mascolo
Traduzione di Tiziana Fois
Biblioteca Liceo Artistico 'Filippo Figari' 
Sassari