alessio delfino

Des Femmes

Des Femmes 1999-2003

Alessio Delfino is not in the tradition of contemporary photography, which at the end of the modern, seeks the goal of “reproduction of reality”, reducing itself in many cases to a hyperreal aestheticism. For Delfino photography is a means to create images, as was once granted to painting alone. His style is characterized by consciousness, which in shaping focuses on the indispensable. The composition of the image is constituted by simple means, in an exact staging. Light, the energy factor necessary for every creation, has a leading role. In this way, his works are charged with the intensity of light and darkness, which are tied together in the shadows and give the photographs a character of mystery. Through revelation or concealment, truths and illusions are revealed. The force of emotional expression is thus charged up to the incredible fantastic; it is like a psychological transformation of our seeing, which passes through a surreal manipulation and dramatization of simple reality. The artist creates a distance from the viewer, awakening in metaphors another world.

When light becomes fire, the images take on a magical character, an emblematic fascination. The romantic condition of Alessio Delfino is shown with spectacular means; the artist speaks of a poem, which often can not be understood. Representing the female nude belongs to these works. To place the intensity of a moment that, by simple suggestion, awakens intimacy and desire, accentuated in the light by the unreachability of the figure. The images testify to the existence of another imaginary reality in which we can submerge ourselves. They do not copy the world, they are projections of the artist’s consciousness, timeless and not traceable to a specific place. They are simply, as if reality wanted to open a parenthesis. The ironic instrumentalization of the female body portrayed by Alessio Delfino arouses in the viewer mixed feelings of desire and repulsion. The woman is offered, as in a buffet, to the spectator’s greedy gaze. One wonders, after all, whether there is a real difference between sexual desire and appetite. The greed of female bodies that has pervaded the media for years is, in these photos halfway between the medical report and the fashion service, completely desecrated and derided. The bodies are covered by the signs of the commonly understood feminine aesthetic, leaving deep traces on the skin of women. The transfigured body turns into a mask, a reversible image of seduction.

(Bruno Locci)