Piero Colle’s Viennese Exhibition

The camera lens is an inflexible, absolute eye whose physiology corresponds to the aperture, exposure time and shot: what appears is not only reproduced, but transcended; within phenomenic appearance one catches a glimpse of all that lies hidden in the folds of the world, a revelation. Independent and exacting, the lens is capable of bringing out the watermark of human archetypes from inert things and living shapes, torments of conscience: Eros and Thanatos, the willing, illusory pauses and the never ending journey.

In photographic representation, an act of creativity can transform iconic appearances into renewed, fluid myths and evanescent poetry, or crystallize them as symbols, at times explicit,  at others provocative and enigmatic.

Without doubt, all this takes place when the eye of a sensitive artist like Piero Colle is behind a piece of perfect, even smart, technology. Not just an artist but a writer and poet who is adventurously, tragically and dramatically inquisitive about all shades of life. It is the face that predominates in the sample of works exhibited in Vienna; each one a box of allusive secrets to be opened, or a compressed novel to be read by following the intensity of gazes and the pattern of wrinkles that may indicate maturity or old age. Or perhaps your eye will run over smooth, young cheeks noticing the strength, determination and ambiguity that surface from the pupils, a grave flow of premonitions or an expectation and promise of sweet abandon.

The screen behind which the faces are often veiled, rather than impeding their distinct perception, enhances their significance and aids the apperception of personal experience and the state of tension. It is the movement of hair that frequently acts as a delicate veil, a decocted mesh of strands transmuted into aerial graffiti, almost drypoint etchings. In the same way, the billowing, impalpable clouds of smoke blown by an imperturbable, self-contented smoker are transformed into the very mark of his existence (Paolo smoking).

The bland, omnipresent light highlights individuality when it is raised so as to soften the physicality of people, or flashed to accentuate a frenzied or resentful gesture.

Portraits dominate and reign in black and white photography, a sharp mirror of souls; among these, the most imposing, due to their underlying classical flavour, are “Anita” with a cross eye, sort of modern Sibylla, and “Lea”, who diffuses soft, limitless melancholy. Worthy of note are the differently heroic, solemn physiognomies of the white-haired, bearded Nordic warrior, or perhaps just magic keeper of Finnish forests, and of the author himself (Lupo poeta), appearing in a strong-willed, forceful self portrait which, however, denotes a supportive, yet troublesome feeling of friendship for all his own kind.

The polymorphic significance encased in the series of caged women requires the observer to make a willing dialectic effort, sparking a fuse of curiosity that leads to an effervescent play of suppositions, thus transforming emotional shock into meaningful discourse. These works reveal the sinuous, exasperated, ritualized sadistic-masochistic significance that is to be found in the perennial encounter between male and female, or vice versa. A historical interpretation of these original creations will lead us to acknowledge, or even denounce, the state of violent, overpowering captivity and restraint that society, culture, and perhaps destiny inflicts on woman, who nonetheless, gains revenge by locking up the antagonist’s dissected brain in a modern display cabinet and, with an ironic smile, exhibits it against her full, shapely nudity (Kris with brain).

In contrast, nudity shines beyond any hidden malice in the happiness, satisfaction and pride of a pregnancy that has just begun, and in the disclosure of a love whose gestures are almost sacred, and where a modest sexuality becomes sublime in the reciprocal, translucent offering of bodies, inclined towards a nature that is good, a parsimonious giver of deep amnesic joy and splendid, fragile illusions, brief antidotes to our state of anxious transience.

Elsewhere, a female nude viewed from behind expresses the emission of breath towards the infinite, which a distant pale blue hue suggests might recall the purity of a golden age, or may hint at a vague, remote, soul-saving mirage (Ginevra cielo).

Though varied and versatile, Piero Colle’s photographic technique is always coherent with a unique style in which the images have an evident tempo, intuition is fresh, and constructive thought is ardent.

His photography courageously fathoms the depths of the psyche and instinct, ascends to the purged, clairvoyant areas of the mind and gives swift, empathetic narrations of personalities and characters whose faces wear the mark of their truths, both clear and arcane.