GOLFO MISTICO
“And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche)
Naples, a human archive, a locus of magic, mystery, and symbolism, where history has crystallized epic events and popular beliefs have identified the presence of gods and deities. Here, the relationship between life and death is visible, palpable. Archetypes of the classical world the Temple of Isis, the Fontanelle Cemetery, the Piscina Mirabilis, the Cave of the Sibylsymbo- lize the boundary between ancient human accomplishments and collective mystical experiences, where pagan, Christian, and alchemical elements are deeply intertwined in our “genetic code.” Assunta Saulle's work revolves around the theme of architectural monuments as vehicles of universal symbolic content. Many images-symbols appear throughout the sequence of photographs on display: the temple, the cross, water, earthly remains, light, and darkness. These are a plurality of signs blended into a fertile, fluid magma, a rich interplay between the artist and “her” places, and the emotions they evoke in her. And it is precisely her beloved and profound connection to this land that has allowed her to capture photographs of great narrative power while at the same time offering a precise geography of our collective memory.
GOLFO MISTICO, which inspires the title of the exhibition, is a landscape that exists because we are immersed in it, existing in relation to us and our experience. It is the stage of the space-time continuum in which we live, a place of the soul that neither time nor flesh can contaminate. It is an eternal space within us, a womb where the deep, dark, earthly sense of the tragic yearns for the light of the transcendent in an epiphany that the artist reveals to us through her images contemporary sacred icons that follow one another in a sequence reminiscent of the medieval processions. In those processions, people only comprehended the divine and their
destiny through the images that stood as warnings along the cathedral’s aisles.
From this premise, following the path already traced by photodynamism, the performative aspect of Assunta Saulle's work emerges: the self-portrait, a technique that situates her presence/self-portrait as the sole witness moving among these architectural ruins, where the last echoes of the genius loci linger. The use of long exposure allows her to gather a remarkable amount of light, immersing the viewer in a luminous, suspended twilight, a time that stretches and expands into a contemplative vision, offering reflection on the essence of the world, and glimpsing hope beyond material life. At this moment, the artwork detaches itself from the continuum of history to enter the fourth dimension. With this device, the artist shares the experience of transformation tied to the inexorability of time. Both the totemic architectures and the ghostly body are subject to decay, yet Saulle is not concerned with being a historian of events but rather a medium, a messenger of mental connections to stimulate our imagination of the Other. While the starting point the container derives from a recognizable real world, extracted from the multiplicity of our topoi, the presence of mysterious ectoplasms immerses us in a conceptual journey into the oneiric. The gulf, therefore, becomes an imaginative representation of a land/consciousness, mediating between abyss/subconscious and sky/unconscious, feeding age-old questions in search of hidden truths: the fleeting passage of human life in history? Does death exist as an afterlife? Does the soul survive the body? Is there a divine plan influencing our destiny? These light-etched writings force us into a kind of self-analysis, leaving us in total uncertainty, but with the intimate, shared commitment to give meaning to what we are and what we will become. Saulle’s photography helps us in this effort, which momentarily saves us from the feeling of nothingness. By representing something of the real (finite-past-present) and allowing us a glimpse of the unreal (infinite-future), she projects us into a metaphysical dimension, beyond the comprehensible.
These are incorporeal visions, projections of the unconscious, unconscious desires before which a sacred silence is imposed, because sacred must be our attitude toward our existential anxieties, our emotions, and the mystical experience that occupies human life in the face of the unknown.
Humanity, mysticism, dream. I seek becoming in photographs and photographs in becoming. I am interested in the mystical element that each of us holds within. And then transience what is seen and what is unseen. A visceral necessity comments the artist a necessity to meet the Other in their interiority, in their mystery, in their relationship with the passage of time, in the search for a place that is, above all, a place within ourselves.
Saulle’s humanity lies in daring to explore suspended realms between body and spirit, immanence and transcendence, with a faith unburdened by religion, lending us a naïve gaze that belongs to all humanity, never imposing meanings or solutions. It is an invitation to those who, through the aesthetic experience of art, with their own tools, subjectivity, and imagination, without preconceptions, know how to connect with themselves and others, because there is no time. The struggle against the passage of time, which relentlessly continues its work, is hopeless. Photography, along with memory, is a tool to stem time's destructive force, surviving beyond the disappearance of objects, imprisoned in the moment of the shot, yet it too is destined to decay. Knowing how to capture that moment, at that precise time, the hic et nunc, means growing inwardly. The gaze captures what attracts it, imagines what it desires, transmitting to the mind what lies beyond the surface, and what the senses have received is transformed into emotion. That is the moment in which one’s imaginative, creative, aesthetic, and human potential can be fertilized; it is the awakening of the psyche, the only path to healing the Anima Mundi.
Carla Travierso
GOLFO MISTICO
“And if you gaze long into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
(Friedrich Nietzsche)
Naples, a human archive, a locus of magic, mystery, and symbolism, where history has crystallized epic events and popular beliefs have identified the presence of gods and deities. Here, the relationship between life and death is visible, palpable. Archetypes of the classical world the Temple of Isis, the Fontanelle Cemetery, the Piscina Mirabilis, the Cave of the Sibylsymbo- lize the boundary between ancient human accomplishments and collective mystical experiences, where pagan, Christian, and alchemical elements are deeply intertwined in our “genetic code.” Assunta Saulle's work revolves around the theme of architectural monuments as vehicles of universal symbolic content. Many images-symbols appear throughout the sequence of photographs on display: the temple, the cross, water, earthly remains, light, and darkness. These are a plurality of signs blended into a fertile, fluid magma, a rich interplay between the artist and “her” places, and the emotions they evoke in her. And it is precisely her beloved and profound connection to this land that has allowed her to capture photographs of great narrative power while at the same time offering a precise geography of our collective memory.
GOLFO MISTICO, which inspires the title of the exhibition, is a landscape that exists because we are immersed in it, existing in relation to us and our experience. It is the stage of the space-time continuum in which we live, a place of the soul that neither time nor flesh can contaminate. It is an eternal space within us, a womb where the deep, dark, earthly sense of the tragic yearns for the light of the transcendent in an epiphany that the artist reveals to us through her images contemporary sacred icons that follow one another in a sequence reminiscent of the medieval processions. In those processions, people only comprehended the divine and their
destiny through the images that stood as warnings along the cathedral’s aisles.
From this premise, following the path already traced by photodynamism, the performative aspect of Assunta Saulle's work emerges: the self-portrait, a technique that situates her presence/self-portrait as the sole witness moving among these architectural ruins, where the last echoes of the genius loci linger. The use of long exposure allows her to gather a remarkable amount of light, immersing the viewer in a luminous, suspended twilight, a time that stretches and expands into a contemplative vision, offering reflection on the essence of the world, and glimpsing hope beyond material life. At this moment, the artwork detaches itself from the continuum of history to enter the fourth dimension. With this device, the artist shares the experience of transformation tied to the inexorability of time. Both the totemic architectures and the ghostly body are subject to decay, yet Saulle is not concerned with being a historian of events but rather a medium, a messenger of mental connections to stimulate our imagination of the Other. While the starting point the container derives from a recognizable real world, extracted from the multiplicity of our topoi, the presence of mysterious ectoplasms immerses us in a conceptual journey into the oneiric. The gulf, therefore, becomes an imaginative representation of a land/consciousness, mediating between abyss/subconscious and sky/unconscious, feeding age-old questions in search of hidden truths: the fleeting passage of human life in history? Does death exist as an afterlife? Does the soul survive the body? Is there a divine plan influencing our destiny? These light-etched writings force us into a kind of self-analysis, leaving us in total uncertainty, but with the intimate, shared commitment to give meaning to what we are and what we will become. Saulle’s photography helps us in this effort, which momentarily saves us from the feeling of nothingness. By representing something of the real (finite-past-present) and allowing us a glimpse of the unreal (infinite-future), she projects us into a metaphysical dimension, beyond the comprehensible.
These are incorporeal visions, projections of the unconscious, unconscious desires before which a sacred silence is imposed, because sacred must be our attitude toward our existential anxieties, our emotions, and the mystical experience that occupies human life in the face of the unknown.
Humanity, mysticism, dream. I seek becoming in photographs and photographs in becoming. I am interested in the mystical element that each of us holds within. And then transience what is seen and what is unseen. A visceral necessity comments the artist a necessity to meet the Other in their interiority, in their mystery, in their relationship with the passage of time, in the search for a place that is, above all, a place within ourselves.
Saulle’s humanity lies in daring to explore suspended realms between body and spirit, immanence and transcendence, with a faith unburdened by religion, lending us a naïve gaze that belongs to all humanity, never imposing meanings or solutions. It is an invitation to those who, through the aesthetic experience of art, with their own tools, subjectivity, and imagination, without preconceptions, know how to connect with themselves and others, because there is no time. The struggle against the passage of time, which relentlessly continues its work, is hopeless. Photography, along with memory, is a tool to stem time's destructive force, surviving beyond the disappearance of objects, imprisoned in the moment of the shot, yet it too is destined to decay. Knowing how to capture that moment, at that precise time, the hic et nunc, means growing inwardly. The gaze captures what attracts it, imagines what it desires, transmitting to the mind what lies beyond the surface, and what the senses have received is transformed into emotion. That is the moment in which one’s imaginative, creative, aesthetic, and human potential can be fertilized; it is the awakening of the psyche, the only path to healing the Anima Mundi.
Carla Travierso