Orama Project, explained
Diachronic approaches on Ancient Cultures and Natural Patterns
After several months of hiatus from Medium, I am pleased to introduce my readers to some elements of my current artistic research, a body of work encompassing painting, sculpture, drawing and digital art, collected in two different projects called ‘Orama’ and ‘Island of Pun’.
“Like branches of a tree are eradicated from the trunk, Orama unfolds different critical sources of inspiration in multiple directions both conceptually and technically abstracted.”
INTRO
“According to the ancient Greek philosophy of Plato, human State (the polis) is an extraordinary instrument and manifestation of mediation between ideas and human reality. Indeed, to be precise, the point of connection is the soul of the philosopher he asserts, considered as a telescope pointed at the cosmos of ideas from where he/she draws rules and ideas to apply to contingent events to mark the entry of *Good, (be careful to write it with two o ) into history.
In this way, human world is not dissimilar from the natural one, in which the supreme idea of Good falls through the mediation of the geometric and mathematical order, in the material dimension.”
Through this project, I developed different works to give voice to my naturalistic vision of the world. Audience and collectors seemed to be immediately fascinated by these compositions and project’s developement, so I decided to put togheter all the contents I structured for it:
‘Orama’ implements painting, drawing, photography and digital collages through which I investigated the atavistic power of Nature in its relations between human body and natural patterns, according also to different primordial Greek and Egyptian natural conceptions.
There are different elements in these works that represent characters or concepts taken from ancient mythology and philosophy, but the context in which I insert them during the compositional approach is not the same in which they arise in the storytelling, that’s why I could say that these works carry a ‘metaphysical’ message.
A naturalistic vision of the world is an idea itself, of a universal dimension, investigated within a personal perception, that has to be sought within natural powers rather than onto the manifestation of them through a mediation, which for Plato is identified in the State itself.
This Platonic and idealistic mediation is nowadays manipulated by media and politics is no longer entrusted to a management of linked to powers born from an idealism or ethical approaches aimed for *Good and democracy, but from technology, which of man’s ideas, is only a reflection and not a concrete manifestation, because;
Understanding human world is neither technical nor juridical, but critical.
It branches deeply downwards the densest truth, and then, it rises in all its directions like the branches of a tree, and since western culture has its seed in Platonic ideologies, it is good to learn more philosophical that hystorical details of this seed to embrace knowledge without Eurocentrism; Orama gives a renewed and fresh vision, creatively and artistically active, expansive and rich in content, free from politics, religion or any other dimension that presents its final result, the work ‘Aegyptiaa’ within the closure or elimination of something that cannot fit into an objective and sterile idealism.
Let’s climb the tree!
WORK #1 — ‘ORAMA’
Orama in Greek language means ‘Vision’ and, as between two lovers,
my vision of Nature is a mirror for the soul, for all those spiritual elements that inhabit me.
This compositional union between the statuary icon and vegetal elements becomes a mental object of investigation about the relation that ancient people had within natural environments, phenomena and architecture.
It is always visionary how ancient people, without technological maintenances, have been able to acquire such timeless and prosperous elements of expression through art and natural depictions.
Technology can helps us to undesrstand how human has been and is able to develop new structures starting from that basic point of elements unification and problem-solving, but the awareness still resides within another element of research.
The natural world is the immutable background that no man nor gods did, as ancient Greek taught us, and it is the very principle that inspired my production since the very first day of my artistic journey.
WORK #2 — ‘PHYSIS’, (Pvt.Collection)
Nature is a mirror for all those spiritual elements that inhabit me, and appear to be meaningless or unknown to my logic initially, but manifesting them as expanded and mixed within vegetal patterns after.
If i mirror myself within a natural spot, within vegetal elements, I will find also what I can call my inner-self, within every organ that composes my body, my physiology.
Aristotles invented word physiologists ( ‘fysi / physis / fysis’ ) to identify people that used to contemplate Nature aimed to propose and construct the first legislative forms of politics in the ancient Athens city, and through the relation nature, body, soul, nature has been initially called “Physis”.
Organic body and our way of act as the first sign of soul existence.
Life motion define my ‘Physis’. Vision of Nature that brings me to my body awareness; soul and body are the same thing, and are not disconnected as every organ is linked within the other one and allows me to breath.
Awake Ananke is the result of the awareness of my body, inner-awakening, the necessary inaccessibility and non-manipulation in presence of Natural environment, as in front of the feminine creative power.
Manipulating Nature means manipulating oneself.
Ananke ( Greek ‘ἀνάγκη ) is an ancient Greek word meaning “necessity”, “fate”. Rising from an abstract idea to the rank of divinity, she had a sanctuary in Corinth in union with Bia. In Orphic theology she had the value of cosmogonic power.
For me ‘Ananke’ is not a deity, nor a dictatorial way of seeing, nor something we can consider as usable, but a necessary background for us to observe, undestand and preserve within our consciousness, both individually and socially awake.
So, creative power is feminine per Nature and a cloud rises among leaves.
The face of Apollo Pythius appears and the god protector of muses defeats the evil python with the use of his irrational logic, and quickly vanishes into the clouds.
Be a leaf. Think like Apollo. Be a leaf, let this be your belief. Beleaf!
This language trick behind this artwork composition identifies the power of the instant idea, elaborated with the irrational and creative approach against the sterile technicism of masculine machines ( symbolically the bad snake ‘Python’ )
An idea come to light in a fast spark that burns for a lifetime, and to maintain your Orama, your vision, you have to believe in it, to maintain your belief until it becomes reality.
Within nature, a leaf can be an idea, a forest the entire lifetime, so ‘beleaf’ is the lifetime idea and Apollo the irrational logic that destroys fears.
This concept behind the structure of word ‘beleaf’, in total assonance with word ‘belief’, and that brings us to this last work that is inspired by the language evolution within the Egyptian culture; the hieroglyphic language.
Aegyptiaka is the name of the treatise that the Priest Manetho gave for the description and cataloging of the Egyptian dynasties to which Egyptologists refer for the study of the ancient culture of the Nile.
The ancient hieroglyphs are placed alongside the natural background, because their mechanism is the reflection of those of the natural environment and the ancient Egyptians perceived and reproduced them from the divine perception to worldly life, on the banks of the river Nile. Hieroglyphs functioned similarly, in the mechanics structure, to that example I provided with word beleaf: different mental objects that mix togheter aimed to generate a new one in order to speak something else.
Here ends the story contained in each work of my project ‘Orama’, a journey halfway between myths, philosophy and archaeological research where the ancient Greek world ends with a step into the ancient Egyptian one and opens the way up to the other project mentioned above ’Island of Pun’!
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