Parolacce

curated by Massimiliano Scuderi

In his practice, Alek O. (Buenos Aires, 1981) blends the common notion of ready-made with crafts, embroidery and other traditional artistic forms. Poised between transformation and conservation, he strips the common visual aspects of objects and replaces them with geometric abstraction. Inverting the design perspective, the artist favors recreation over creation and deconstruction over construction.

The exhibition, curated by the artistic director of the Foundation Massimiliano Scuderi, tends to favor the author’s reappropriation, beyond the paradigms of everyday life, of a more hidden and less frequented time: The time to show oneself in her reverse. Alek O. is interested in things, and not in objects, because ‘things’ have a broader meaning, they represent everything that is at heart, which can be discussed in public because it touches the common good, as the philosopher Remo Bodei says.

They are elaborate materials, built by man, who works according to artisanal cultures and traditions that are declined in a personal and intimate alphabet, giving voice to new possibilities for others, as evocative and symbolic tools. Alek O. awaits her time by dismantling and reassembling tapestries, building totemic structures, subverting the rules of geometry, replicating ways that link craftsmanship to the historical avant-gardes.
The title refers to the exceptional nature of the swear word, as of a recreational and childish time, an attitude that seems to rediscover the art of periphrasis, that is, the way in which to make reality better understandable while avoiding euphemisms. The bad word represents an elaborate strangeness behind which the most original expression is hidden. The objects, chosen for their emotional quality, are removed from their original and daily use: wood from a bookcase, metal from a discarded key, wool from a sweater or a pair of used gloves. Thus, the works serve as a metonymy for the artist, or for people who have had a connection with the material.