AXEL HILGER
M .A .D . G A L L E RY MODA
ARTE
DESIGN
Analisi critica a cura della Dott.ssa Carlotta Biffi You put your camera around your neck in the morning, along with putting on your shoes,and there it is, an appendage of the body that shares your life with you. The camera is an instrument that teaches people how to see without a camera. Dorothea Lange
A darkened background, a weird sense of expectation, an unusual shape emerging from the darkness: this is Metamorphosis, the photographer Axel Hilger's artwork now displayed in Milan. The composition, surprisingly bare, has the main point to exalt the amazing appearance of the form, the curious blend of colors and lines that almost looks like an abstract painting. I said “almost”, because there's nothing abstract about this picture. The subject, in fact, is as formal as it can be: the enlargement of a bug, achieved by the use of a massive microscope. Here is where the true “metamorphosis” lies, here is the real meaning of the artwork: an ordinary subject, a meaningless and almost invisible creature turned out into something else, something strange that we could barely recognize.
The light, driving the composition, magnifies the pattern on the bug body and its colorful harmony, enriched by its little imperfections. Choosing such an unusual subject and displaying it sounds like a joke, a deception against our senses which, in their narrowness, cannot trace the whole scheme, the real subject. We are forced to look closer, to carefully analyze the image in order to understand its real meaning: in our contemporarity, which is defined by the motto “all and now”, this process simply has the effect to teach us how to use our eyes, learning to see once again. It's all a matter of perception, a very common topic when it comes to contemporary art world. Photography faces the theme in its own way, and surely Axel Hilger offer a huge contribution to the discussion. The documentary attitude of his picture must not surprise his audience: he have been working as a documentary photographer for long, realizing reportages published on National Geographic, BBC Wildlife Magazine and GEO.
The attention to details, the carefully studied effects, the incessant research of the most striking point of view are the result of a very specific professional background.However, in this case we are far beyond the documentary side. Metamorphosis does not mean to record some kind of scientific information: it a personal research, going beyond the subject and looking for the very original essence of art, which is the form. The minimalism of the composition may recall the nakedness of Robert Mapplethorpe pictures of flowers, keeping their simple intensity while the sexual references lose their importance: the artist wants you to carefully look the shape, deepening its features, combining colors and lines, in order to pull out the real meaning of the image. Actually, all you have to do is to realize the metamorphosis, changing a lump of disjointed elements into a work of art.
Carlotta Biffi
Progetto grafico | Andrea Massucco
MAD GALLERY MILANO – Corso San Gottardo 18 | Milano Curators Alessandra Magni, Carlo Greco
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