In many of her works Stefania Galegati highlights this condition of precarious equilibrium. A number of photographs, for example, portray environments and situations apparently disturbed by the wind and in which the objects, suspended in mid-air on gossamer threads, are locked in a frozen moment prior to their inevitable collapse (Rewind #1 and Rewind #2, 1997), This condition of suspension and uncertainty, that strikes a middle-class interior as it does the improvised refuge of a homeless person (the installation conceived for the exhibition Mercato Globale in l997 and then photographed), created through a sculptural idiom that mimes the photo- graphic process, as in another installation in which Galegati painted an environment, an interior (a set it might be said), completely in black and white (Fate silenzio, Shut up, 1998). Rew 1 & 2 show ( project if you like) a reality as if it had been seen through the artificial technique of the replay. As, whilst it is true that this scene appears to be suspended in a frozen moment prior to the definitive collapse, perhaps, as the title suggests, the event has already taken place and the imaginary video recorder is running back to the preceding situation of equilibrium.
This miming of a technical process, a reality in which it is as it the spectator is immersed in the altered vision of a videocamera, of a camera, of a spy-hole, in short a filter/lens that changes perception, is an expedient that recurs in many of Stefania Gaiegati’s works and is a clear demonstration of her attention to the logic of vision, the deconstruction of its internal data and, above all, our relationship with them.
In even earlier works (1995), the artist concealed herself in the photographed scene by means of camouflage, becoming at once observer and observed, protagonist and backdrop, or she physically distorted individual objects or parts of a domestic scene (a bed, a door, a chair) as if they had been seen through a fish-eye lens (1996). The desire to spy by concealing oneself or miming a voyeuristic practice: in any case putting the spectator into the position of a visual filter, immersing him in another reality, but one in which the options are still controlled by the artist, is one of the recurrent themes of Galegati’s work. She thus appears to ironize about the ideal interactions, the equal relationships between spectator and creator , in an era that requires and encourages the ever more active participation of the spectator through the passwords of interactivity, virtuality and hypertextuality.
What appears to link these works is, after all, a certain sense of frustration, of unbridgeable distance in relation to the image: the impossibility of overcoming that threshold that separates the observers from the protagonists, the spectators from the spectacle. The only possibility would appear to be to spy, imagine or conceal oneself, counterposing the impossibility of a frontal view of the real, with the possibility of a lateral gaze (Chiara Bertola).
In Shy hamburger (1999), Galegati develops the idea of the photographic works discussed earlier in the video medium, creating a further internal contradiction within the genres. The artist films a series of fake freeze-frames, immobilizing the participants at a number of banquets in static poses, and gives the impression of moving from one table to another and crossing through diverse scenes as if she is documenting an event whilst in truth only the actors and their positions changes. The impetuosity and apparent urgency with which she moves around the protagonists with the hand-held camera, contrasts sharply with the immobility of the scene, that in terms of iconography curiously references frescoes and canvases of the Last Supper. As in earlier works, the artist actually seems to immerse the spectator within an image, a frame, like an intruder within a film, or even reproduce manually, in low definition, the effect of the computerized 3D animation of a painting or a fresco in which she appears to move as if guided by the movement of an imaginary mouse.
Galegati has again staged a situation of danger, of suspension, of fragile balance, already highlighted in the work with the explanatory title of Ho sempre paura del terremoto , I’m always afraid of the earthquake (1997), that consisted of a carpet of thousands of interlocking rubber balls that formed highly precarious terrain. More recently she has constructed a heavy platform in mdf (1999) that, being equipped with wheels, is potentially mobile. At first sight the wheels are invisible, giving the momentary illusion of being faced with a table suspended in midair as if levitating. Somewhere between a functional object adaptable to the context, and pure minimal form, this platform is a hybrid that invites usage, but at the same time prevents the convenient crossing of the space in which it is placed: on the one hand it is solid and well anchored to the ground by its weight and the materials of which it is made, on the other it has a degree of mobility that is not immediately evident and is, however, restricted by the space in which it is installed that must not be much larger than the platform itself.
Thinking about the brief career of Stefania Galegati, there is still the possibility that in some of these works she is speaking about the statute of the image, perception, reproduction or our most intimate precariousness in the world. And what if one was the reflection of the other? Or of the artist herself?
A number of clues relating to this last hypothesis might be other photos portraying the artist handling bottles like a juggler, or the one in which she is suspended in midair as if supported by the hands of two friends. Once again, the impression is wholly false, because the bottles are attached to fine transparent threads and the acrobatics are perceived as such only through a simple opticaI illusion. Banal tricks (low resolution and technical poverty are constant features of Stefania Galegati’s work, in ironic and dialectical response to the mechanisms of vision and the technology that she frequently analyses through her works), in order to deconstruct our vision of reality and the laws that govern it. The metaphor perhaps of a form of acrobatics, perhaps the mirror of that of the artist poised between acrobat and counterfeiter, between amusement and deception, entertainment and imposture.