Let's return to the image, however, in which we may no longer believe, but whose statute demands investigation in order to take countermeasures and prepare a new awareness as observers. Stefania Galegati has been working within this ambit for some years, through installations, photographs, videos and "sculptures" (an improper term perhaps, but how else to describe them?). In a series of photographic works from a couple of years ago Galegati concealed herself within the scene she photographed, camouflaging herself so that she became at the same time observer and observed, protagonist and backdrop (or "environment" as Roberto Pinto has correctly noted). The desire to spy, concealing oneself: putting the spectator in the position of a visual filter, or a lens that alters and distorts perception, immersing it in another reality, one in which the options are still controlled by the artist appears to be one of the recurrent themes in Galegati's work.
The series of sculptures that distort the scene, the objects of which it is composed (a bed, a door, a chair) seen through a fish-eye lens, are still moving in this direction, accentuating the voyeuristic nature of the gestures; as if reality could only be seen though the spy-hole of a door through which one may not pass. The installations in which everything is meticulously, maniacally painted in black and white, as if in a pre- Technicolor world, also construct an illusion in which the trick is nonetheless evident in its artisan nature. Low definition, therefore, versus high definition: another strategy adopted by many contemporary artists interested in reflecting on the gaze (for example, by Olafur Eliasson in his installations in which the observation of simple natural processes and their optical possibilities have the power to arouse considerable doubts regarding our perceptive capacities). In parallel, Galegati has worked on a series of installations and photographs that simulate environments disturbed by wind and in which objects suspended by silk threads (low definition here too...) are fixed as if in a frozen instant prior to their irremediable collapse. A condition of suspension, or uncertainty that strikes both a bourgeois interior and the improvised refuge of a street dweller created via a three-dimensionality that mimics (again...) the photographic process. Rewind #1 and Rewind #2 (1997) stage (or "project" if you like) a reality as if it was seen through the artificial technology of the replay. Because, if it is true that this scene appears to be suspended prior to its definitive collapse, in a frozen instant, perhaps, as the title suggests, the event has already happened and the imaginary video recorder is rewinding to the preceding condition of equilibrium. However you look at it, Galegati stages a situation of danger, of unstable equilibrium which is moreover highlighted in a work with the illuminating title Ho sempre pauradel terremoto, 1997, ("I'm always afraid of the earthquake"), in which she creates a carpet of hundreds of interlocking rubber spheres to form a terrain of very precarious stability. This she does suggesting at the same time strategies of camouflage, voyeurism and simulation against the constant evidence of perception. There then remains the possibility (another strategy...) that these works speak of the statute of the image, of perception, of reproduction or our most intimate precariousness in the world. And what if the one was a reflection of the other? In any case, and revisiting Galegati's diverse works, there would appear to be a recurrent sense of frustration, of unapproachable distance with regards to the image: the impossibility of crossing that threshold separating observers from players, spectators from the show. The only possibility appears to be to spy, imagine or hide oneself, countering "the impossibility of a frontal view of reality with the possibility of a lateral gaze" (Chiara Bertola). Or alternatively, like a juggler or an acrobat she herself impersonates in other works, to move in precarious equilibrium, ever on the edge of deception.