There are many rules why it is difficult to make a space, a dead zone in which to stay. In the zone there is no risk of being checkmated, but an aura that stops you crossing the perimeter.
Although these reflections by Stefania Galegati refer to a particular work – La zona (1999), a sort of enormous, bulky table whose stability depends on the weight of the support and of the wheels on which it is mounted – they can be applied to other works. The so-called dead zone constitutes a place not created, not drawn from the spatial context, which is on the contrary regulated by the customary rules of life and by the volumes of the body. The zone , too, can be crossed, but according to other rules, another order of principles, of viewpoints, on this occasion raised, different. It becomes a non-neutral space that we could define as a system of difference with respect to the everyday viewpoint, which already has an almost pre-defined framework of relations, due if not else to the need for distraction.
For some time now Stefania’s works have been centered on the distance between reality and fiction, between the uninterrupted fluidity of life and the aesthetic suspension of the still life, sought after and constructed. The artist has always created a shadowy zone for herself, a special viewpoint which is neither within reality, with the creation of works intended as additions to reality, nor completely outside it; the reality from which her works derive exists, but it is never reproduced through a simple mimetic procedure. Perhaps the initial problem lies precisely here, in the impossibility of arresting reality in order to examine it carefully: rather than giving up, it is worth making an attempt – an extremely poetic attempt – to metaphorise this limit. The shadowy zone is placed in a space in between, in a sheltered place where there is no risk of being checkmated ; it represents the only possibility to look with detachment, sometimes with a strong sense of irony, at that which moves around us. The depictions of a black-and-white reality (Fate silenzio, 1998), the series of images of objects suspended in the air, as if caught by an improbable gust of wind (Rewind, 1997-2000), right up to Shy Hamburger(1999), a video in which the people, arranged around tables for lunch or dinner, are filmed as if caught in a sudden freeze-frame, they represent a distance, an impossible immobility, in which the only thing to hold onto is not reality – which cannot be verified – but the eye of the artist, the only element which still guarantees an experiential datum. In Senza titolo (2000), too, a sculpture depicting a Samurai whose belly contains radioactive material, there is a more violent actuation of the distance between the concrete datum and that which I believe, between reality and the mental image I have of something or the information I possess. For the sake of accuracy (?), or to mirror the substantial lack of perfection in nature, all her works maintain an element that is out of place, a trace – whether it be the imprecision of the make-up, something that in any case always has a powerful sense of seduction, or a reflection of the dribble that supports the objects – that calls back into doubt the certainty that we cannot possess or know what we are faced with, except very approximately. In Shy Hamburger it is the vitality of the camera that restores a guarantee of reality; it is, however, the batting of an eyelid, a half- smile, cigarette smoke rising into air, which constitutes the true wunderkammer, which draws our attention to those imperfections of reality which in normal circumstances we would struggle to recognize. It is therefore an act of art, substantiated for Galegati by the viewpoint of the shadowy zone, which restores the complexity of reality, exalting the variables of inconstancy, imperfection, and contrast. Another reflection with regard to some works is the presence of a continuous reworking of data belonging to the history of art: these are not referred to directly, but with ironic nonchalance, in a play of allusions. In Piano (1995), the photographic image seems to refer to the images of Giuseppe Chiari’s concerts, with which it probably only shares the subtle aim of the Fluxus program to mix together elements of reality and art, and the video Shy Hamburger also presents references to Renaissance versions of the Last Supper in its iconography, and to Flemish art in its perfect, almost pictorial rendering of elements frozen under the light. Accentuating this sensation that we are face to face with a painting, if it were not for the imperfections mentioned above, is the immobility of the scene and the choice of the iconographic theme, which annul the distance between the viewer and the work and thus develop a hallucinated perception, almost an example of Stendhal’s syndrome. As well as this relation to the high tradition of the history of art, in many of Galegati’s works we also sense the presence of a narrative thread, a pleasure in story-telling. This narrative intention is evident in some of the works mentioned above, and also in recent works such as the Senza titolo series (2000), photos that present the outline of a dwarf cut out on the back of a wooden bed or on one side of a chest of drawers, in which the presence-absence of these beings derives from the imprint of their bodies on the hollow of a mattress, and in the folds of the clothes put away. The same intention is also evident in the video Dove si racconta di profondi sospiri e lunghi pensieri (2000), where two caterpillars face up to each other in a sort of courtly tournament. The power of the shadowy zone returns here, in the disturbing presence of beings which do not come from the real world, at least that defined by custom, nor from somewhere outside the real world, but from a space in-between. The dwarves, presences which in themselves are unusual, leave evident and ambiguous traces; the caterpillars acquire a fantastic dimension as humanized machines: as the artist points out, ancient stories can’t be trusted.