DE-CRYPTICart 2023

 

International Contemporary Art exhibition

2023 January, 12th

Concept by Art Curator Lisa Galletti

Human beings have a deep attachment to mystery. The unfamiliar tickles the imagination and ambiguity produces hypotheses; the enigma, on the other hand, is a puzzle for our minds. The unknown, in its broadest sense, ignites in us the spark of discovery and we love it. Why are we so attracted to the unknowable? Why does our mind constantly try to see beneath the surface of things? Isn't it easier to live in a crystal-clear world where no shadow lies beneath things? No. A simplistic and totally comprehensible view is not part of human nature. Man feels the need to search for what lies beneath the veil, he needs questions in order to know the world. On the other hand, since the very beginning, this continuous search for and solution to the unknown has led the human species to consolidate and proliferate over time: it is good to be 'attracted to mystery' for survival reasons: if you know the areas where you usually move, you can reduce the possibility of encountering surprises that are not entirely pleasant. The almost morbid attachment to the arcane, therefore, seems to be inherent in our consciousness from the dawn of our history and yet, is it only a matter of survival? Is the attraction to mystery simply a legacy of our evolution? No. It is not just that. The human being feels the need to know and unravel the shadows because he is aware that he does not know everything about the world. Knowing only what he knows, he is led to see reality as a single mysterious space where the energies and dynamics set in motion are not entirely clear and crystalline.

Centuries of philosophy have sought solutions to the great mysteries of life, the world and the otherworldly and, for centuries, the answer has been one: there are divine forces and figures that we must take for granted to explain the phenomena of the world unknown to us. Natural cataclysms, the cycle of life and death, and even disease were all things that referred to something as obscure and inaccessible as the divine. Thus, paradoxically, the unknown was explained by the unknown. This way of viewing the world persisted in principle until the developments of science and the arrival of the scientific method. Since then, many enigmas of the world and of life have found a solution based on non-empirical methods and our reality seemed to become more crystalline. But is this really the case? Not really. Our world is still full of enigmas, of 'unsolved cases', of mysteries that reason can only partially explain. There are essentially two reasons for this: science is constantly evolving and updating, and we continue, undeterred, to search for the mystery by banging our heads against it. It is inherent in our DNA. The element as transparent and clear as crystal holds within it facets and shadows that the human being is eager to unearth. It reels before the unknown, the mind quivers and cannot do otherwise.

Art itself is part of this. One of the few human actions not necessary for existence, it has developed and consolidated to the present day. Let us ask ourselves at this point how it has been possible for it to develop and endure even though it has never affected the quality and length of our lives. Perhaps because creating something out of nothing makes us comparable to gods? Possibly. Perhaps because making art allows us to narrate what is impossible to express through speech and writing? Certainly. Or does the solution lie in seeing art as a gigantic enigma? The latter is, predictably, the most fascinating of the three hypotheses. Everyone has their own motivation for creating art, everyone feels the need to 'make' without even knowing why. Only by creating do we take small steps to try to discover the motivation behind this desire to create, and only by creating do we unravel previously opaque and inaccessible areas of our soul. Art endures because it is itself an unknown force. Primordial energy springing directly from the innermost recesses of our consciousness, art is what is most obscure. And we are drawn to it, we are fascinated by the colour that moves and expands through our gestures; we are enchanted when the spark of creativity takes over and occupies all our thoughts. In those moments, art moulds us while we are trying to mould it. We try to tame this force unknown to us, but it is all in vain. An endless cycle of inspiration and creation; of searching for answers and formulating new enigmas, art will always remain a mystery. And that is the beauty of it. If this cycle had an end, the act of creating would not be so fascinating. All that yearning for the unknown that tickles the human soul would inexorably leave our limbs and art would be left to itself. Malleable colour would turn into granite rock and the spark of creativity and change would lie motionless, encased within that imperturbable skeleton. Stripped of its Maya's veil, art would no longer have any reason to exist. In this sense, M.A.D.S. Art Gallery wants to position itself as a tool to avert the lifting of the veil. "DE-CRYPTICart" wants to be a stratagem to advance and make inexhaustible that cycle of searching for answers and continuous formulation of new enigmas that only art, with its malleability and mysterious energy can create. "DE-CRYPTICart is deciphering the unknown and reformulating it; it is lifting the veil to sink into the bottomless abyss of art.