/ Responsive Vision: Getulio Alviani

Responsive Vision presents notable works by Getulio Alviani throughout his life. In the second half of the 20th Century, Italy contributed to breakthroughs in innovative art. Works of Responsive Vision were selected throughout about two decades, especially between the 1960s and 1980s. During this period, Italy, owing to its great economic growth and visionary creativity, brought revolutionary innovations in various fields, leading the country becoming the world’s seventh largest economy, with accomplishments in industrial design, fashion, architecture, filming industry, technology, and art.

Art presents the essence of culture and ideas. In addition to providing information, it also initiates interactions that are insightful and creative. In fact, the difference between “ocular seeing” and “vision” is that vision is a perceptual process involving imagination. Responsive Vision explores the limits of viewers’ perception, shows the boundaries of that perception, breaks those limits, and creates new opportunities for future developments. It is under this concept that Responsive Vision is planned. What is fascinating about the event is not only the visual composition of space with poetic elegance, but also the contrast that comes from the highly expressed of light in a world of disciplines with sentiments. These elements pave the way into a refined physical space from which viewers could re-examine the inertia and routines in daily life that can probably be reshaped.

Struttura speculare a elementi quadri, ALIEN Art Centre © ALIEN Art

The exhibition brings together elements including Bauhaus, Goethe’s theory of colors, and Op Art for viewers to experience the intellectual joy brought by Alviani’s works. In a very interesting way, these rational studies have one thing in common, which is shifting the purpose of human existence onto a deep and direct gaze into reality. That being the case, scientific analysis is only a tool of logic with which people understand that insight of reality, while art comes into direct contact with reality through perception. Alviani’s art allows viewers’ visual perception to be part of the work where they go through a journey of understanding light, colors, and perceptual behaviors.

This exhibition displays eight of Alviani’s notable series: Tensione, Superfici a testura vibratile, Rilievo speculare a elementi curvi, Struttura speculare a elementi quadri, Cerchi virtuali, Volumi, Poligoni, inscritti nel cerchio, and Cromie and Spettrocromie. These projects use light, as a material, to generate new shapes. Each volume or object is an example of a problematic resolution of his research.

Cerchi virtuali -compenetrazione, ALIEN Art Centre © ALIEN Art

Rilievo speculare ad elementi curvi, ALIEN Art Centre © ALIEN Art

The blue of the sky teaches us teaches us how light can constantly change. Light affects hue; colors neutralize other colors or alter them; illusions and parallax can dominate perception, and so on. These insights gained from natural phenomena show us that the same color will advance, retreat, vibrate, or deform, due to changes in its surrounding colors; the same goes to physical space, as it also produces different shades and layers of darkness due to different incident angles of light. Should a person possess keen perception, it no longer matters to stick to the meaning of objects on the surface; instead, they should follow the rules and their instinct in manipulating color and light, which is the key to sharpening the brain through viewing these works. Although most people still expect to find some kind of meaning that can explain what they are seeing, it is that time that they must practice paying attention to the signals and natural responses coming from within their body. For instance, viewers could follow the sequence expanding in certain directions progressively, witness sublimity within the symmetry, and experience the fullness or sharpness of the volume from the distribution and shades of the colors.

ifty-fifty a e b serigraphy. 1962, 42x84 cm © Centro Studi e Ricerche Getulio Alviani, ALIEN Art Centre© ALIEN Art

Alviani’s skillful arrangements of aluminum and steel made the most of light as an plastic element that gives life to new shapes that change through the light continuously. It was unprecedented in the history of art, where light, used as a material, can be serialized and transformed into an art form that has rhythm, thus inspiring a new way of thinking where art can become an experience. To this day, the contemporary nature of Alviani’s works continues to guide viewers in feeling the rhythm and momentum of such an ideal world through his process of creation.