| |
Stefano Nicolini
The Antithesis
[Swimming Pools (Piscine)]
2009
Colour slide 35 mm, printed on Hahnemuehle Baryta paper
100 x 67 cm
Provided by the artist - Stefano Nicolini
LL/37557
After so much colour, here is a quieter photograph which finds its completion in the symmetry between the two divers' legs. The full muscularity of their bodies is counterparted by the slightly sketched profile in the foreground of a judge with a red jacket and a white cap. His eyes are on the athletes which does not cause us to avert ours from their action. The scene is dominated by various shades of blue with no other chromatic distractions. This makes the marriage with the liquid world, celebrated with the divers plunging into the water, even more absorbing and total. Such basis enables a return to the natural element which I personally long for, giving meaning and accomplishment to Piscine [Swimming pools].
The antithesis, which is the title of this photo, is symbolized by the light which illuminates the legs of the first athlete and by the shadow which envelopes those of the second. It indicates contradiction, a recurring state of our way of acting and of being. A condition which hits the thinking man too, and therefore something which human nature cannot avoid.
The entering into the water of the diver on the left is made solemn by the glimmering halo enveloping him and created by the splashes of water. It is as if the purpose is to find some kind of purification from the fault of falling into contradiction with ourselves.
But the fact that the diver on the right, shadow and alter ego of the first, follows him into the liquid world in which he is searching for purification, drops the hint that there is no possibility to be redeemed from the fault of contradiction.
Stefano Nicolini (July 2010)
| |
LuminousLint 
@LuminousLint