{"id":45579,"date":"2014-07-01T12:01:41","date_gmt":"2014-07-01T10:01:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/ritrarre-leffimero\/"},"modified":"2017-09-20T13:24:17","modified_gmt":"2017-09-20T11:24:17","slug":"ritrarre-leffimero","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.area-arch.it\/en\/ritrarre-leffimero\/","title":{"rendered":"ritrarre l\u2018effimero"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beaches thronging with holidaymakers, ski stations seething with skiers coming and going, swimming pools, discoth\u00e8ques packed with youths deafened by the music\u2026Massimo Vitali\u2019s photographs portray the rituals of modern-day entertainment and represent the chaotic arbitrariness (and hence \u2013 at least apparently \u2013 outside the norms) of fragmented rhythms of leisure, pleasure and relaxation. The freedom to not have to do anything, the temporarily granted possibility to suspend the regular rhythm of working life and to escape the necessity of doing in order not to do, be lazy, wander aimlessly, get bored, waste time\u2026, produce a disorderly temporal space, void of sense for society, inasmuch as unproductive. Vitali\u2019s images frame portions of landscape, only identifiable by the activities carried out in them and by the inhabitants who are temporarily invading that space, giving it connotations. So just as free time represents a productive void, a worthless interval in the production and work process, in the same way, the space which acts as a backdrop to the images makes no sense if deprived of the people occupying it. The leisure spaces are in fact places without identity, if uninhabited; they are spaces of \u201climit\u201d, suspended places waiting to be occupied in order to take on their meaning, that can be indistinctly placed within the public or private social sphere, among the fantasies of desire, dreams and the tangible possibility of experience. The presence of the city or production works, which often act as a backdrop to Vitali\u2019s images, emphasizes the contrast of this ephemeral world with the real world of everyday life, transforming the physical space into a magical place, a theatre of the absurd, where the spontaneous actions of characters which animate the scene is banal and at times indecipherable. The large dimensions of the images, which develop over lengths of metres, portray a very detailed composition of a series of numerous microcosms, in which the observer can conjure up memories of similar experiences already encountered in potentially analogous places, although not necessarily the same. The multiplicity of focal points in the scene, the apparent randomness in the framing of the picture, and the absence of a hierarchical order among the figures portrayed and the almost stereotyped banality of their gestures, stimulate the observer\u2019s curiosity and lead him or her to look instinctively for narrative links among the subjects. But a logical sequence is continually escaping, always referring back to that disorder, which we are undeniably fascinated by and which offers us the ephemeral opportunity to cut out a temporal space in our lives that is free from financial and social conditioning. Vitali\u2019s photos tell of this desire, white and undefined just as in our dreams.<\/p>\n