Wood York  1 - 30 dicembre 2009
text by Roberto Mutti

When photographing New York it is dificult to avoid the temptation of simply seeing it as the city of skyscrapers. One could object that there are plenty of areas of the city without skyscrapers or that it is by no means the only city to have them, but the relationship with New York is primtarily a psychological one and it seems impossible to resist those mesmerizing volumes and those high-rise, geometric skylines.

Through both her cultural training and her personal sensitivity, Alessandra Asta knows only too well what dangers lie in repetition and hence knows how to avoid it. Living in Venice one is exposed daily to the risks of what one could call ‘the visual pollution of beauty’ since it is precisely that which stimulates imagination and creativity which could result in being perceived as repetitive or mundane.

To a photographer, taking pictures of New York implies accepting a challenge, because the risk of being rhetorical lurks around every corner, just as it does in Venice - although obviously in an converse manner since the classic, slow beauty absorbed through leisurely strolls and the relections in the waters of the canals is replaced by trafic, movement, speed and the intense urban lighting of a city that never sleeps. It is certainly true that New York is an ever-changing city, yet somehow it never really changes; it is a self-suficient universe which, at the same, time reveals itself to the rest of the world as a chaotic place in which change never completely deletes traces of the past.

Observing New York means having the feeling of being at the heart of all contradictions and also of being aware that, in Hegelian terms, it is precisely through the conlict of opposites that a synthesis of the whole is both created and exceeds it.
Thus Alessandra Asta allows herself to be seduced by the charm of this modern maze, which is not simply made up of buildings, neon lights and avenues, but which also has strong cultural references. In fact, for anyone acquainted with the history of photography, every corner of this city is remindful of those famous shots, immortalised by well known photographers, that crop-up in our minds in no particular chronological order: 5th Avenue covered in snow by Alfred Stieglitz, the Empire State building in construction by Lewis Hine, the local shops by Walter Rosenblum, Harlem by Leonard Freed, the shimmering night scenes by William Klein and the more gruesome ones by Weegee, the close-ups of women’s faces by Diane Arbus and the street level shots of pedestrians’ legs by Lisette Model.

So much in fact, that it is impossible not to want to ind a way out of this visual
tangle. To do this Alessandra Asta has simply raised her eyes upwards and, in that simple gesture, has achieved just what she wanted. In order to get away from the ixed and insidious rules of the maze one has to know how to off-set the buildings themselves. What must be considered is not the logic of confusion, but the sharp shapes of the walls that deine it. The facades of the skyscrapers thus become screens on which the artist’s feelings are projected, relective surfaces that provide access to an unexpected inner dimension.To obtain this result the photographs must distance themselves from any possible smoothness – which brings with it the obvious result of lattening both the image
and its deeper meaning – striving to reveal another surface in order to give a new depth, consistency and intensity. This surface is made of wood: unpredictable, sinuous and natural, it juxtaposes the coldness of metal and the barrenness of glass but ends up blending with them. Alessandra Asta uses reined processes to create images with superimposed layers of different photographs. Often the outlines of one merge with those of another until they are no longer discernible, but in other cases, particularly in those images where glimpses of the sky can be seen, the image is deliberately ‘dirtied’ by marks that appear to be pictorial or graphic, even though they are not.

Thanks to the merging of these different layers and to the link that is created between the diverse materials, the photos take on a new strength of expression. Take ”Sciarpa” for example, in which the surface of the building, seen from below and framed by the close up of a sculpture, takes on an immense plasticity, emphasised both by the textile background and by the chromatic shades that tend, purposefully, towards a cold, pale-blue. Colour has an important role in this work and is emphasised in the “Incisions” series, in which the subject matter – skyscrapers - does not change but the emotional result varies according to which colour (black, white, grey or turquoise) is prevalent. Occasionally – and this is the case in “MoMA” – the architectural features are clean and linear and it is the second, partially hidden image - perhaps due to a knot in the wood - that provides the dynamism. Often, such as in “One Way”, the particular angle, lighting, and frame are more reminiscent of a Venetian building than a New York skyline although, in fact, the street signs clarify any doubts as to the location. More of a coincidence than a misunderstanding, as if a European and an American viewpoint had, for one instant, had the opportunity of converging on the same focal point. Or perhaps, more simply, Alessandra Asta wished to tell us that New York city is not just an American city, but a place we can all recognise as our own, where everything happens as if it had never happened before, where you feel that everyone has left a mark that is worth discovering - in point of fact this deinition would also be appropriate for the theatre.
These elements can all be found in “Skyline” where the green tones are juxtaposed with shades of grey and brown while, up above, the sky appears to be scratched with bolts of lightning while the photographer’s observant eye lights up some leaves in the foreground and just a few windows over there, in the background.