Through a repetitive and almost maniacal process of manipulation, Stefano Arienti transforms commonplace objects of everyday life, including telephone books, comic strips, train schedules, and posters, into  sculptures that, maintaining the fragile and ephemeral appearance of the medium employed and demonstrate the artist ’s interest in the communicative potential implicit in widely disseminated images belonging to popular culture. It is precisely the images that are most popular, in that they are broadly disseminated and thus more recognizable, that present an occasion for a completely personal reworking. Using small gestures, such as folding the pages of a book, obliterating parts of a poster, or tracing over an outline and preserving only a few aspects, the artist intervenes specifically with the immediate recognizability of the icon, creating a perceptual dislocation in the viewer and attenuating the power of the image to communicate.
In Clint, 1994–95, following one of his most common practices, Arienti creates an intervention by erasing parts of a poster of the actor Clint Eastwood, partially distorting the original image. By transforming a well-known movie personality into a subject with a completely different appearance, the face disturbingly disfigured, Arienti utilizes the entire expressive power of the image, revealing the weaknesses and insecurities of contemporary society.
Chimica organica (Organic Chemistry), 1988, takes as its starting point an old university textbook, the pages of which have been folded and stapled to form a long snake-like form. Positioned in different ways, depending on the exhibition space, this anthropomorphic sculpture continually changes its shape to adapt to the space it occupies, in an almost Darwinian process. The work ’s playful appearance contrasts with the methodical and destructive process inflicted by the artist on the book.
In his focus on the methods used to create art, Arienti acknowledges the influence of Arte Povera and Process Art,and especially the work of Alighiero Boetti.
In Senza titolo (Untitled), 1991–92 (not reproduced), the process by which Arienti has manipulated the thirty slide images that make up the work is even more evident.
Intervening directly on the slides with scratches, holes, and burns, he has totally transformed the preexisting images.
City views, flowers, still lifes, and photographs from Arienti ’s most private and personal life are methodically destroyed by the artist almost tortured through a modus operandi that, while preserving the violence of the gesture, still retains the delicacy and intimacy characteristic of all his work.

[C.O.B.]

• 

  A Room of One’s Own

  Curated by Marcella Beccaria Taking its inspiration from Virginia Woolf’s homonymous essay (1929), the exhibition A Room of One’s Own is a reflection on the positive value of solitude and its importance in the creative realm. Immersing viewers in spaces…

• 

  Italian painting from italian collections

  Curated by Giorgio Verzotti Painting is one of the languages through which the art system confirms its tradition. In contemporary artistic practice pictorial jargon is no longer resolved through its own self-legitimization, but is debated thanks to interventions that can…

• 

  Collezionismo a Torino (collecting in Turin)

  This exhibition illustrates the importance of private collecting in Italy, which is sometimes shrewder and more astute than its public counterpart in discovering ever-new contributions to the development of contemporary art history. The public is presented with a selection of…