from "Re-Image the Imaginable"
by Gianluca Marziani
Chiostro del Bramante, 2012, Roma, Italy:
...
Ax Aler always starts from existing images. Whether they belong to others or to himself is unimportant, what does matter is the typology of the selected images and their transformation into a new original. The crucial moment concerns the characteristics of the single images and their silent dialogue within the global vision of the author. What counts is the internal weight of the violent scenes, the prophetic tension of the narrated drama, the iconographic force of cathartic action. But what counts as well is the totality of the artist’s work, the pros and cons between the parts, the “dangerous” relationships between stories and contexts. The distance between the most poignant works and female portraits doesn’t change the perspective: because even here you feel the dizziness of cause and effect that flows from work to work, you perceive a common white noise that brings them to life, an emotional power which does not leave you indifferent.

The artwork raises questions
The artwork sparks reactions
Navigation, selection, sharing: three steps in order to reach the linguistic short-circuit, the last step that defines the grammatical strategy within the abovementioned transformation. A first mutation concerns the emphasis on a new original, obtained with enlargements, focusing, varied alterations. A second mutation instead, takes us in the linguistic short-circuit, in the quest for a language that can re-read the starting image. In Ax Aler’s case, the subject is painting and design, archetypes of the visual narration, that the artist shapes with elegance and precision, by placing the original photo in the aura of technical perfection, within the metaphysics of the figurative look, in the warm zones that Gerhard Richter let us love with his radical paintings. In some artworks, Ax Aler places two languages alongside each other within the same work, fusing drawing and photography on the refined Hahnemhule paper, with astonishing results that affect our perception of reality.

I don’t want to speak of each dramatic context in which we are catapulted by the images. The description of reality must remain a pictorial archetype a sort of universal echo that questions the user, placing him in a state of doubt. I like the atmosphere created by Ax Aler, through his demanding manualism, the moral pathos of the framing choices, the non-didactic energy that supports the entire project. You never have the feeling of a figurative documentary, but that of a realistic fiction, recreated through excessive use of disciplined drawing, free of academics, direct though transversal. Let us not forget that only painting allows the transformation of reality into an internal reality, elevating life to a sharable and universal virtuality.

Browse the artwork and create your ideal photomontage.
Imagine a before and an after for every image.
Add a story to each artwork. Your own idea of a story.
Follow the questions that the paintings suggest.
Rebuild idealistically the work in every different way.
When the artwork allows you to do all this, the project is doing its job. … Read More