Notes

Marrying the application of data to more expressive gestural acts, Marco Cianfanelli aims to set up a tension or dialogue between the controlled, accuracies of the digital realm and the uncontrollable realities of being human. The silhouettes of human figures appear repeatedly in relation to other shapes or forms pointing to unexpected connections between social forces. Spheres - Future, Past and Present, I-VII, in particular, refer simultaneously to microscopic, visceral and celestial forms. Our desire to grasp our own humanity is precariously formed from an engagement between our sense of individuality and our location within a greater species, on a singular planetary body.¹

“Collapsing the categories and conventions that sort our experience, he strives to invent forms that bring together [his] thoughts in relation to economics (statistics, values and economies of scale), geography (resources, place and ownership) and emotion (self, psychology and chemistry). Key to his practice is an attempt to give shape to the convergence of multiple kinds of data, knowledge and experience, asserting the interrelatedness of all things. His work explores social hierarchies and channels of consumption as they relate to aspects of human desire, value, beauty and material relationships”.²

1. Alex Dodd (2009) Marco Cianfanelli: Absent Fields, Johannesburg: Goodman Gallery.

2. Ibid.

Exhibited

Goodman Gallery, Johannesburg, Marco Cianfanelli: Absent Fields, 1 October to 24 October, 2009.