Sergio Ragalzi | FAIRY TALES AND BEDTIME STORIES
From 01/04/2022 To 06/05/2022
Insomnia is the cycle of works that Sergio Ragalzi created in the early 90s, developing his research through the tools on which the condition of dissatisfaction relating to the quality or quantity of sleep is consumed: beds and pillows. The hallucinatory dimension of the lucid dream of the Turin artist's work therefore returns, the atmosphere of the lugubrious tale, of the "black man" who kidnaps sleepless children, of the three owls on the chest of drawers, of the forest and its dangers, of evil witches who they want to grow old, gothic and nocturnal atmospheres. But also of sleep that lasts decades, that fairy-tale condition of vigilant torpor evocative of depression, which in everyday life often shows a sleep altered in its quantitative and qualitative aspects and deprived of its qualities of recovery and rest. And generally it is not the prince's kiss that wakes us up and saves us.
If in My Bed by Tracey Emin, a work from 1998, resulting from four days in bed after breaking up with her boyfriend, the traces are those of an explicit reaction to pain (crumpled sheets, cigarette butts, empty vodka bottles, used condoms ), in Ragalzi's beds (1993), the testimony is the combustion of one's feelings, a black pile of slag of resistance to the monster, to the craft of living to put it in Pavese style. And as always, there is no consolatory mechanism in the result but the attempt, once again salvific, to estrange oneself from oneself, almost to rise and observe oneself from above, the pain transformed into ashes and tar, which accumulates and stratifies, night after night.
When David Lynch challenged his most loyal fans (including yours truly) with Inland Empire, a reporter asked him: "But why all those bunnies?" he replied: “The film is mine and I put as many rabbits in it as I want”.
Ragalzi's predatory insects have populated his daily life since the 1980s, on canvas, in iron, painted on the walls. They are everywhere and we have learned to live with them, as well as our phobias. They are also present on one of the cushions on display (installation of various pieces, 1993), and it is another bed that I am thinking of, namely the one in Robert Smith, in the video of that 1989 masterpiece which is Lullaby, accompanied by an obsessive and metaphorical ticking of a clock, is swallowed by a spider.
And I feel like I'm being eaten
By a thousand million shivering furry holes And I know that in the morning I will wake up In the shivering cold.
On show in Milan, from 1 April to 6 May 2022, an installation of two beds and some pillows both from the Insomnia cycle and some insects that will crawl on the ground and on the wall.
A partially off-topic thought comes to mind regarding the modern methodology of falling asleep and entertainment: if fairy tales and lullabies are recited to induce sleepiness in children, what is the method used with today's adults who live in a society regressed to pre-puberty? adolescent? With the replacement of the fairy tale, or the TV series, which with the mechanism of the next episode, to be clicked on the bottom right without wasting time, replaced the request for "one more, one more mother"...