Of the Surface of Things

Asher Liftin (New York, 1998) returns to Alessandro Albanese Gallery, after his first solo international exhibition in Milan. This time the artist elaborates a new exhibition project curated by Anna Vittoria Magagna, which will open on December 17, 2022 in the Matera venue. 

The title of the exhibition Of the Surface of Things comes from the poem by Wallace Stevens, in which the poet reflects on the observation of the world and “the surface of things”, to literally quote the title, in two ways by reality and imagination, a dualism at the center of Liftin's research. The poet metaphorically dresses himself in the cloak of imagination, obscuring the real world and seeing the elements of nature appearing in different colors. From this awareness of renewed representation, Liftin's figures emerge with a visual search with a broad index: as photographs found or taken personally by the artist and from media icons, such as television or film. The works in the exhibition emphasize their provenance by repurposing the textures of digital photography in painting, similar to fragments of pixels, or bright film filters.  

Subjects are often simple and familiar, reworked digitally, and stripped of their iconographic references to transition into painting. Such example of figure is visible in the Torso in Torque which is a late nude by Picabia; in the Still Life of Fruit and Pistachios, whom subject is a photograph by the artist; and in Flower in Turcato, in which the still life is circumscribed within a gestural trace on the canvas. Gesture plays protagonist again in the diptych The Conformist, in which the image from Bertolucci's film is overlaid with a grid, imitating a sketch drawn, perhaps by the letter carrier, on a package delivered to the artist to erase his address. Asher Litin focuses on synthesizing visual stimuli as information, concepts and knowledge. Of the Surface of Things creates a forest of heterogeneous signs in constant tension between imagination and reality, in which the relationship among image, symbol, and gesture are lenses of the world. In this sense imagination becomes a tool of knowledge, and art the space of questioning our reality.