"Accepting to see oneself aligned to an infinite process means not mystifying the work behind the illusion of a future freedom, but grasping it as particular, out of time. Gianni Anselmo's work seems to highlight this infrastructural state, which liquefies the reality of aesthetic research into a whole, anonymous and contingent, to give it a radical indeterminacy..."
Germano Celant on Anselmo, from the Arte All'Arte I catalogue, 1996
Giovanni Anselmo participated in Arte all'Arte I, invited and curated by Laura Cherubiniwith an installation inside the balcony of the Palazzo Comunale in San Gimignano.
"In the structure he eats there are two granite blocks tied together, the baby does not fall until the pressed salad in the middle loses its volume along with its freshness (to maintain balance, vegetables must be frequently replaced). It is a work on the ephemeral, where the perishability of the vegetable world can cause the situation to change. The balance achieved by the forces in tension is always precarious. The element of weight is accompanied by that of colour: Greys that lighten towards ultramarine are pairs of bound and suspended stones, mounted on the wall like paint, while 'ultramarine', as Lea Vergine notes, indicates both colour and place. The fact is that Anselmo continues in his attempt to neutralise the law of gravity, as in the work entitled Lightened Stone: "By a certain law of physics, the stone, moved away from the centre of the earth, is imperceptibly lightened, and it is therefore to be thought that, transported higher up to a certain point in the universe, for example the sun and the earth, it totally loses its weight and can perfectly identify with the idea of flight. [...]
And so we come to While Colour Raises Stone and Stone Raises Colour with the pair of stones hanging from a window. In this case, however, in the city of towers, the stones tied with a taut cable are suspended from the parapet of the balcony of the courtyard of the 13th-century Palazzo del Comune. It is not the moment of flight that interests the artist, but the tension towards flight. Higher and higher, the subtraction of weight, albeit minimal, will perhaps one day allow the stones to soar into the air."
Laura Cherubini, Arte all'Arte I, 1996
