ART CITIES:Madrid-Michael Fliri

Subtle and nuanced, the art of Michael Fliri exists on the thresholds between performance, sculpture, photography and video. In his practice, which cannot be subsumed under any single heading, he investigates concepts such as metamorphosis, mutation and disguise: the protagonists in his work – often Fliri himself – time and again undergo a process of transformation. Body, landscape, a thought-out theme and imaginative metaphors together form a compelling whole.

By Efi Michalarou
Photo: : Italian Cultural Institute of Madrid Archive

Michael Fliri in his solo exhibition “La luz nunca ve una sombra” presents a selection of more than twenty works whose realization ranges from 2007 to the very latest results of his experimentation. In each of the exhibition rooms of the Italian Cultural Institute in Madrid , specific series of works are collected, unified into three major possible fundamental themes in its path: Sala de Exposiciones “Landscape”; Sala de los Espejos “Identity; Belvedere “Luce” room. The works exhibited in the Sala de Exposiciones lead us to the artist’s areas of origin, South Tyrol. From “My private fog I” (2014) to the series “My private fog II” (2017) the step is natural. Fliri has made masks in semitransparent material, each with the shape of a mountain range or natural crystals collected by him in his walks in the mountains. Wearing it, the image of the artist’s face is transformed, it becomes less and less recognizable depending on how long it has been worn and, therefore, the condensation has transformed its surfaces into images that recall glaciers and snow-covered rocky slopes. The work “The skin of an image” is also linked to the stones and their image, or rather the image of their “epidermis”, where the reproductions of the subject generated by the four lateral elements originate from the photograph of the stone in the center. transparencies of his immaterial and transparent mold. In the Sala de los Espejos there is the complete series of “All right… All right” (2007), the oldest work on display. This is linked to the subsequent developments on the face that led Fliri to “My private fog I” in 2014, in which he continues the study of the possible metamorphosis of his face using an element that he will also use in the following years: the mask made of semitransparent material. From these works we move on to the recent images of “Stargazer (Self-portrait)” (2020) in which Fliri uses analogue means to arrive, with the amazement of discovery, at a visual language that recalls digital and that allows associations with biometric measurements or simulations. of the post-human body. In the Belvedere Room there are three recent series of Fliri. The photographs “AniManiMism” (2017) derive from the homonymous four-channel video installation in which the artist’s hand animates, in each projection, a translucent mask. ight and shadows are also the protagonists of the series “The light never sees a shadow” (2018) which gives the exhibition its title. Here Fliri creates photographs of three-dimensional masks – always created through thermo-forming – of plaster sculptures with different surface structures. These “new presences” are then crossed by light sources of different colors. Shadows that cast on the background as a copy of the image multiply. These presences and their shadows seem to merge into a single object. The resulting shots are the expression of the fascination that light and its magical effects exert on the artist. The thought goes to the myth of Plato’s cave and the question of the essence or appearance of our perceptions makes its way as an interpretative hypothesis. “Hand” (2021) is the most recent work in this exhibition. Always starting from casts of her body, in this case of the hands and forearm, playing with lights and liquids poured into these forms, Fliri gives life to images that are once again able to amaze with their evocative power and create a sort “Analog radiography of the image / sculpture”. The exhibition ends with the projection of the audiovisual work “Polymorphic Archetypes” (2018) which revolves around the principle of Chinese shadows, in strong connection with the series exhibited in the Belvedere Room . Here too a dialectical relationship is created between light and shadow, analogue and digital, archaic and contemporary. This continuous overlapping of possible faces finds a constant counterpoint in the sounds generated by the Belgian musician Koen Vermeulen. What happens when a mask is masked, when a mask is superimposed on another and then another and these planes are confused and absorbed?

Photo: Michael Flirim, My private fog II, 2017, Color photograph, 83 x 123 cm framed Photo: Rafael Kroetz, © Michael Flirim, Courtesy the artist, Italian Cultural Institute of Madrid and Galleria Raffaella Cortese

Info: Italian Cultural Institute of Madrid, Calle Mayor 86, Madrid, Spain, Duration: 8/7-30/9/2021, Days & Hours: Wed-Thu 12:00-20:00, https://iicmadrid.esteri.it