Alessandro Busa’ – Exit Wounds and the Abyss of Memory

Alessandro Busa’ approaches the act of creating a painting in a rather personal and peculiar fashion, one that could be defined as ‘sculptural’ in its nature: his works are first and foremost the outcome of a careful process of physical manipulation of the canvas, which develops through a systematic deconstruction of some of its key elements (its structure, for example) as much as through the transformation of the very same.

Alessandro Busa’ carefully sculpts his paintings into shape, inflicting stab-wounds to the surface of the canvases, smearing them with paint, ripping them with sandpaper, literally ‘beating up’ each piece until the right abrasion, cut or injury comes to light on the surface of the work. The process is carefully executed until the perfect wound is finally achieved: these wounds take different forms and are either physically performed (as in the case of the Flashsteels and Respirazione Branchiale series, both inspired by the abyss and its inhabitants) or only subtly suggested, as for the earlier works such as Lamiera (1994) or Fulmine (1995).

The edges and the frames of the paintings are similarly intervened upon, therefore becoming actively included in the piece as an equally important element of it; the canvases are thorn apart so that they literally explode in a million fragments, investing the physical space of the painting as a whole. There are no boundaries to Busa’s work, as most of his pieces literally ‘explode’ outside of the traditional ‘edges’ of the canvas, in an explosive fashion: the frame of each piece is no longer used as a mean to delimit the space of the work, but functions as a support for the painting itself to develop further, outside of its own boundaries, in an epidemic of colours and cuts. This is part of a deliberate attempt to deconstruct the work of art into its most simple and primal elements and to overcome the very conceptual limits that the idea of ‘painting’ implicitly suggest.

In works such as Voodoo (1995), or Totem (1999), Busa’ plays on the distinction between artwork and artefact, creating a totem of sort which appears to exist suspended in the limbo separating the sacred, the commodity and the artwork: the ‘sacrality’ of art is pushed one step ahead, up until the point of conferring to the object/artwork a different kind of sacred character, one of a religious kind. But in making the connection between the icon, the totem and the artwork, Busa’ also subverts the distinction between object and work of art, willingly orchestrating an encounter and a fusion between these two supposedly oppositional concepts. The two merge and can no longer be distinguished. With most of his works, Alessandro Busa’ seems to distance himself from the typical position of the artist, assuming that of the ‘artisan’, the role of the craftsman, as the preferred standpoint from which he chooses to develop his work.

Further references to the theme of the sacred can be found in Busa’s habit of inserting peculiar elements (such as found objects) inside his paintings: this is the case with the offerings to the deities (ex votos) employed in the series Champagne Molotov, a series that certainly represents the peak of the process of deconstruction of the canvas and rehabilitation of the frame as painting surface which characterises Alessandro Busa’s work as a whole. This process of critique and deconstruction of the painting space is traceable back since the artist’s very first works and has progressively assumed an increasingly violent and evident character, up until the point where the act of bringing back to light the frame of the work demands the complete obliteration from sight of the canvas.

In the Icons series, and in particular in works such as Icon 1: The Great Mazinger (1999) or Icon 3: Dash, Busa’ employs displaced elements, signs and icons of contemporary culture removed from their original context, in order to create a contrast between these and the context where they are being placed, and so as to establish a connection to a long-lost past or another moment of history. The Icon series, in particular, is a celebration of the eighties and its most characteristic symbols (cartoons, objects of everyday consumption and so on), through an ironic rewriting of the very same, and introduces another of the most important themes of Busa’s work, that of memory and history, a theme which is absolutely central to the artist’s latest works.

The Berlin series, developed from 2000 onwards during the artist’s prolonged stay in the German capital, is indeed an investigation into the themes of memory and history focusing on the presence of ghostly images related to both modern history and religion within the urban environment of the city of Berlin. These works, building on the experience of the Champagne Molotov series and recuperating some stylistic solutions from earlier works such as I Love U, I’d Kill You…but I’ll Love You Forever (1996), present a technical evolution of sort, with the multiplication of the details and of the objects inserted within the space of the painting, and the peaking of the process of ‘skinning’ of the canvas which I already illustrated above: in this series we witness the bare frame of the painting becoming the actual artwork alongside the complete removal of the surface usually devoted to painting. In this series, through the juxtaposition of photos, steel, paint and object from the sphere of everyday, Busa’ questions the role of memory in contemporary society, by evoking a series of ghostly presences permeating each work with a melancholic and spooky aura.

Although experimenting with different media and materials during the course of development of his career Alessandro Busa’s has strived to achieve, since his very early works, a reduction of the formal component of the work of art, and an exaltation of the most primal, emotional and instinctive approach to the creative process as a whole.

Alessandro Busa’s paintings meet their injuries in the process of being given birth to, while the artist perseveres in his violent attack against the structure of the artwork, butchering his creations until the perfect, definitive, lethal stab-wound has finally been inflicted.

Albert Hofer

This article is © Albert Hofer (2005), no parts of this document can be reproduced without the author’s permission in writing.

Alessandro Busa’ can be contacted at: alekvelasco@hotmail.com

Albert Hofer can be contacted at: info@channel83.co.uk, or alberthofer@gmail.com