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Figures / Scenery

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At first sight it seems as if the image is not meant to be self-sufficient. Each fragment of diptych or triptych achieves harmony with its neighbour through a series of discordant chords, empty spaces, understatements, halts, ellipsoidal formulas, false adjustments. There are changes in focusing, moving from the relatively close-up to the far-removed, from an almost precise to a nearly hazy definition. Shifting from one viewpoint to another, the panels are linked together more by a kind of cinematographic editing than by any purely pictorial situation. The subjects, however, are perfectly easy to recognize : a man, a woman, a background. The actors are naked, the scenery is bare. All the necessary elements are there to replay indefinitely the old story of Adam and Eve, although in this new version there are several women and only (for the moment, it seems), one man : elements enough to compose a picture, although it isn’t really a painting. Although the characters and the places are right, it is obviously neither a fable, an allegory, nor a metaphor.

Elio Tisi himself would rather claim a membership with the metaphysical school ofthought, in the sense understood by Giorgio de Chirico, Filippo de Pisis or Carlo Carra in 1915. A silent and enigmatic universe, with just the necessary mystery surrounding the act of creation. In spite of the characteristic simplification of its architecture and the typical impression of emptinessfollowing dawn or nightfall, the truly symbolic atmosphere of unreality common to the work of Giorgio de Chirico and his followers is missing. The world that we are looking at seems to be ours, but owing to a subtle difference, it is almost impossible to understand. Could that be due to the colours, that are not quite right for this type of semi-realistic approach ? Or to the oppressive emptiness surrounding the figures ? Could it be the continuous stillness, that causes time to collapse in an almost cataleptic fashion ? It is neither a reality that can be experienced, nor a world of dreams, it doesn’t belong to the category of fables or morals and cannot be associated with the indecision and elaboration typical of open structures. Here are no characters in search of one or several authors, no open theatre, no script of which the spectator can become the hero. Elio Tisi doesn’t expect us to act in his stead, to manipulate empty shapes that are waiting for their future to appear.

It might be said that this “narration à minima”, that gives its title to the presentseries, is a fiction that doesn’t owe anything either to the painter or to the spectator. A fiction that doesn’t aim at the romanesque, but that exists just in order to supply an unfinished painting with an unfinished story. It could also be defined by the prevalence of drawing over colour, the latter being always clear-cut and organized in large, simple fields. The drawing is confined to the space between the figures and the background and to the obsessional (neither brushwork nor line) work engendered by the slow, repetitive technique. Even if the subject and the scenery can easily be identified, they do not refer to any particular place or person in Marseilles. They have become a concentration, almost a condensation, of a vision that, ignoring detail, goes straight to the essential. One might say that today the image is emptied of its ancestral capacity of bringing reality to life. It seems that a shift has occurred, that the image, that reality, have drifted towards a world of loss, deterioration and exhaustion of figurative information, that often looks false nowadays because of the over-abundance of detail. That the absolute image, the icon, is made only of a few brief but decisive notations, that bring sense to a coded script.

Of course, Elio Tisi doesn’t want to give an iconic sense to his work, the void that it contains is too great to allow that much importance to the figures. It is to be noted that the void in question is luminous, being neither time nor space. Speaking of Chardin, Alice Vincent – Villepreux writes : « The void becomes the force that binds or unbinds the composition. And the self, the empty space from whose hub all things stem, allows them to exist from their own view-point, » adding further on : « It is the air surrounding things that becomes the fullness of the universe » (1). The pictorial space becomes united to space itself, pushing back the limits of the drawing or the canvas, merging without any discontinuity one panel into another, unifying vision beyond the hitches and incidents of representation. Perhaps one could venture to say that the void is the subject that Elio Tisi is dealing with, that inhabits his ambiguous images in all their propositions, and explains why they are so often situated in intermediate worlds, worlds that are the breaches in which so many of today’s violent images, refusing to be miscast, can find refuge. This is why Elio Tisi’s “narration à minima”, covering the whole range of traditional subjects, from nudes to landscapes, from portraits to still life, finally escapes all classification.

The kind of universe that could easily find an echo in the words of Pascal Quignard : « A life exists that is hidden from the world. It is independent from the form of speech that “maintains” human beings together in society. There is a private part of the soul that possesses its own silent language » (2).

Like a deafening silence, one could add to conclude.

François Bazzoli
Art historian

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(1) in Alice Vincent – Villepreux ; « Ecritures de la Peinture », Paris : French University Press, 1994.
(2) in Pascal Quignard, « Petits Traités », Paris : published by Maeght, 1990.

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Places of nostalgic lightness

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Paper, as used by an artist. has always enjoyed a unique evocative power, often because what gets fixed onto it is the sublimation of a gesture that is close to the idea that generated it. This consideration applies to any type of paper that can respond to the expressive urgency of the moment. But there also exists the kind of paper that the artist chooses for a specific type of work: here comes into play a kind of tactile quality, a perceptual sensitivity, an opportunity to act. For Elio Tisi there is a need to summon an additional value that distinguishes and identifies him: for his refined compositions he always uses sheets made by the paper mills of Fabriano, the city where he was born, and with which he has remained closely linked, in part because of certain cultural affinities that emerge from his works. In this respect, if you observe the three diptychs in the exhibition, titled 'Thinking the place', you notice immediately, almost instinctively, how the essential lines of the landscape structurally remind one of the Giotto masterpieces in nearby Assisi, which have also come back to us through the metaphysical readings of Giorgio de Chirico and Carlo Carrà. The atmosphere has remained unchanged, even though the images have the timbre and formal contrast of a female nude. The uniform perceptual result is due to the extremely diluted acrylic paint which, through a myriad brush strokes, reaches a kind of pixellation of what is depicted. As Tisi says: 'By this method, the microscopic particles of acrylic paint spread automatically and evenly over the entire surface'.

In the triple sequence of 'Thinking the place' the realism of the nude color-blends with the architecture, and the girl‘s thoughts are materialized into an idealized reality that belongs to the order of harmony; the search for emotional contrasts that Tisi pursues in other occasions, transforms itself in the present embodiment into a dialectic as well as tonal convergence. it is his personal way of applying and binding the painterly substance onto the page that distinguishes his work, where gesture and intention run hand in hand, laying down layer after layer of a narrative that slowly captures the eye, turning it into an accomplice. It is a slow process of seduction that seems to retrace the patient steps of the author himself. Hence the shapes that are delineated in space coexist harmoniously with the geometric shapes that describe their essence, beyond the boundary line, in a time devoid of all humanly conceivable scale. Everything is sealed in the closed eyes of the three officiating figures, the sacred ritual of belonging to a place now lodged in their soul. And the delicate chromatic transition of these scenes bestows to those who contemplate them the quiet and magical scent of a dream.

A somewhat different concept seems to involve 'Marche di Carta', a collection of twelve works forming a polyptych of gestural fugues and moments fixed just before dissolving. The atmosphere does not change, only the way of evoking it. The distilled perfection of the sign, the careful investigation of a fleshy glazing to be delivered to a palpable body, or the repeated search for a structure to be entrusted to a certain order of composition, are now replaced by impulse, by shock, by the pleasure of surprise that catches the author himself at the very moment of birth of the event, while his hand seems to run ahead of desire for a moment. In this way Tisi's apparent amazement infects us and leads us immediately into his world. This time the story unfolds in notes, in successive expressions that explore connections of ideas that go beyond the order of timbre or construction with which these notes were compiled. This informal approach, characterized by rhythmic drips, informs images that are barely sketched, caught in their transformation or locked in the moment of revelation or even kept in a dreamlike context that makes them seem precious and mysterious to our eyes. The paper absorbs the substance while giving back to us the ghost of a desire or the scent of a certain nostalgia that encourages diving into a past destined for the pure bliss of moments that go beyond their memory. In such embodiments the fluid sequence of figures is consumed and renewed by the subsequent blossoming of butterflies, trees, fish and birds that exist in the desire of those who evoke them from the heart, and who are able to perceive them with the required sensitivity. Beyond the title, everything here will either be appropriated or remain foreign to us, depending on whether we are able to get attuned to the author of these visions. Only then will the bee loaded with a flower's nectar become the bee that we remember from our childhood, multiplying in the fields, much like the birds, blending into the green of the woods, or like the miracles that our imagination discovered or drew in the sky. Only then will the 'place', preciously preserved and dispensed with poetic lightness by Elio Tisi, also belong to us forever.

Luciano Caprile
Art critic

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Galerie du Tableau

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Exposition - 05 Juin au 17 Juin 2017 à la Galerie du Tableau, Marseille.
L’exposition « Elio Tisi » à la galerie marseillaise du Tableau met en lumière le lien entre photographie et peinture chez l’artiste italien. A travers les images produites par les miroirs, elle ouvre une interrogation sur le statut de l’art et de l’artiste.

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L’exposition « Elio Tisi » à la galerie du Tableau, à Marseille, mêle photographie et peinture de l’artiste italien qui vit et travaille dans la cité phocéenne. L’accrochage souligne l’importance chez celui-ci des photographies et des dessins dans l’élaboration de la peinture.

Elio Tisi : une démarche picturale nourrie par la photographie.
La pratique picturale d’Elio Tisi repose sur un minutieux travail par étapes qui repose sur d’autres médiums : la photographie et le dessin. Les trois disciplines sont chez lui liées et le tableau, plus qu’un aboutissement, constitue la reprise d’un thème, à la manière des répons dans les chants liturgiques. Les tableaux d’Elio Tisi, s’ils sont l’issue de sa démarche, portent en eux les photographies et dessins mêlés qui ont été les éléments indispensables à leur création. Ils ne les effacent pas car chez Elio Tisi, les étapes sont aussi cruciales que la conclusion et constituent pour ainsi dire des œuvres en elles-mêmes. C’est pourquoi l’exposition présente quatre photographies en regard du portrait d’une photographie.

Les images en miroir d’Elio Tisi interrogent le statut de l’art.
De cette façon, les œuvres d’Elio Tisi réaniment le débat autant scientifique que philosophique sur le statut des images qui sont produites par des miroirs. Ces images ont-elles une existence propre ou ne sont-elles que des reflets, c’est à dire des semblances d’autres images ? Plus globalement, elles ouvrent un questionnement sur le statut de l’art. Le miroir est en effet le parfait symbole de la fiction et de l’imagination. Si l’art est la production d’images en miroir, d’illusions et de contrefaçons, l’artiste devient le rival de Dieu.

Paris Art
Magazine d'art

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Galerie Mund'Art

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Elio TISI « Minima ». Exposition à l’Espace GT–MundArt du 09.11 au 01.12.2017 dans le cadre du festival ‘’La Photographie Marseille #7’’.

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Les dernières œuvres d’Elio Tisi ont pour sujet le cadre urbain, la ville ou plutôt des bouts de ville, voire des bâtiments singuliers.

Depuis l’antiquité, la ville a été représentée comme servant de cadre à un sujet, sur la colonne Trajane par exemple. Dans la peinture gothique la cité est devenue le sujet lui-même : Ambrogio Lorenzetti, Jean Fouquet etc.

Les représentations d’Elio Tisi ont une particularité qui les rapproche des œuvres de Giorgio de Chirico ou la figuration humaine est quasiment absente. Chez Elio Tisi elle l’est totalement comme tout autre élément anecdotique qui permettrait une datation.

Ces représentations minimalistes sont intemporelles et non situées. Elles renvoient à une réflexion sur le temps et, plus loin, sur la condition humaine et sa vacuité. « Ce qui passe nous fait spectateur. Ce qui reste nous fait passant » (Alain, Emile-Auguste Chartier 1868-1951).

Ce qui nous fait ’’rester’’ devant l’œuvre c’est l’évidente qualité plastique. Ici le jeu de lumière et d’ombre privilégie les ombres géométriques. Ces compositions sont élaborées et rien n’est dû au hasard des prises de vue.

Là où on verrait une série de photos une œuvre peinte vient malicieusement se glisser.

Nom d’une pipe ! On aura compris que le vrai sujet d’Elio Tisi, le motif de l’œuvre, c’est d’abord la peinture.

Alain Gromelle
Architecte urbaniste

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Once the figure has pushed the place out of the picture, can they still be said to belong together ?

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A woman, a man, part of a street, or a square. Two or three colours. A prevailing tone of ochre, in a greyish, acid monochrome. Even the pinks and the blues have a “greenish tinge”. The cool atmosphere of the painting, with a yellowish hue, is the result of a succession of washes, of a careful blending of infinitesimal touches of acrylic paint : at the end of a lengthy shading-off of its contours, done with a fine brush, it is defined (but not drawn) : it is the molecular attraction of the specks, their dancing immobile mass, that gives an impression of digitization. The image surges out of the vibration of the pixels, and the reflections captured in the sheet of glass could reinforce the impression that we are looking at a screen, without the presence of unmistakable signs of its pictorial nature, given by the texture of the paper, the frame and the presentation in diptych and triptych form.

Elio Tisi’s painting confuses the issues, and although from another viewpoint it is stripped to essentials, it plays on technical uncertainties, (the viewer’s first question is : “how is it made ?”) and relies successfully on the paradox created by the use of craftsmanship that is somewhere between tinkering and trade secrets, to suggest a world of high technology, of cyberspace and synthetic images. Or, to put it differently, how a far-removed pupil of Giotto enjoys turning the world upside-down and becomes infatuated with slowness in order to describe our high-speed era. Could irony be concealed beneath the serenity . Is there still time enough to feel anything ?As to strong emotions (the basic ones), what it is more like their impact – their cries, their fits, their grimaces – than a body divorced both from time and space and deprived of the use of speech ? Suddenly begins to look like always. “The sage, like the fool, has little to express”, wrote Albert Camus.

The genetic ambiguity of the images, due to the way in which they are made, is echoed by the ambiguity of their meaning, a meaning that in any case the painter refuses to impose. He merely speaks of “narrazione minima”…. The least that can be said is that the narrative is flimsy. It could even be said is that it ends just as it begins, like a man without self, who is about to get up and then sits down again immediately, because the purpose that he had in mind has disappeared in the interval. Who is that woman ? Who is that man ? First, we notice that they haven’t any clothes (I put it this way to signify that Tisi doesn’t in any way paint “nudes”) and that seated or standing, caught in what is hardly an attitude, they are alone. Each painting contains one human monad at the time. That floats, suspended in an unidentifiable environment. Neither the foreground nor the background help to dispel this neutrality : the bodies, apparently solid, could be either immersed in some homogeneous liquid or moving about in the air. In spite of this the figures are neither types nor allegories. The artist from one exception, if I am not mistaken), averted gaze. The heads and the hairstyles are not painted in the same manner as the bodies…In deference to Andy Warhol ? Therefore, these figures are those of people with a sexual identity, but who cannot be further identified because they have neither clothes, look (or expression), or behaviour that one can put a name to, nor surroundings (living or still). Someone is there. Waiting. The waiting is going to last. Time has come to a standstill inside a human body.

Space is apart, is given a separate treatment. The leading idea that directs this series of paintings is the separation – and the subsequent rearrangement in the polyptych form – of the subject and its surroundings… Far from placing his figures on an architectural background, the painter confronts figures without scenery with scenery without figures ; however, we know that both refer to a photographed reality (in this instance of Marseilles). In both cases Tisi pursues logical argument to its absolute limit, and in doing so turns it back to front : the figures abolish space, forbid any form of anecdote, thus “springing” into the foreground, into an intermediate world hesitating between hallucination and hyperreality (the viewer who has lost sight of them is tempted to turn round to make sure that they haven’t moved) : the perfectly empty urban scenery symbolising on the contrary absolute perspective. It reminds me of La Città Ideale (a panel that was for a long time attributed to Piero della Francesca) in the Galleria delle Marche, and of the “Urbino’s perspectives” (just before 1500) often referred to in specialised literature, sometimes as urban architecture, sometimes as a stage décor. It seems to me that Elio Tisi’s perspectives, precisely because of their vagueness, incorporate these features and find a new use for them. Together, they formulate a strangely disturbing question : “what is the world that we live in ?”.

An artist delivers no message. The bold idea of separating the figure from its background cannot be interpreted as an allegory of a dislocated universe. There is no doubt that the hiatus underlying the pictorial device is the result of artistic intention. For ages to paint, to write ( to engrave), also meant to inscribe / to circumscribe. A reassuring behaviour – because, real or figured, the world is the world.

So we have here a pictorial gesture that in its method (the suppression of outline and modelling) and in its aspect (the polyptych form placing face to face figures and scenery), subverts tradition in a very subtle manner and manages to pay homage to Giotto, to the Quattrocento, to Giorgio di Chirico, while paying its tribute to modernity in the way it captures its atmosphere. Tisi wants to paint and to represent : at the same time he is perfectly aware that the representation of reality, (“the painter’s duty”, according to and since the Della Pittura of Alberti) meant that the subject was self-assured and the world and its contents were stable. Therefore the artist’s delocalised figures and virtual scenery stem from artistic concerns that are necessarily related to the multiple interrogation of today’s humanity.

Michel Guérin
Philosopher

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