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"LIGHT TREATMENT" München 2008

Curator:
Tiziana Gazzini

Proposed and organized by
La coda dell'occhio - Cultural Association-Italy
Pro Arte e V. - Cultural Association-Germany

Supported by:
Planet LIfe Economy Foundation

» press » art. #12

MARIECLAIRE

Italy, December 2007 (#12)

WITH POP-ART THAT IS LIGHT

by Laura Antonini

The Italo-American, Gaialight, plays with tin cans and icons (as did Warhol). To provoke, deliberately

Tin cans and cigarette lighters studded with glittering little hearts among which Coco Chanel, Paris Hilton or the prisoners of Guantanamo eye you nonchalantly. Cans and icons, does this remind you of anything? The pop creations of Gaialight speak of reality with the language of lightness. Class of 1973, mother from New York, father from Sicily, tall, blonde, Gaia has the body of a model, but her primary interest in fashion is its fetishes which she borrows for her installations (on exhibition during the coming months in New York, Munich, Paris, Rome and Milan). In her latest cycle of works, Light Treatment, she has gone further: she has transformed orthopaedic crutches and hearing aids into pop objects covered with highly colored Prozac and Viagra pills (the catalogue, not to be missed, printed on recycled paper by Crai, the supermarket chain, and distributed as door-to-door flyers). One way, only apparently light, to reflect on our political, social and cultural ills.
How was this "lightness" born? Of the necessity to give gifts to friends. I wanted to give and at the same time say. I began with a cigarette lighter: you take it, you leave it, you steal it, it lights up, it lights you up, it passes from hand to hand, and like ideas, it circulates freely.
A ploy with which to remove current urgencies from the new censorship. War, handicaps, prisons, death are fastidious subjects. To bring them to the fore I "lighten" them.
As in Burma on my mind? This installation, realized for Rome Design Week+, tells of two tragedies: that of the Burmese people and that of mass communication. A rifle, 6 overturned bowls, 30 cigarette lighters, candles, a purplish red piece of material and the iconic face of Aung San Suu Kyi attack the use of news flashes: guilty because, all too often, they privilege the dramatization of the news item over its reflection.