The painting Tommaso’s Bedroom (oil on canvas, 26”x22”, 2016) by Andrea Rugarli depicts the frontal view of a teenager standing in his bedroom. The view is cropped so that the only visible part of the body is between the elbows and the ankles. Elbows, knees and ankles divide the composition in three parts, occupying respectively the top, center, and bottom of the canvas. This unusual perspective creates a tension between a strongly sexual picture and a focus on ambiguous gender. The impossibility to categorize the gender of the subject is intriguing. Even though the title reveals the identity of the boy, the painting emphasizes certain parts of the body that are rarely understood as gender-specific. With our second issue, the aim is to focus on human bodies, without considering gendered categorizations. Ankles, legs and knees are the best representation of the tension between the mind and the body. We all want to be people with both feet on the ground and yet constantly on the move.
Every step we take implies the adjustment of balance – losing and regaining it at the same time. We think we control it but, in fact, we are dependent on the surface shape. It’s our never-ending interaction with nature where we are fated to seek our place. Even so, the same step shows the connection with ourselves – how inspired, determined, frustrated, excited we are. By falling, walking, running, jumping we embody hopes, fears and intentions. Movement makes us feel alive and allows us to express our sense of being. Poetry translates movement from body language into images and, like our feet, balances fragility of subjectivity and pressure of matter.
Andrea Rugarli, Leonora Masini, Natalia Vygovskaia
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