Person out of Context
Psycho-dramedy in seven frames. Psico-dramedy in sette quadri.
Person out of Context #1
2022, 180×143 cm
Person out of Context #4
2021, 180X143 cm
Person out of Context #7
2022, 170X170 cm
Adonis e Tempo
2021, 180X143 cm
Il dubbio
2022, 180×143 cm
Person out of Context #3
2021, 180X143 cm
Person out of Context #6
2022, 180X143 cm
“It is not possible to study a human being in isolation, but only within his social context,” wrote Adler in the 1920s. An absolutely valid axiom in the 1920s. But in a society, such as today’s, accustomed to placing the truths of the exact sciences within the system that produced them, what chance can an axiom of psychology have? Most unstable and perishable there is only one thing: and that is precisely, context.
Echo chambers, self-referentiality, liquid modernity, sliding doors. These are somewhat incantatory words, but they give us back a certainty. Contexts have become fluid. And they determine us less and less, because our nature as 21st century individuals is to always be “out of context.” We are now the ones who shift contexts, as happens to the menus, contextual indeed, of our smartphones, which change with every click we make.
Art, high art, which is concerned with studying the way we are in the world, today cannot but measure this irreducibility to inhabit a context permanently. Especially if it is liminal art, on the border between the abstract and the representational, such as that of Ariel Soulé, in which bodies find themselves living simultaneously in space and in their own opposite, in matter and antimatter.
In each work in the “Person out of context” series Soulé, an artist but also a playwright, represents the psycho-dramedy of displacement. Every glance provokes a movement: and little use clinging to a handle or a certainty.
Echo chambers, autoreferenzialità, modernità liquida, sliding doors. Sono parole un po’ incantatorie, ma ci restituiscono una certezza. I contesti sono diventati fluidi. E ci determinano sempre meno, perché la nostra natura di individui del XXI secolo è di essere sempre “out of context”. Ormai siamo noi a spostare i contesti, come avviene ai menu, contestuali appunto, del nostro smartphone, che si modificano a ogni nostro clic.
L’arte, quella alta, che si occupa di studiare il modo in cui stiamo nel mondo, oggi non può che misurare questa irriducibilità ad abitare stabilmente un contesto. Specie se è un’arte liminale, al confine tra astratto e rappresentativo, come quella di Ariel Soulé, in cui i corpi si trovano a vivere contemporaneamente nello spazio e nel proprio opposto, nella materia e nell’antimateria.
In ogni opera della serie “Person out of context” Soulé, artista ma anche drammaturgo, rappresenta la psico-dramedy dello spiazzamento. Ogni sguardo provoca un movimento: e poco serve aggrapparsi a una maniglia o a una certezza.
Franz Iacono
Ariel Soulé
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