“Profilo continuo di Mussolini” (Continuous profile of Mussolini, Renato Bertelli, 1933) embodies the denial of an image and at the same time the duty to exalt the effigy of the dictator. Unlike the tradition of visual art, the work is out of focus, precisely in the act of portraying an individual. It is a gesture that deforms and speaks the mechanical language, the same that de-generates the image. Continuous profile of Mussolini is the perfect futurist sculpture, the only one that fully speaks the language of the machine that turned it.
I repeat the action a limited number of times and each time in a different place. After each event, I select an image that sublimates the action in the work. An action, a photo, a work.
Each work contains its original sin thanks to which everything is in focus except the subject that justifies the presence of an audience.
What the viewer sees does not correspond to what the photo extracts from the action. Live, the shape of the body that rotates on the stool is perfectly in focus. The work shows the hazy outcome of the rotation and only the audience and the space that contains everything appear clear. The photo will never be the action because the work is something different from reality.
In reality, the out of focus is something that escapes sight and the invisible that shows itself catches us unprepared.
The invisible danger is doubly insidious and when it shows itself it is too late.