Alessio Iacovone: Luminosity

Artist’s identities are constituted by a multitude of signs, that combined together create a personal alphabet of images. Regardless the subjectivity of their meanings, these images generate symbolic significance that is ascribable to primitive shapes. The allegoric dimension plays an essential role in Alessio Iacovone’s artworks, alongside with the investigation of the relationship between personal experience and traditional symbolisms. The artist interprets them through photography and drawing, merging contemporary sensitivity with interpretative strength. In the series Luminosity, the artist himself becomes part of his own language, scrutinizing different emotional states and universal archetypes transcending individual experience. The photographic series documents small private rites, rendered through the solemnity of sacred art and the suggestions pertaining to the realm of alchemic imaginary. The artist privileges the simplicity of “chiaroscuro”, limiting the color range to scales of grey, only slightly enlightened by minimal color hints. Like the pages of an enigmatic “Mutus Liber”, each image illustrates the process of an inner transformation, suggesting to the viewer paths toward spiritual inquiry. Psychic change happens when abandoning parts of the self, grieving losses that precede the birth of a subtler substance. In fact, Alessio Iacovone’s artworks often include fire, the element that consumes the substance while restoring life. Another pivotal element in his work is the smoke, emitted by a sort of “Atanor”, the alchemic furnace that is here represented by the human body, where the philosopher’s stone is being generated. Each dissolution relieves the substance, elevating it to a higher spiritual level, to a brighter luminosity embedded with angelic, redeeming qualities, that spiral the mind toward the most vertiginous celestial peaks. In the psychic language, inner transformation equals the sublimation of libido, the energy that, according to the Greek mythology, is embodied by divine characters such as Eros. In its instinctive shape, libido makes life possible on Earth , and at the same time, when channelled toward immaterial direction, leads to spirituality and mysticism. The iconic, the symmetry and the formal northern brilliance in Iacovone’s artworks sublimate  sensuality of shapes. They transcend the physical dimension to communicate with further levels of consciousness. Desire is thus transformed: from selfish attachment to terrestrial things, it turns into cosmic energy, dancing like a celestial body in the sky.