Drawing the Sky
Photography by Marco Bettoni. Courtesy of The Serpentine Gallery and SANAA Group
(...) As a whole, Drawing the Sky is an enrichment of Marco Bettoni's body of work. It broadens his path of enquiry, yet at the same time it is a continuation of the artist's sensibility, his ability to seize details from reality and use them to redraw reality with his own personal signature; to craft a new reality out of the equilibrium of harmony, and a balance between the figurative and the abstract. He personally and directly participates in creating the conditions that allow the idea to fly. (...)
The Japanese element, which is where the whole process began, has become vanishingly muted in these invented vedutas which, to borrow the words of the poet Hashin, are "neither sky nor earth". They are neither abstract nor figurative either. They are worlds apart that the artist has created, using a fisheye lens to form rounded worlds because "each circle is a finite world; together, the circles make a constellation of finite worlds." Exhibited in this form, they become "the creation of a universe composed of self-contained parallel worlds." It is interesting to note how, in the colour-saturated luxuriance of fabric and blue sky, the images have sloughed off the breathlessness of motion; the houses, the trees, and the focus-challenged background of garden prevail, evoking the impression of a convergence of colours. The moment has been captured through the striking of an inner balance. The result is a visual impact, a kind wind: harmony...
Paolo Nelli
Writer