Catastrofe
Catastrofe is the first solo exhibition by Sasha Toli for THEPÒSITO Art Space. The title of the exhibition recalls the culmination of ancient tragedy, that exact moment when the protagonist is forced to face the deepest and most painful truth and only through this change, the catharsis, can they reach a new awareness. This process of destruction and rebirth is the core of the works exhibited by the artist from Umbria, each work is a portal to an inner revelation, a guide in a path of self-revelation and analysis.
The artistic research related to the exhibition is a mystical and complex journey. Sasha Toli’s production manages to interconnect a peculiar Mesoamerican iconography and a Flemish figuration of the detail that directly recalls the painting of Hieronymus Bosch.
The oil and acrylic paintings on canvas are richly detailed, they seem to somehow vibrate with their own life. These tell a story of decay and decadence in which every hero aspires to redemption. Alongside these powerful images a mycotic revelation. The use of mushrooms in installations adds an additional dimension: symbols of growth and regeneration, they become visual metaphors of the continuous transformation of life.
These complex organisms directly recall the use of psychoactive agents, used for millennia by Mesoamerican populations and some proto-European civilizations during the rites of Revelation. Mushrooms do not fulfil any decorative function, on the contrary they are the essential means by which the artist invites the viewer to explore the surreal realm presented in his works. Through this psychedelic lens, each installation becomes a vehicle for the discovery of hidden truths and for the opening of the mind to new perceptions. The exhibited small coils become embryos of lightning which are somehow associated to that enigmatic relationship that there would exist between the mushrooms and the thunderstorm electric discharge. Lightning would appear to have the ability to alter the structure or activity of fungal spores, increasing their ability to germinate and propagate. A thunderstorm thus becomes an exact symbol of post-traumatic rebirth.
Sasha Toli (Narni, 2000). Student at the Academy of Fine Arts in Urbino, he approached painting in a first place during his years attending the art school ‘O. Metelli’ in Terni. He is fascinated by the way in which the pictorial morphology manages to assume a “hierofanic” function, a revealing function, and that as Paul Klee argued does not want to render the visible, but to make visible. The artwork, sometimes considered in contemporary times as numinous ‘object’, is animated by a free creative activity, this allows the influences of the artist to converge in the tragicomic tension, necessary for the work to be solved. His interest in the natural world, led him to learn about the history of psychedelic plants and mushrooms, increasing his fascination for mysticism and the sacred alongside with music and pop culture.
