Sweet and sour. An high thought flavoured with marble and honey, candied fruit and brass, a violin and a little bit of hail. We are dealing with soft and elegant dichotomies and alchemic compositions. David Casini's works of art lie on white backgrounds, crystals and fine combinations which they seem to be secrets to unlock for every look, thanks to their complex beauty.
Casini was born in Montevarchi, he is known especially for his manual skills and dexterity, which are qualities that nowadays are not so common in the bevelled contemporary overview, because of the presence of some 21st century art movements.Techniques and materials which come from the bittersweet heart of Tuscany, will be safeguarded and treated by the artist even at a distance. The period spent in Geneva is really important, since it determines the birth of new estethic ideas and it has lead the artist towards different expressions. He will inherit the traditions of this simple land, by re-elaborate his masterpieces. Furthermore, he will be attracted by the typical Swiss landscapes by making his works of art more sparkling and cold.
Attention, is an example of his work of art which was realised in 2003. The artist re-elaborated the myth of the Swiss hero Willhelm Tell in this masterpiece, who is a true legend. He created this myth by attaching two parts in a unique scene: he drew a part of it in the wall and he sewed the other one on a design sofa, following a traditional Tuscan technique. The period from 2003 to 2013 is full of varied works of art, that are different from each another, but signed by “a common denominator”, that is a cruel but romantic love, compared with the willingness of re-creating the reality, by keeping his feet on the ground. Casini is attracted by something that belongs to everyone, but it is not particularly observed: the space. He loves transformating the environment by absorbing his shapes and particularities, like if it were a paper which needs more ink.
Espax is a natural installation which was presented in Naples in 2006. It consists on a big opening on a ceiling from which comes out a majestic, strong and white light streghtened by a neon: in this case, the masterpiece assumes the aspect of a doorway, a passage, another environment, space, another time. This transformation is a typical concept of the artist's poetry. The exploration of anachronistic and abstract spaces is also present on Corruptible matter: a deep title which wants to highlight the matter, the flesh and the verb through what surrounds us. Casini uses perspectives of some important artists of the Reinassance, such as Piero della Francesca, Alberti and Mantegna. Casini revives the past of traditions and cultures, and he registers them in cinematographic and space age settings, through a continuous dialogue between past and future.
Casini is chaotic, he shuffles chaos and transcendental silent that blinds as the white veins of marble and the tromp l'oeil on the pavement of the Genevan gallery Analix Forever, that is the guiding light of the artist. This illusion of perspectives deceives us and it makes us fall in a mocking smile which wants to look at other possibilities. A time that beats in a warm way, like steps on snow. We are continuing to deal with dichotomies and oxymorons. Casini is even a capable sculptor who uses tactile and three-dimensional propulsions (especially for choosing the metallic lines that help the binding which streghtens the materials). He creates ceramic architectures as the Italian futurist Antonio Sant'Elia did in the 1920s. Those gothic heights are full of ideas which throw themselves into an imaginary space, they are real leaps which aim at creating a continuous ascetism.
Another keyword of the Casini's works of art is Krystallos, that is also the title of a show which took place in 2008. The word “crystal” comes from Greek (another look at history) and it cross-refers to the iced water for the ethernity by divinities and it is a concise and well-defined concept, a relationship with the universe. Marble, crystal, ceramic, ice sculptures, quartzes, even verticalism... a sofisticated and balanced list which we have to read it in a complex way made by kind stratifications. Casini creates but this elevation is always tied to something like coral clouds which highlight the difference caused by the base of the ceramic sculptures which is in pure coral. So, what are corals? Are they crumbs of the earth's core? A wunderkammer full of perfumed memories freed by some vintage closet but launched towards visions that are yet to happen and moments that have not yet invented.
In 2009 he won the Talent Prize thanks to his masterpiece Genera. A sea urchin, glass and quartz. The work of art's title is semantically valiant, it highlights the importance of the progress. Casini creates a symbolism composed by a construction of different levels, because antiquity, biology and precious jewels mix themselves under the artist's imagination, who creates new worlds by respecting its roots and depth, generating antique and cairn frozen theatres. As a stylist, he loves redefining the aspect, without neglecting the essences. It seems a Calvino's passage extracted by The Invisible Cities:
“When you have forded the river, when you have crossed the mountain pass, you suddenly find before you the city of Moriana, its alabaster gates, transparent in the sunlight, its coral columns supporting pediments encrusted with serpentine, its villas all of glass like aquariums where the shadows of dancing girls with silvery scales, swim beneath the medusa-shaped chandeliers. If this is not your first journey, you already know that cities like this have an obverse: you have only to work in a semicircle and you will come into view of Moriana's hidden face, an expance of rusting sheet metal, sackcloth, planks bristling with spikes, pipes black with soot, piles of tins, blind walls with fading signs, frames of staved-in chairs, ropes good only for hanging oneself from a rotten beam. From one part to the other, the city seems to continue, in perspective, multiplying its repertory of images: but instead it has no thickness, it consists only of a face and an obverse, like a sheet of paper, with a figure on either side, which can neither be separated nor look at each other.”
An obverse, and the face will be hidden by something else, because imagination reshapes reality. Casini's works of art are alive and dead, they are included in transparent containers, they make their invisibility visible and they lose themselves in frozen times and spaces. But if the work of art is always an open wound, those of Casini are real rituals and passage doors towards the elsewhere. Rito di passaggio is a fireplace which becomes the metaphor of an imagined travel and Casini has no suitcases, but only marked paths. And over the fireplace there are some dreamlike souvenirs that mix among themselves in an organic and inorganic cocktail. The icecubes are only dichotomies.
Another interesting work is L'illogica abitudine which was created in 2011 and it is about the illegal building on the Mediterranean sea. We are dealing with a “catwalk” of microsystems such as corals, resin, iron and glass, a skyline of rising architectures of corals that continue to generate by imaging thought that it is possible to translate through heights and architectural exoskeletons. The artist has tackled the relationship between space and life as a good art lover thanks to Back Home, created in 2012 and located in the Morris's Space of Milan. Casini has lived for two months in the gallery, he has also caressed it and sometimes hurt it, loved it and jeered at it. In other words, he has really seduced this environment.The gallery was transformed in blankets of an unmade bed, now it is life lived, true life. It is both a creation laboratory and a memory archive. A real stratification of smells and thoughts, a live space with a free and open immagination.
Casini comes back home. Everything belongs to him, both his mind and his hands, he is able to combine antique and new tastes by inventing vintage mirrors, synthetic paints, brass, sea sponges, corals that generate vibrant reflexes and fledging shapes of imagined visions that are always related to the idea of reflex through the mirror, it is a deep research on a real and ancient identity. We are dealing with a dejà vu. We have seen these shapes yet somewhere, they are impregnated of life lived moments, they are both tracks and footsteps. Tu non mi conosci is not a clichéd work of art: if we think that we are dealing with a boar's head, we are getting wrong. If we turn around it, we should be amazed. Indeed, the head's cavity has become a cave full of quartz crystals surrounded by mistake and preciousness. The animal and the mineral come together thanks to a strong energetic fantasy, and as a consequence they mix with each other. The cave becomes a deep cavity of sharp thoughts.
On the other hand, there is Come quando fuori piove, which is a plastic poem, a visual mash-up, a dj set composed by objects, an installation that let you meet a transformer, an electric pump, a nebulizer, glass, iron, plastic, brass, sylicon, wood and water. Casini's objects collide, not because of vanity, but for random coincidence that always generate something else. They are microcosms and they seem to be poetries of Sanguineti, since he wrote a poems series from 1951 to 2004 that is called Mikrokosmos: it is strongly related with the Casini's masterpieces thanks to the scientific ancestries, superimpositions, independent universes and thanks to the use of a deep-rooted language in our material reality.
Tutto sembra funzionare was realised in 2012 and it is related to a particular idea: it is an installation for little alchimists, the masterpiece becomes a real machine, (since the key-word of the artist is dexterity). The machine has an erotic aspect and it is related to free sex mechanisms which are represented by fluid and evanescent smokes, like the pleasure. Casini is a transformer, a real catalyzer of energies, he translates erotic fantasies by creating usable words. The temporary and spacial questions are included in a masterpiece called Momento in cui tutto questo ha uno spazio, which was shown in the 4th contemporary art festival in Salonicco. Casini's works of art are everywhere, especially in the chaotic present which is lied to the past future through a satin line. Casini creates an elegant and open work who merges with the dichotomies beetween artificiality and reality very well by connecting the archeologic museum to the sea sponges and to the minerales that vibrates in an elegant way. They slightly remind the suspended evanescence of Calder, not only the concept of aleatoriness.
Casini gives us a significant phrase: “Arte torna Arte” / “Art returns to Art” - an expression coined by the artist Luciano Fabro, it seems to be an important thought for the art which appears to be a continuum that wants to renovate something and it streghtens his own history by mantaining the words of Sanguineti: “A virgin look at reality: this is what I call poetry.”