SERIE DE FOTOS

2016
Galería NAC
Santiago, Chile

If we search for the meaning of the word drift, we would encounter a definition that reads more or less as follows: “the dragging of a moving fluid mass in relation to a fixed surface.”

Starting from this premise, in the creation of the Aesthetic Drifts — a complex series in which the photographic image becomes a means of introspective understanding of the sensory alteration produced by his installations — David Scognamiglio intervenes directly in the cognitive process itself. His operation begins with photography in order to arrive at the very essence of the word drift.

Neon channels traverse spaces in search of their existence within the reflections generated by water. Scognamiglio’s installations are therefore composed of only these two elements — light and water — forming a minimal yet profoundly beautiful composition.

The interpenetration of these two elements ultimately creates reflections that resemble intangible, ever-changing architectures: spaces that the observer simultaneously inhabits and constructs through movement within them. The process of creating place occurs through subtraction, as it is precisely by removing matter that the artist succeeds in eliciting sensory and emotional responses in the viewer.

Drawing upon the legacy of Man Ray’s light painting, Scognamiglio captures these stimuli through the photographic camera. A new sensory revelation appears before the viewer’s eyes: the cognitive process, already altered within these nonexistent architectures, enters yet another sensory dimension.

The meaning of drift thus dissolves while simultaneously acquiring a new significance, becoming an aesthetic vision in which light abandons itself and flows across a fluid that, by nature, possesses no fixed form. Photography captures the luminous trace left behind, arriving at the final outcome of this inward investigation into perceptible knowledge.

A true epiphany of reality.

— Stefania Dubla, independent curator.