Alice Mestriner and Ahad Moslemi

After the summer break, spazioSERRA exhibition season continues. venerazioneMUTANTE is dedicated to the transformation of site-specific works during their stay. materiaprima is the new exhibition by Alice Mestriner (Treviso, 1994) and Ahad Moslemi (Teheran, 1983), visible from Monday 13 September to Saturday 9 October at Lancetti railway station in Milan. The exhibition is included in the program of Walk-In Studio, the festival of artist spaces and studios, and of Milano Art Week.
 

The research of Mestriner and Moslemi originates from the assumption that everything essential is invisible, while everything that results, and is therefore visible, appeared from the undifferentiated and invisible accumulation of material’s potential. The phenomenon is the manifestation of reality which, in order to be perceived, must necessarily have a shape, which in turn is the consequence of a chemical reaction that binds atoms and elements to itself. However, there are situations in which the shape does not manifest itself directly, but only the symptoms can be glimpsed. The ignition engine, the transformation, is hidden in the invisible: what we see and what appears to us physical and concrete is actually nothing more than the fruit, the consequence of the invisible part of the universe.
 

The site-specific installation materiaprima is built around a main element: dust. Dust is the component that occupies the void, it is life, it is the atmospheric dust that gives rise to the transformation. Edorardo De Cobelli writes in the critical text accompanying the exhibition: “Dust is the result of the disintegration of any element which, according to Lavoisier's historic statement, later shapes and recomposes new material. If a synonym were to be found, this would in fact be Matter: a raw material, invisible, which travels along highways, invisible and unknown to us, and ultimately generates new life”. The interactions within it occur by chance, compatibility of atoms and molecules; dust is an invisible microcosm, existing but reckless, in which a cycle of life, death-transformation and life is hidden, where past, present and future coexist.
 

The point, (“the grain”), is the most basic constituent part of the dust, the first part of the whole. That invisible part of the cosmos, if aggregated, shows its materiality. The result will be the relationship between visible and invisible, between being in potentiality and being in act, which coexist in the dust. Mestriner and Moslemi praise the formation process that originates from dust, assimilating it to that which, starting from the point, composes lines and surfaces which in turn create the five Platonic solids. With the dust they create a tetrahedron, a cube, an octahedron, a dodecahedron and an icosahedron: these are the elementary structure of the world and also represent its origin and the elements that compose it, fire, earth, air, ether and water. "If the construens force of the artists has organized the dust to form regular geometries" writes De Cobelli, "the pars destruens of entropy will break the bond that unites them to the point of making the works indistinguishable. The dust that makes up the sculptures will finally return to being nothing other than dust".