Amedeo Polazzo: The Hovering Life

For Amedeo Polazzo’s first exhibition at Bel Ami, he stages physical and philosophical worlds of imaginary momentos and dreamlike vignettes. Polazzo employs a fresco-secco method to paint temporary wall murals that draw attention to the ephemeral qualities of an exhibition. Upon these walls he also hangs more lasting paintings on canvas. In contrast to the fresco murals, the works on canvas–which appear to be torn from a lost or discarded scrapbook–find their form through the gradual building up and erasure of layers of pigment, tempera, and oil to create a time-worn effect.

The resulting installations are a fantasy in search of reality, or maybe the exact opposite. Polazzo’s subjects are both personal and generic: a fox and her pups, a moth in the moonlight, or a cat peeking through blades of grass to paw at its prey. Idyllic but anonymous, unknown or forgotten, outside of time, Polazzo’s imagery allows for gaps, unraveling the impulse to construe a narrative from fragmented memory. These works capture a yearning to hold onto the fragile details of an evocative moment, while at the same time acknowledging inevitable loss.

The title of this show comes from one of the artist’s favorite books, The Man Without Qualities by Robert Musil, an unfinished novel penned between the world wars which probably influenced Fellini’s film 8 1/2. This manuscript, over 1,000 pages including revisions and alternate versions, captures an estranged sensibility on the brink of Modernism but still touched by Romantic longing. The main character Ulrich strives to synthesize strict scientific fact and the mystical, a method referred to in the novel as “the hovering life.”

Polazzo, of German-Italian descent, grew up with a palpable sense of a domestic life made safe by those who still recalled the insecurities of war. This series of paintings, which creep off their canvases and wend their way across the wall, encourage innocent confabulation and a more playful way of moving through space.