Biology of the inorganic

Carlo D'Orta is described by Gianluca Marziani as a "biologist" of the contemporary landscape, an under-the-skin researcher who digs underneath the first layer of urban appearance.

Biology is the science that studies life; inorganic is what has no living ability. On a theoretical level, everything is clear: centuries of speculation have strengthened the dichotomy between whatever breathes (human, animal or vegetable) and what does not respond to biological requisites. Nowadays, however, these two words produce a palpable crash. That is because the present extent of progress, nano-technological evolution, the web's universal gigantic proportions, along with social and cultural transformations, are shaping an increasingly "scientific" society, where objects breath, machines think and human activity is cloning drones with their own internal biology. Certainly, everything is always linked with a human factor, and nevertheless, the cloning of hardware/software has now the power to make machines independent in a way that was unthinkable in the past, providing them with a life cycle with organic features. A new inorganic biology has sprung up: a post-digital concept that goes beyond lifeless electronics and captures the biodynamic side of contemporary machines.

James G. Ballard, Philip K. Dick and Kurt Vonnegut were right when they fancied battles between men and robots, mechanical rebellions and artificial natures. Their literary premonitions are the original archetype enabling us to examine reality around us, hanging between differences and similarities. This kind of adventure-like imagination has, sometimes, amplified, other times, underestimated the drifting ways of unsteady progress. I am thinking about director Andrew Niccol, whose films (Gattaca, S1m0ne, In Time) present man and machine blending through an invisible cross-breeding. Humans shift towards a robotic dimension, while inhabitable spaces shift towards community-friendly geometries.

The locations in Gattaca create a proper link with Carlo D'Orta's photographic world. This reference has no formal didactic meanings. More likely, it has a connection to the organic process associated with post-rationalism. It looks as though geometries, straight angles, lines and modularities breathe an auto-generated oxygen stemming from a peripheral circulation. Such circulation expresses a biological quality inside the chemistry of architectural elements.

Carlo D'Orta is a "biologist" of the contemporary landscape, an under-the-skin researcher who digs underneath the first layer of urban appearance. Here, structures become architectural synapses and macro-elements remind us of the cellular micro-world. His perspective is driven by a scientific principle and a pictorial attitude, through complex and never obvious combinations. His rationality interprets the codes of the real world, discovering the extent of ambiguity between figuration and abstraction.

The now mature digital age is re-shaping the chain linking photographic framing with the final circulation of an image, through procedures and ways of contamination that have made photography the most complex, paradoxical and controversial among contemporary languages. The new tools have shortened the distance between generic users and performing quality. In the same way, digital speed has lessened the “aura” of the roll film, along with its processing and printing time. At the same time, usability is highlighting the importance of iconographic resistance, an ideal area for first-rate visual perspectives. This is about photographers who combine technical skills and the ability to watch, as well as a deep knowledge of print techniques, paper and mechanically-derived tools. I like to picture D'Orta in this figurative reserve devoted to special souls: a planet inhabited by the finest, but also the most curious and open-minded photographers-painters. Born in the digital era, with earlier roots in mechanics, they look back at history while focusing on research.

You can notice a successful exchange between the biology of a landscape and the biology of photographic language. D'Orta empathetically combines these two moments. On one side, he selects specific architectures, chosen by virtue of their biodynamic character, the chromatic vertigo completing them and the pictorial heart breathing life into them. On the other side, he searches for new photographic paths which are consistent with the medium's philology; this search leads to hints and combinations, involving past and future — an addition without subtractions.

His recent (Re)fineart project reshapes an industrial context with a pictorial-inflected interpretation by working on the tiniest details, highlighting contrasts with a poetic aura, reshaping single items. This work has been inspired by the places of heavy industry (oil, chemistry, steel) whose aesthetic functionality has had an impact on our imagination and on life in the post-industrial services sector. D'Orta has started from here. He has chosen an oil refinery in Austria, becoming its visual interpreter without any moralistic attitude or reportage-like approach. Instead, his approach is "impressionist" in that it reinvents and redefines realism, with subtle yet significant shifts. The key concept always lies in an independent detail — in the ability to isolate single industrial elements, providing them with an iconographic field, namely an aesthetic source characterized by a metaphysical attitude and semantic absoluteness.

D'Orta captures the absolute from the inside flow of static places, by isolating the right moment of pictorial time: that particular natural surface wrapping the artificial structure of architecture. His research deals with an action of refinement within the molochs of our landscape. It is an endless challenge against time and weather in order for eyes to capture the inexpressible, the unconventional and the iconographic spirit of the world.

The contemporary city owes a lot to the visionary contributions of painters and photographers who have captured the secret soul of their medium, designing visual perspectives that broaden our view of the present. However, while a painting seems to be pushing things inwards, photographic printing gives us the feeling of a body needing to push outwards. Lately, there has been a debate over what to do with the implicit need for photographic three-dimensionality. Someone (Antonello & Montesi) has invented a software to develop 3D shot techniques. In this way, it is possible to print images that turn into mobile bodies by means of specific glasses. Carlo D'Orta has instead worked on the basic nature of the photograph, creating a sculptural double that breaks down and re-composes the print at the same time. His idea is a perfect equation: sharp volumes split as a result of their duplication by means of modeled plates. A photograph is thus broken down into parts in the context of an installation process enabling multiple effects. This accomplished theoretical task is a reaction to the chaos of the real world – a gateway to higher and exciting challenges. Gianluca Marziani, director of Palazzo Collicola Arti Visive, Spoleto

Through 26 May 2013

Carlo D'Orta: Biocities, (Re)FineArt, (S)Composizioni

Palazzo Collicola Arti Visive di Spoleto

Spoleto, Perugia

Biology of the inorganic

Carlo D'Orta is described by Gianluca Marziani as a "biologist" of the contemporary landscape, an under-the-skin researcher who digs underneath the first layer of urban appearance.

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