ROBERTO CALBUCCI

... on paper (of larger dimension), were realized during the same period. The use of continuous stationary paper as a support is part of the idea that all of the works are related and joined to compose one single and unique research, in various situations. Through the surface you can see the interior aspects of things where the surface can be interpreted as a place of visual space, built with graphic-pictorial material. All of these works on paper make up a part of one macro cycle realized around the idea of visual abstractions. There are graphic explorations of the signs in auto-referential relation to signs of different compositions and forms that have a dialogue between them to define the place of representation. The semiotic approach (actually, more appropriately iconological) takes care of signs like elements that mean something different regarding the same phenomenon, developing dialogues in the abstraction and, as for all different types of communication, including visual communication, the sender, the receiver, the channel, the code, the message and the context must be considered; so every paper, with its own representation, establishes a communicable dynamic between the parts. The sequential formulation of representation has become the necessary syntax in this research. The support is the element on which the great fiction of representation expresses itself. The place of representation is often identified as a landscape, place, structure of expression, vision of impulse, dimension of mental nature and a land of researched thoughts. They are not aesthetic functions representing themselves, but visual presences that combine elements to discover the meanings. The generating impulse of research is the subject, and the necessity to enter inside the representation to its structure and in the dialogue between the parts, is the aim of the "voyage". In this exploration, joined and parallel to the pictorial research, all of the works were realized as a possibility to enter and to excavate macrostructures of representative vision, introducing themselves between the perspective lines of visual thought, looking for and finding various places in various moments and also various places in coinciding moments. The research tends to dig and travel in the wonderful world of mental structure in relation to the representative vision. The ideas navigate around the visual perspective intended as displacement of the vision in segments and portions of places where every dimension correlated to the momentary place has a world of substructures and visual hierarchies within itself. Entering between the perspective-mental lines, one can come in contact with virtual worlds but in concrete relation to the abstract idea of the vision of one superior representation. In the studies on paper are free visual expressions of the pictorial and graphic gesture, in a vast expressive dialogue. A recurring graphic element in many of the works on paper (in the various series of works on paper) is a line and its own intersection with another line to define and suggest a wider vision of perspective depth where the diagonals elicit movement and lead towards the depth of the pictorial space, for a more intimate push in the research. The projects were often executed and developed in a dynamic sequential continuity of research where a step suggests the following step as in an "archeaological" exploration, in the subterranean of the generating thought. In the visual research of concept, the visual studies on paper are those places in which the idea or the primary need to visualize take form, attempting to block the passages of the impulses contained in the generating idea. In this primordial moment it is unavoidable that the callbacks between the thought, the gesture, the idea in transformation, the message, the metaphor, the description, the reflection with its temporal holes, create an abstract narration first of all, between the mind and its internal bouncing and the generating thought, creating silent dialogues that are then transported in the surface transforming itself in the first sign of the idea. All of this corresponds to a sequential narrative structure (as in comics), interpreted here as a place in the thought of research, visually transports itself in a continuous evolution of forms and signs... "the abstract comics". Sequential art with a composition of multiple mental places where the silent dialogues come to life, meeting elements and graphic situations and constructing personal dialogues in the evolutionary expressions. The representation is felt as an incessant flux, a continuous transformation, functioning to diversify the numerous conceivable approaches. All of the projects on paper can be read as a continuous descriptive narrative of the representation in the abstraction of the thought (referring to the reading of the paper...). "No object is perceived as unique or isolated by the rest. To see something means to assign its place in everything: a positioning in space, an appraisal of its dimension, the clarity, the distance." (Arnheim) The internal structure of the representation (in these works on paper) aligns the graphic elements so as to create the connections between the interrelated elements through the organization of the space according to the invisible lines, highlighting the tension between the parts. "Like making visible forces invisible" (Giles Deleuze). Kandinsky writes: "The content of a pictorial work is not in the external forms, but in the force-tensions living in these forms." If the tensions suddenly, for incantation, disappeared or died, also the living work would die immediately. The field of vision works as a graphical trace and the field of forces is its own expression.

... and their own movement, in the joints and compositions, in the forms and their articulations as forms, and the relation between them going to express the meaning researched in the abstraction, generated from another type of abstraction; the mental one, of the generating thought, in the vast places of research. Research in the world of signs for pictorial places. Materializations of pictorial places as expressions of the epiphany of mental places. The deposited sign-form reveals itself and appears in the form of representation as an expression of the path through the visualization of the idea. The refusal of the three-dimensional and realistic representation of the space favors the free spatial depiction of the perspective, founding it on a conception of the world modeled on an interior space of the cosmic type that projects the man into a metaphysical dimension. To transfer the energies enclosed in the movement of the idea on a surface making use of the expressive systems of the sign and the form and to construct a story that is not auto-referential but that is necessary representation for a continuous exploration in the research. A circle that closes if one finds the visual answer necessary to satisfy the generating thought.

... places of the narration, "in the order of a linguistic chaos" and in the recovery of cognitive information. The free abstraction, expressed in sequential narrative relation, recalls the structure of comics. The visual perception of the space is not limited to a static point of view, but is the systematic result of a variety of points of view that sequentially project on the retina, in the acquisition of the perceptive aspects of the truth. The group of forms and represented signs are dynamic onomatopoeic "elements" that converse, in evolution, in the free interpretive figuration, where a description or a scene can be found hidden under or behind the surface of an abstract sequence, but presents, to interpret and insert in a larger narrative discourse... in the rhythm of the sequences that can create drama and emotion... Sequential, abstract. The dynamic of the signs, and the "expressed form" become the subject, creating the structure of the representation. The "abstract representative structure" combined with "structural dynamics of the comics" create a history and dialogue made of signs and forms. The signs, in their movement, converse in the structure produced from their dynamics, without the use of the traditional narrative paradigms. The structure of the comics is adapted in order to create "humor" and movement. The sign and the pictorial mass inspire the imagination, in the experiment with the form, in the pure graphic trace. [*1] Is it narration or not? Are they attempts to describe the nonverbal state of mind? Are they triggers to think in an unfamiliar way? Certainly they comprise the means of a non verbal communication, with its own rules and possibilities (implicit). [*1 Tim Gaze] Abstract comics...dynamic expression of a remote feeling.

... does not have a physical entity and it is not seen directly in the "things" or between the "things"; above all one must think about it more than see it; it establishes a continuity between the drawn sign and the "thing" thought, it is similar to the thought and the "things". The straight line, the curve and the angle are all abstract concepts, mental images. In Towards the Form, the lines express their character, a formal elevation; it is not the line that we perceive but the linearity, not the straight line but the rectilinear one, not the curve but the curving or the curvilinear one. Belonging to the world of concepts, the line shows itself on a plane. The line in an action to represent is first of all a sign in motion. The movement in the visual language. Movement has always been a subject of research and interest. Through the way to organize on a surface, the lines, the colors, the lights and the shadows, we can communicate dynamic sensations and movement, or we can represent static and immovable images. The rhythm is determined by the sparks ignited from the "generating impulse of the idea" and its transfer on the surface in the form of gesture; here the dynamic line.

... visual and expressive element to determine and visualize the thought, the idea. The lines are energy that become material and the sign is its expression. The signs inserted inside the surface materialize and define the "field", pronouncing the character and the atmosphere. In a curved line there are infinite forces that have an effect on infinite points, that succeed one another with progressive intensity, with gentleness, compromise. According to the energy imprinted on every single force, various amplitudes of curved lines can be presented. The character of the sign determines the character of the atmosphere searched and grown inside the "generating thought". Every inserted visual sign succumbs to the static and dynamic law, the increase and decrease, approximating themselves to order and disorder. The point (invisible and abstract) is passive, and in its movement it is transformed into a linear dynamic; the sign for the idea. The sign, therefore, is "the object of an encounter" and is the contingency of the encounter to assure that it provokes thought. The sign and the sense. The sign as an element that refers to the content. The sign that joins the significant and the significance. The continuous becoming of the sign, of its transformation into reason of the context in which it is found.

... representation in favor of an art that expresses itself through the single primary elements of figuration: the plan, the sign and the form. The expression of the "generating impulse" is intended as interaction of "speed and direction of movement"; the space of the representation represents the movement with its own "waves of modulation", in an infinite place, without a defined time-space dimension. This condition of "infinite space", in motion, though, cannot exist in an idea.

... place of "self", the same "self" in which my "self" has a need to know its "self", the "self" that is needed only because the world continuously receives news of the existence of the world, a device in which the world has to know if there is." (Calvino). This landscape only belongs to the internal subject intended to explore the "structure of itself" as the "origin of itself", the idea. The place where the idea resides. The place or landscape is intended as a place in which the idea "jumps", turns and goes through paths, searching its own direction and identity and the necessary ambient to expand itself, developing and transforming into structure and concept, in the space-time of the memory and the story; of the fantastic space. Place develops one of the principal lands of the aestheticizing of existence. Entering in another dimension, in a world with dialogue between jagged dialogues, rounded off and pointy, lines and geometries of a semeiotic alphabet of representative elements, covering archipelagos of rare continents. The elements of representation are primary and fundamental for the visualization of the idea, displaced in the space that contains them, noticeable in the perspective-gestalten structure of the view. Many different views in the continuous research of territories for abstraction... "to complete this exploration to the discovery of 'an unverifiable axiom for the calculations of the memory' ". (Calvino) The passage from one place to another constitutes and structures, once again, the reading of narrative episodes. The landscape of a territory is something more than that which can be seen from a single view. In Place, the territories visualized along the road of research, for the research, are found, elaborating all of those structures necessary for the epiphany of the concept. In the space and time dedicated to the representation, the path of research is consumed circumnavigating the places of the visual and expressive possibilities.