Marco Giordano

In LIPSLIP, Marco Giordano revisits the characteristic process of visual poetry research. Common sense words are “diverted” from their function and transformed into a sort of textual and visual enigma. The terms Lips and Slip intertwine, flip upside down and drift within the irregular surface obtained with fibreglass aluminium and thermoplastic polymers. These materials are commonly used for road signs: a further reference to the common, functional use of language, which here is instead used to give rise to unusual and contrasting meanings. As the artist explains, this generates “an alternative approach to reading, which interrupts its fluidity and automatisms”. Thanks to the colours, the materiality and the partial fragmentation of the letters, the words become “objects” to be seen and ideally touched. This encourages “multiple interpretations, ranging from the eroticism of bodies in contact with each other to a lack of verbal control”. The seed of “creative chaos” and happy ambiguity is grafted onto the functionality of everyday language, invoking the need for open, imaginative and non-definitive meanings.

Stefano Castelli