Abuse II, The Uncanny is a study of the human form, in which Bolzoni explores concepts of abuse and discomfort. The subjects’ bodies are photographed in an objective, almost scientific way, sprawled across the floor in various states of contortion, made even more disconcerting by their heads and faces being invisible. Without this ‘identifier’, the viewer is unable to place their age, gender, or the colour of their skin, creating a feeling of the uncanny that is extended through the sense of an unknown viewer.
Presented in the form of a fanzine inserted inside the publication is a further series of images, entitled Abuse II, Event, which is comprised of photographs of clothing. As it often occurs in Art, and as almost always happens with the unconscious, what looks like a detail, a smaller entity fact or secondary symptom, turns to be the pivotal source of meaning: an event. This is also the title of this fanzine, within which the same themes developed in The Uncanny are suggested through their absence: the traces of life in this part of the work are suggested through a series of clothes pictures which date back to 2015, the big summer of migrations from Syria to the south of Europe. During that summer, in Milan, Alessio met a Syrian refugee who was selling some of his and his friends’ clothes in the streets, the only commodity they had left after having lost virtually everything due to the war. The clothes have been bought by Alessio and later on documented through the medium of photography.
The garments -some of which still stained with body fluids, reminiscent of the people who wore them- are additional fragments of reality out of which the artist provides a wider idea of what being human, being alive, means.
Like the bodies in the book, or the flowers in the previous project Abuse, also the clothes are portrayed lying on a surface, with the same scientific eye and documental inclination: a quest that delves into the very nature of life and humanity. The clothes, are portrayed contorted in a way that seems to echo the bodies; trousers and t-shirts are turned inside out, to better show all the inner spots where the cloth touches the skin.
Hardcover 112 pages 287 × 353 mm ISBN 978-1527232198
