Author: Giovanna

Limited edition booklet series

Representation, imagination and reality – Tokyo

We move blindly.
As I wander, I see vegetation chained, caged, fleeing or resigned, protected or constrained by an accumulation of non-biological life that nonetheless seems to share an intimate existence with that blade of grass.

Mother by Pink Floyd comes to mind:
“…Under her wing she won’t let you fly but she might let you sing…”

Vegetation becomes bodies.
Existences in conditions of constraint – visible or invisible – striving, with all their energy, to break through, to cross a line, to open a space.

A flash: hundreds of children in a warehouse sewing small toys.
Then the stench of thousands of chickens pressed together, held up by one another, unable to stand.
And immediately after, Mrs. Maria on my landing, alone and old like the contraption that supports her.

The same image fractures.

The cage that seemed an obstacle may be protection.
The branches reaching upward may be escape or exposure.

A cactus emerges.
Effort, or ecstasy?
The same gesture.
The viewer decides – or perhaps not.

I close my eyes.
What represents that fragment of existence are fingers on the strings of a guitar.

Or smell.
Or touch.
Perhaps what we call interpretation is only a veil we lay over the world.
And perhaps imagination and interpretation coincide, at the very point where we stop distinguishing.

Then I ask myself:
what if I had to represent the Divine?

Stay Vivid.

[…] «These suggestions and inner pathways resonate with those observers who are able to understand that what is produced by the camera and its processes derives not only – nor even primarily – from subjects or technique, but from the heart and mind of the artist.

It is with this spirit that one should approach the works of Lorenzo Di Loreto. In relation to the intangible, his mysteries embrace the firmament, the fluidity of water, the movement of light, in the hope of conveying an ineffable sense of wonder toward the mysteries of the Universe. Di Loreto has created a body of work that is, in the words of John Berger, ‘a form of transport’, and this undoubtedly constitutes the true purpose of art.». 

| Naomi Rosenblum – NYC Aprile 2010

[…] «Looking at Lorenzo’s photographs, it is both risky and limiting to assume that the role of a photographic artist is simply to interpret or document immediate experience. I believe that photography can be much more; the power of art must also be a poetic expression, because the artist’s primary purpose is to elevate the individual to a higher level.

In Lorenzo Di Loreto’s images, we become aware of the quintessence and the process of Being, not only in an aesthetic sense but also in an intelligible one. The artist himself states: ‘I like to define my Art as ritual and spiritual». 

| Frank Dituri NYC – Aprile 2010

«Far out In OUT is a purification, a distillation, another step closer to the Essence. The long-awaited mystical rebirth for which Tabula Rasa and Inner Kaos had prepared the ground.

Now it is the return of the hero, carrying the hard-won elixir after having slain the Dragon that guarded it. Artistic expression becomes a pure sublimation of the movements of the Soul; a privileged instrument destined to give voice and form to that One hidden in the remote depths of Being, whose intimate exploration constitutes my primary intent.

I like to define my Art as ritual and spiritual». 

| Lorenzo Di Loreto – Aprile 2010

Inner Kaos is the point where the process pauses and exposes itself.

After the dissolution of Tabula Rasa (Nigredo), in which identity is traversed and disintegrated, an unstable zone emerges: a threshold. It is not yet transformation, but neither is it loss. It is an intermediate state in which consciousness can no longer turn back, but has not yet found a new form to inhabit.

In Jungian terms, it is the moment in which the confrontation with the Shadow has already opened a fracture, but integration has not yet taken place. The Ego finds itself suspended, exposed to psychic material it no longer controls.

In alchemical tradition, Albedo is not fulfilled light but clarification. A cold light, one that does not console. It brings visibility, not resolution.

The images of Inner Kaos arise precisely within this space: they do not represent an identity, but its instability. They are inner landscapes, though not symbolic in a narrative sense. Rather, they function as surfaces of emergence: fragments in which the subject perceives itself while losing itself.

The sense of disorientation is not a theme, but an operative condition.
There are no stable coordinates: neither moral, nor emotional, nor formal.

What emerges is a continuous tension between reaction and acceptance, between the attempt to assert oneself and the awareness that every form is still provisional. A no man’s land in which identity can no longer rely on external systems — no “flag” to follow or to reject.

In this sense, Inner Kaos does not construct a language: it puts it into crisis.

It is the moment in which the artist stops representing himself and begins to see himself.

And precisely for this reason, it becomes the necessary passage toward Far Out In OUT (Rubedo), where what is still fragmented here may, eventually, find an embodied form.

Tabula Rasa is the debut work of Lorenzo Uccellini (Di Loreto) and also constitutes the first book of a trilogy, followed by Inner Kaos and finally Far Out IN OUT.

The underlying thread of the entire body of work is mystical death and, after a period of liminality, cosmic rebirth. Mythologically, it ultimately represents the Hero’s journey: in order to bring back the precious treasure or save the beloved, one must first confront monsters, riddles, and magical traps scattered along the way.

Seen through the lens of the Hermetic Tradition, this first work also corresponds to the initial stage of the alchemical process – Nigredo – in which the blackness, the dross, is washed away, allowing one to proceed, purified, toward the subsequent phases that will ultimately lead to Rubedo.

Finally, from another perspective – that of Jungian psychology – what is represented in Tabula Rasa is the first archetype of the collective unconscious: the Shadow, which must be confronted in order to move forward along the path toward the individuation of the Self.