text Laura Barreca
07 > 09.2009
The metaphor which Adrian Hermanides used to present himself for the first time in Italy, with his project Domani, a Palermo #09 reminds us that the western world is living in a historic moment molded by the Catholic church- the result of an ideological programme which is also representative of its ancient origins. The incurable verbal attack dates back to Galileo Galilee. The world of science has always been compared to the religious world. Centuries after, this separation still exists today and means that the Church is able to conduct a complete project destined to resolve the famous “equation of God.” In other words, proof that God created the world, and the whole universe. Through this study and research, the tiny details come together and explain the beginning of the world. Or “the truth of the sky”, as recently expressed by Cardinal Giovanni Lajolo, President of the Papal commission of the Vatican State. The project, which started to take place in 1993 in an area east of Arizona, started with the construction of the so-called “Gregorian telescope”, an extremely powerful instrument that captures the light of the stars and, through photometric analysis, achieves unhoped for results on the evolution of the stars, comets and asteroids. Amongst others, one of the more extraordinary aims of this powerful telescope is the study of a tiny part of material present in the Andromeda Galaxy (the non-material found in black holes.) It is able to emit few radiations and absorb and hold within itself any light that it finds in the same trajectory. It is called MACHO- Massive Compact Halo Objects.
Starting with the study of the renamed V.A.T.T.- Vatican Advanced experiment, Adrian Hermanides constructed a revised version of the telescope which, contrary to its model, looks out and reflects the solar light which strikes the Sicilian island making the majolica and hot arab architecture of Palermo shine, in a million flashes of light which shine into Francesco Pantaleone’s gallery, in the buzzing heart of the city. It’s all about a natural projection, which the visitor can physically emerge themselves in, observing and noticing that the light of the world is a concept belonging to the world and not actually a part of it. With this work, Adrian Hermanides presents us with a hypothesis- that the formalities of the representation of our universe continue to be subjected of the secular activity of the ideological programming of the Catholic Church conducts. Therefore, with a sort of theoretical enjambment, the iconography of our world corresponds with the vision of the one truth, from a unique point of view, made by us sinners, saints, martyrs, believers and non believers which has always irreparably divided the world into good and bad people. The concept of Catholic Meta Iconography in the evolution of history of art is an ulterior elaboration that appears in this study that the artist of South African decent is conducting and has held a specific project in Palermo. A series of printed photographs, reproducing doubled and abstract images, like in the stains of Rosharch: photos taken from the internet, deliberately grainy, that show a certain likeness in form and colour with the veil of Christ, considered the first representation of Christian iconography, but whose origin is now officially disowned. Hermanides invites us to reflect on the hypothesis that living in a solid, Catholic representation of the world, it isn’t possible anymore to critically distinguish between the origins of what surrounds us, from the smallest of elements to the universal dimension. In the sculptures that contain the memorabilia of life and of the street, well worn by time and abandon, found during his residence in Palermo, Hermanides creates a sense of reality and contemporaneousness, restoring a truth that maybe, and not totally unjustifiably, we have still not got used to.
