Daniele Papuli, Ule, Carte visionarie

29 June / 23 September 2018

Sculptographies, installations, videos

ULE: a visionary tale told by paper, water and ink. 285 metres of lightweight paper till rolls that Daniele Papuli unfurls like a roll of film. A project dating back to 2009 when the artist dyed in ink the 19 rolls of paper that are now grouped together under seven headings: ule, breath, world, flight, voyage, evanescence, distance.

A magical image made of splashes, halos, deep shades of black, branching veins; a slow process of osmosis that transforms paper, the artist’s favourite medium for over two decades. In a never-ending game of pareidolia, shapes and blurs merge into different forms, like the shapes children see when looking up at the clouds.

A 30-metre-long sheet of paper cascading from the ceiling springs into view. It serves both as a screen for the video that slowly runs, from right to left, for 25 minutes and as a stage for a group of paper sculptographies. The sculptures emerge like archaic figures, extrapolated from the narrative. In the Salentino dialect they are called cuti, which means a stiff, solid mass, made from different types of paper, hardened through stratification and colouring; adorned with splashes of colour, halos, motifs and patterns that turn them into visionary creations.

ULE is an experience in the making. The accompanying sound or, rather, sounds are the recorded movement of large sheets, strips and slivers of lightweight or heavy paper; crackling, rustling and tearing sounds like the effects produced by a Foley artist using sounds and images which, in this case, are vibrations and splashes of colour.

This is a multi-handed project: the hands of the artist plunging into the raw material and even extracting its sound; the hands of Gianni De Rosa strumming, plucking and skipping over the taut strings of his viola; and those of Renato Ferrero, patiently editing images, sounds and silences.

A brief video, projected on paper, introduces the project to the visitor. It presents the work, the concept, the genesis and harmonious development of ULE, which in the Salentino dialect means birthmark, an unfulfilled craving that appears like a blemish on the skin, but also flying, the desire to be light, ethereal.