“We live most of our dreams far more intensely than our existence when we are awake”.
Hermann Hesse
Dreams would be the expression of thoughts and feelings that we avoid in the daytime, which, however, emerge in our dream activity – albeit in disguise, as we continue to defend ourselves against them. In particular, dreams in psychoanalysis are the expression of our repressed desires.
Now, Carlo Caldara’s shaded and evanescent images actually made me think of the dream reality. Not so much of the dreams of the REM phase, however, as of the dreams we made when we are conscious, although with the mind free to travel through an imaginary projection. The artist’s latest works have indeed marked a true turning point in the evolution of his art and represent the completeness of his personal journey.
Carlo Caldara was able to switch from fgurativeness, where he represented the human being at the centre of his research, taking into consideration the inborn potential and limits peculiar of every man, to a more conceptual kind of art, involving an abandonment on the part of his mind, which leads him – and can lead the viewer too – to ask themselves questions about their own lives and on how they want to live their lives. At this stage, the artist puts words and imagination at the centre of his investigation. According to Martin Heidegger, «the essence of the image lies in “showing” something».
Caldara idealizes, through his awareness, the anxieties and fears that characterized his earlier works, thus moving on to conceptual aesthetics, although not lacking of poetics of its own.
Life is a trip (2015) is a work that represents life as a journey made of experiences and personal references.
In Lose your mind (2016), the work to which this exhibition owes its title – and that has not been a random choice for me – there is a surrender to his thoughts, which inevitably represent a deeper, more personal and, perhaps, also more shareable journey – a mental one, in this case. The artist represents common thoughts of a general kind: the reflections that inevitably arise from one’s own experiences and from the way one lived them.
In this creative cycle, Caldara was able to reach the mental projection that serves as a background to his works, in which he inserted indicative inscriptions with messages that are important to him. Through these words, you can reflect yourself and read the real thoughts, the deepest ones, which highlight the very soul of the artist. Yes, he is a human being, but this time no longer made of flesh and blood.
He is a human being who is not afraid of standing in front of a mirror and share with the public what he thinks and what he feels.
Finally, he has extended the message to all those who, like him, sometimes feel the need and urge to abandon their mind to give way to the freedom of their being.
To what extent can our thoughts and uneasiness be of a common nature? And what do they depend on?
It is no coincidence that Carlo Caldara also focuses his attention on the use of drugs with an image of Paroxetine and Depamag, which are both used for diseases and disorders in our society and, however, can also provide us with help and support to improve and “light” our depths. Surrendering to your mind also means letting yourself go and changing the order of thoughts, casting your mind towards your future and expectations of life with less anxieties and fears; freeing yourself from what you have inside, getting rid of any superstructures, so as to become not only the man standing in front of himself, but also the man who lives in the world to such an extent that, in addition to making a personal and individual analysis of the latter, can also provide a cross-section of our own contemporary society and show how strongly the uneasiness we go through affects our lives.
Therefore, his production with mirrored background really becomes a mirror for both the artist and the viewer. Carlo Caldara lays himself bare through his sentences and concepts of life and on how he lives – or would like to live – his life: his innermost expression is represented by sentences and emblematic images that have been accompanying his life path, literally “cut” on aluminium with a Plexiglas bottom to reflect his works.
In this exhibition, the artist conveys a sense of awareness of his personal identity and of the world we live in, seen through his eyes.
