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Drop by drop I count the hours. In the darkness, with my pain, Sinking deeper into the darkncss of níght. Silence of dreams, shade of the world, nothing of two - all - and of two lives, Small eternity and infinite hours, Overfull of myself, alive with a heart drippíng away without a scnmd, I am blocked up in my pain. A pain of the mind is my pain... for my world .... and for something higger .... (literal translation of a poem hy Patrizia Valduga, "Donna di dolori")

Luigi Stoisa made his début in 1984 with his first one-man show at Tucci Russo's gallery in Turin. His research started in the early Eighties, the post-modern era: his first "mature" works date back to this period, even if he had heen meditating and reflecting about painting since the mid-Seventies. The midEighties represented the height, and possibly also the beginning of the decline of the "Transavanguardia" mavement, as it was called in Italy. This form of painting was born in Italy and spread very quickly as a new "international style" all over the world (where it went under the name of "neo-expressionism'). In uny cuse, Stoisa has little in common with the premises of that painting genre: on the contrary, right from the start his work can he placed outside or beyond the painting of the post-modern age. It is obviously not a question of style but of intentionality. In the works of neo-expressionists, interesting though they may he, there was a kind of ideological flaw which we could not see objectively at the time but ure forced to acknowledge in the light of our present needs: that art form imposed categories and wanted ta he the realization of a universal category and of a superhistoric rule.
On the other hand, Stoisa's work already presented itself as the temporary result of a meeting with history: it should not to he considered the recovery of a consolidated value, which time has hidden, but rather as research which questions the value in the very moment when it is brought up-todate. And this questioning can only pass through the relativization of what was considered absolute, i.e. painting which has become part of a category because of its specificity. In other words, if neoclassicism in painting (it may he better to call it its vulgate or simplification) justified itself simply for its own self-gratification, Stoisa's need was a refusal to assign any form of prize to painting and a desire to position his specific work in the many other existing forms of expression.
Mindful of the tradition of newness which the post-modernists had cancelled, the artist ventured upon a farmal research in which form became something to refound totally, completely and beyond any kind of pre-conceived code. In order to do this, one needs to have a clear picture of the extent of the problems to face, but also a certain desire to make them less important. For Stoisa art is a confrontation with history, hut without uneasiness moreover, it is a confrontation with the distant past, but also, in the same way, with the recent past. In fact, there is no Golden Age or centrality to discover, and least of all is there an identity to represent again. On the contrary, one can get lost in the many faceted forms of working which, altogether, can answer to the question af what art means nowadays. After the ideologies, the great thought systems and after the past nastalgic era.
At the time of his formation'; history is, for Luigi Stoisa, the reconstruction of a genealagy which jöins up the great lessons of the Renaissance: Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci's perfection, with Caravaggio's poverty and with the de-constructive postulates of modern times; the flaking af Cézanne's brushstroke, Boccioni's dynamic strokes and Bacon's tragically deforming hut synthesizing ones: ".
In his work we can clearly see the `perfection" of the iconic sign: it is consciausly presented as a sign filled with historicity. At times it appears in the form of a declared quotation ~fram Giatta to Paala Uccello): and this mere showing himself and this placing of history in a place where it simply appears, shows that it is considered a theme and not a fetish. What the work elaborates creatively, is rather the negative force of modernism, that is the critical deconstruction of the visual canventians. In this sense we can say that Stoisa sets himself inside the tradition of newness in the heart af a periad in which there should have been a firm refusal of this tradition, in the name of "local tastes" arsomething else,
?he genealogy re-animated by Stoisa establishes another polarity as dialectic reference, the wellknown tradition of using objects, of the ready-made, of processual art and of paor art. These twa pales are always present in the artist's work, and represent the references within which his whale reseurch maves.
L'angelo della pittura (the angel of painting) is amongst the first works that can he cansídered "mature'; following what we called Stoisa's formation "period; it was the first to contain the dual presence of the two polarities and of the different traditions. Moreover, in it these traditians started maving in inedited directions. The painting, which dates back to 1981, portrays an angel with a palette and paintbrush in his hands an image painted in an anachronistic "style"; as it was called frum then an. In any case, for Stoisa this image is not selfsufficient, its evocation (a metaphoric annunciation) a new way of painting, or the persistence of painting in the ranks of artistic forms of expression is assuaged, and the sense of the works stems from the specific materials used - oil painting an tar and an unframed canvas.
This freedom from a frame already emphasizes the artist s intention ta achieve the installing dimension, and with that, a departure from the bidimensional (the upper part af the rectangular canvas, with some pieces fixed to the ceiling, creates a kind of canopy); hut especially the use af tar shows his desire to qualify the operation as work in progress. An important property af tar is that it agglutinates the paint, that is, it makes it disappear almost completely, T his happens with a very slaw, almost imperceptible, but relentless process, whose visual effect is, first of all, the alteratian af colaur.
The artist makes use of those typical procedures of the neo-avantgarde: cansidering the wark aj art as a process, where matter has a way of showing itself in its autonomous marphagenesis, and where the artist can pre-ordain the structural modifications of his work, but cannot govern them campletely. ?he work is transformed by the unpredictability of the elements it consists af, and their constitutive rules become the constitutive rules of the work. From Burri to the procedures of PoorArt, these strategies were established as the most radical attacks on the centrality of the artist, considered as subjecting suhject , without necessarily getting to the point of abolishing his role. From the idealistic, charismatic "creator" who, by himself, qualifies the work, in fact the artist becomes the organizer within all the events. However, their definitive conformation is not his doing because they involve the abserver actively.
In Stoisa's case all this was done from within the expressive canons af painting, in a periad when the centrality of the subject had been restored.
His contrary desire (to place himself on the borders of the process and nat at its centre) encauraged him from this point onwards to experiment with other materials, in a declinatian af extra pictarial choices with the intent to visualize transformation as such. In 1982, with Foglie (Leaves) he huilt t.hree copper containers, in the shape of crumpled leaves: in it, he poured water which started aff the oxidation of the metal. (Water + copper = copper oxide is the precise caption ta the installatian). One's attention to the autonomous processes of the matter never jlags: an the contrary, it becames a real research of the image which becomes high levels of suggestiveness. If the "Leaves" can he the many faceted forms of working which, altogether, can answer to the question af what art means nowadays. After the ideologies, the great thought systems and after the past nastalgic era.
At the time of his formation; history is, for Luigi Stoisa, the reconstruction of a genealagy which jöins up the great lessons of the Renaissance: Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci's perfection, with Caravaggio's poverty and with the de-constructive postulates of modern times; the flaking af Cézanne's brushstroke, Boccioni's dynamic strokes and Bacon's tragically deforming hut synthesizing ones: ".
In his work we can clearly see the `perfection" of the iconic sign: it is consciausly presented as a sign filled with historicity. At times it appears in the form of a declared quotation ~fram Giatta to Paala Uccello): and this mere showing himself and this placing of history in a place where it simply appears, shows that it is considered a theme and not a fetish. What the work elaborates creatively, is rather the negative force of modernism, that is the critical deconstruction of the visual canventians. In this sense we can say that Stoisa sets himself inside the tradition of newness in the heart af a periad in which there should have been a firm refusal of this tradition, in the name of "local tastes" arsomething else,
The genealogy re-animated by Stoisa establishes another polarity as dialectic reference, the wellknown tradition of using objects, of the ready-made, of processual art and of paor art. These twa pales are always present in the artist's work, and represent the references within which his whale reseurch maves.
L'angelo della pittura (the angel of painting) is amongst the first works that can he cansidered "mature"; following what we called Stoisa's formation "period; it was the first to contain the dual presence of the two polarities and of the different traditions. Moreover, in it these traditians started maving in inedited directions. The painting, which dates back to 1981, portrays an angel with a palette and paintbrush in his hand.~ an image painted in an anachronistic "style'; as it was called frum then an. In any case, for Stoisa this image is not selfsufficient, it's evocation (a metaphoric annunciation) a new way of painting, or the persistence of painting in the ranks of artistic forms of expression is assuaged, and the sense of the works stems from the specific materials used - oil painting an tar and an unframed canvas.

(1992 - acciaio inox su foto non fissata cm.30x20 cad)

This freedom from a frame already emphasizes the artist s intention ta achieve the installing dimension, and with that, a departure from the bidimensional (the upper part af the rectangular canvas, with some pieces fixed to the ceiling, creates a kind of canopy); hut especially the use af tar shows his desire to qualify the operation as work in progress. An important property af tar is that it agglutinates the paint, that is, it makes it disappear almost completely, T his happens with a very slaw, almost imperceptible, but relentless process, whose visual effect is, first of all, the alteratian af colaur.
The artist makes use of those typical procedures of the neo-avantgarde: cansidering the wark aj art as a process, where matter has a way of showing itself in its autonomous marphagenesis, and where the artist can pre-ordain the structural modifications of his work, but cannot govern them campletely. ?he work is transformed by the unpredictability of the elements it consists af, and their constitutive rules become the constitutive rules of the work. From Burri to the procedures of PoorArt, these strategies were established as the most radical attacks on the centrality of the artist, considered as subjecting suhject , without necessarily getting to the point of abolishing his role. From the idealistic, charismatic "creator" who, by himself, qualifies the work, in fact the artist becomes the organizer within all the events. However, their definitive conformation is not his doing because they involve the abserver actively.
In Stoisa's case all this was done from within the expressive canons af painting, in a periad when the centrality of the subject had been restored.
His contrary desire (to place himself on the borders of the process and nat at its centre~ encauraged him from this point onwards to experiment with other materials, in a declinatian af extra pictarial choices with the intent to visualize transformation as such. In 1982, with Foglie ~LeavesJ he huilt t.hree copper containers, in the shape of crumpled leaves: in it, he poured water which started aff the oxidation of the metal. (Water + copper = copper oxide is the precise caption ta the installatian~. One's attention to the autonomous processes of the matter never jlags: an the contrary, it becames a real research of the image which becomes high levels of suggestiveness. If the "Leaves" can he 

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self-portraits. So we could interpret it as the epitome of all the possible selfportraits, the image which embodies the artist's outstanding action, namely of reflecting himself. ?here is also a certain extent of theatricality in reviving the mythical figure which bends over the thing which will kill him, since painting on tar forecasts its disappearance.
?he installation can rather be seen as a carefully planned execution device. But Narcissus, son of a water nymph, mirrors himself in the spring: in his mother and in the liguid which at the same time is birth and death. Stoisa's Narcissus in the manner of Caravaggio is, metaphorically speaking, the artist's image which.rejlects on painting and its historicity without recognizing himself, and this nonfinding of himself implies a continuous questioning, a kind of death which revives, a transformation which is, in fact, the fulcrum of all the artist's work.
Painting which contemplates itself, the whole metalinguistic dimension which qualifies contemporary art, is given here as the proven starting point (like the ahsoluteness of Malevic, like history which merely shows itself ...) which cannot exhaust the work but can set new necessities for it.
A strongly felt necessity is opening up to something else.~ everyday life, the event, as we have seen, and, particularly here, the space of reality: pouring tar on the floor captures the space in its dark but slightly specular surface where the environment and its phenomena are mirrored.
Starting from the "death" of painting, the artist therefore questions his own role, which can link the art system with reality, with its phenomena and its objects. That explains the choice of tar, hut any other kind of material or object would have done as long as it appeared as functional as the actively significant qualities of tar (which becomes a binding element for different solutions~ or of some eguivalent which expresses or contains a principle of change.
Ash, molten lead, copper steel, sandpaper and wbod spark off relations where the pictorial specificity, already, changed in its essence, loses centrality. ?he plunning phases - I must say - are based on prepuratory drawings and indicate a distinct mental direction: often, only ajler numernus sketches, is the work presented.
Having decided on this variegated vocabulary, the artist builds up his installations; he gives importance not so much to the elements used but to their relations, which are founded on the figures of the meeting and of the exchange and evoke not only the world of abstractions but also of junctions.
Based on the concept of space as journey and crossinglmeeting there is a series of works dating from 1986, among which Le nostre strade infinite (Our endless roads~. Here a number of lurge tyres were freely installed all over the floor and walls of a room (in this case, the joost Declerg Gallery in Gent, Belgium). From each of these started a strip of tar which represented the tread of the tyre and thereby traced out its direction. The irrationality of the arrangement acted as a virtual multiplication and breaking uplpermeation of the space. Under the name Strada (Road~ sheets of sandpuper streaked by tar strips were found. From this moment onwards sandpaper has often been used in Stoisa's installations , because it is seen as a complementary element to tar. The malleahility of tar, its capacity to adapt to the shape of the object to cover and also its disappearing potential are exploited. In the case of sandpaper.~ its abrasive qualities which transform the surface of the material.s it comes into contact with, but also its consequent perishableness, that is, the transformation which the sandpaper undergoes as a result of this contact.
The installation Parliamone ancora (Let's still talk about it~ of 1987 started off from an objective jàct (two chairs and a table), but was gradually abstracted from its naturalistic aspects and studied as the relation between solid geometric figures. The result was a sculpture consisting of two large steel wedges, on which an irregular wooden solid, covered with sandpaper, was placed. Added to the "minimalist" aspect of the installation, which also continues to evoke the theme of a conversatíon between two people, we find an operation which clearly demonstrates the different specificity of the materials. On the mirror surface of steel the trace left by the rubbing of sandpaper can he seen: and the sign of this friction, this marking which emphasizes the manuality and, more than the evocation, the fulcrum of the work itself.

On the walls of one of the halls (Tucci Russo's Gallery) an uninterrupted theory of sandpaper sheets re proposed the theme of the "road'; while in another room the artist was explicitly concerned with the world of ohjects. A line of school-desks leading to a small tar square painted on a windowpane once again represented a route. Previously Stoisa had already worked on windowpanes and on the screen hetween outside and inside (Giorno: 1'aria che taglia/ Notte: 1'aria che taglia, 1986 = Day: cutting airl Night.' cutting air); in this case the artist established a relation between the ideal, ahsolute spatiality, ohject of pure thought and represented by the black square, and the real space of experience, which the desks recall and which the outside, overlooked by the window, simply is.Parliamone ancora was entirely reproposed in 1988, for an installation specially planned for the Pecci Museum in Prato, under the name Dialogo (Dialogue). Here the central group of irregular solids was made more complex and a reversal of functions took place: the sandpaper now supported the steel, which was further "violated" by a flow of tar. On each wall a sculpture in the shape of a long gutter was placed diagonally, in order to create a virtual rotary movement inside the room.
The linear arrangement of elements, like in the school-desks, can be found in many of Stoisa's installations: First of all there was Tovaglie (Tablecloths) in 1988 when five steel sheets were bent in different wuys, displayed on trestles of various materials and lined up on a long sheet of sandpaper. Then there was an installation of pieces of glass, lined up on the floor and leading up to a peeling wall ~Corrado Levi, 1988J. And, in the same year, the remaking of Merenda (Afternoon Tea) with china cups filled with tar and resting on a folded steel sheet. He plays on the contrast between materials, surfaces, textures, empty and full, soft and hard. There is a world of pure forms, but defined in an intentionally approximate or non-normative way (e.g. the glass solids at Levi's, the irregular solids at Tucci Russo's and in Prato and the very beautiful reflecting black surfaces of Notte Dentro: Night inside in 1991); and, on the contrary, there is the ironic transfiguration or ennohlement of ohjects and of common experiences in other works (we can see the real "visual mottoes of spirit" in the hottles of 1990).
Up to today the work which possibly contained all this was a collection of installations presented in 1990 hy Tucci Russ~' Giorno di una notte, Pentole al sole, Purificazione mobile di uno spazio, Le nostre case trasparenti (Day of a night, Pots in the sun, Mobile purification of a space, Our transparent houses~.
Four operations representing four different settings: not only the theatrical character was accentuated but also the scenographic aspect of the installation, which became a "liveable" space.
A line from which pots dipped in tar were hanging and from them a liquid had been dripping hefore solidifying. All this faced glass panes covered with the same liquid which were leaning against the real windows of the gallery. Then there was a closed room with four small angular forms on the jloor. these synthesized the idea of a living space and recalled a series of wooden constructions, also strongly synthesized and based on the same theme; they were covered with sandpaper of many dífferent colours on the outer surface and with tar inside.This installation is seen as the most mature rejlection put into practice hy the artist so far.' for the complexity of the elements which his work has highlighted and which can be summarized here as a discourse on space. A discourse which deals with the phenomenological dimension of space and also points out its axiomatic aspects, since the work can he explained as an operative comparison between the axiom as starting point and the phenomenon as dialectic test.
Giorgio Verzotti

from Luigi Stoisa 1982-1992
Edition: Piacentia Arte - Piacenza (I)