09 SPOTLIGHT BY JACQUELINE CERESOLI

ANGELO CARUSO: ECLECTIC AND POETIC SITUATIONIST URBAN ARTIST

Angelo Caruso, Una linea per l'architettura, Pisticci, Italy, 2008

Angelo Caruso, a community artist, performing cultural agitator and veteran of diffused art who works in urban spaces,  mainly in the outskirts, with a focus on enhancing the social and cultural heritage of the areas he operates in, is the founder of City Art, a collective identified for its installations and shared, participatory projects related to the territory and designed for the community aimed at regenerating people-focused cities: his platform for art works and creative mechanisms. Among the installations that have left a mark on the collective imagination, it is worth mentioning ‘Una linea per l’architettura’ (2008) in Pisticci (MT), an Earthworks project that traces a seamless laser-powered graphic line shaping the roofs of so-called “casedde” located in the old centre of the ancient little village of Rione Dirupo that stand out for their  rectangular building design; unique of its kind, simple and functional like the houses carved into the tuff in Matera. The project rethinks the territory and combines architecture and art, focusing on enhancing a type of building found in other towns of Basilicata. On a dark August night, a laser line suddenly appeared, tracing a floor plan embedded in an architectural landscape. This action from the past lives on in the eternal present of an image to give shape to an intangible space, documenting how and why Light Art can create a new place perfectly knit into the surrounding territory. Image and design become one and the same thing when architecture uses light to communicate with art (and vice-versa). The ephemeral architecture of a part of the landscape weaves connections with the past as it is observed, encompassing the history, past and distinctive landscape of the place in question; one single luminous mark is enough to bring out of the shadows a symbolic, emotional and cultural public space that was previously invisible; an infra-ordinary space where, to quote Georges Perec, paradoxically we all feel rather at home. Jacqueline Ceresoli