Shadow Art by Fabrizio Corneli.

Italian artist Fabrizio Corneli creates imposing sculptures made off light and shadows. His unique shadow is the result of carefully calculated projections of light. Mathematics is a key element to the creation of these mind boggling artworks. Corneli calculates geometry and the projection of light in order to give life to his seemingly simple, yet so complex shadow art.

When the lights are turned off the Florence based artist’s work seems like abstract objects, which do not look like something that would makes the viewer stare at in awe. However when the lights turn on everything changes. It is the time for the shadows to take over the adjacent walls, take form, materialize and leave the viewer absolutely astounded by the majestic, detailed artistic images that are magically projected before his eyes.

The artist uses a number of techniques and materials to achieve this breathtaking result. Sometimes it is a folded piece of paper, a sheet of copper casting the negative space of an complicated scene, a suspended triangular lantern expelling a burst of light in the silhouette of a man with outstretched arms, or a few simple stick-like structures on a wall allowing shadows to create the defining contours of animal faces. The common denominator is that they all utilize the power and unique properties of light and shadow in order to form exceptional artworks.

Corneli’s artistic identity is a synthesis of geometrical calculations and philosophical reflections on perception. Having adopted the principle of anamorphosis, of transformation and deformation born in the Renaissance, he developed a method that coherently translates this concept into the aesthetic language of the twentieth century.

No longer does the specific viewpoint of the observer encourage him to correct the deformed image, but the well-aimed point of light. In his view anyone wanting to see, needs light. “Light is energy which creates forms.” He says.

Τhe apparently abstract images projected, are founded on an ironical and poetic interpretation, the formal vocabulary is limited to portraying models by paring them to their essential contours. Corneli’s primary interest does not lie in contents or in aesthetic or formal aspects: instead he aims to “electrify” the entire field of human perception, with artworks oscillating between non-awareness and knowledge. He  wishes to turn the act of looking, recognizing and understanding from a conscious process into an adventure of the senses.

He leaves it to the audience to choose to explore the origins of his images by means of their knowledge, experience or by association. His anamorphoses are an open perceptive mechanism in progress: as if the viewer was to enter a laboratory and become part of the installation.