Eric Wesley: Spafice

opening 20 settembre 2007 ore 18.00

SPAFICE ITALIA is the title of Eric Wesley’s new project, which was designed and created for the Morra Greco Foundation of Naples. The origin of the oeuvre stems from the artist’s interest for the symbolic relation between two topoi of Western society which have been ambivalent towards each other since their conception, the opposite poles of work and rest, otium and negotium. The eagerness to find a possible synthesis between these two elements, by harmonizing them in a new, more mental than real, space, gives birth to SPA FICE, a theoretical project at the crossroads of performance, sculpture and installation. SPA FICE is the hypothesis of a culturally sustainable space in a global context, which was inspired by the open and dynamic spaces of Berlin’s internet cafés. This model is indissolubly linked to the idea of franchising, intended as a philosophical perspective. Hence, it is intended as a potential, geographically unlimited, renewal of the project and its fascinations. Wesley’s Neapolitan creation redesigns the basement floor of the Foundation in three independent rooms which are each the home of a metaphoric representation of the key moments of the fluid progression of human thought in an encompassing dialectic of tradition and technology, such symbolically ancestral elements like water and fire and an advanced data transmission modernity. A geyser, a pool and a private office with several technological accessories are subsequently positioned in the different rooms in which the project is divided according to a dialectic articulation of professional needs and entertainment expectations. Moreover, there is the metallic structure of a drill in every space. As a kind of Aristotelian motionless motor, this object is a starting and propelling image, an ideal connection between the various phases of the exhibition, which aim at emphasizing the shared proceeding of free creativity and conceptual determination. As in the artist’s other projects, also in SPA FICE Eric Wesley is interested more in decomposing and revealing a process than in pursuing a scope, thus establishing an innovative dialogue with the underlying structures of Western thought. As an echo chamber of the diverse dispositions of the audience, at the crossroads of a labyrinth and initiation journey, SPA FICE eschews all contained systematizations by privileging open perspectives, constructed on the unpredictability of what Edmund Husserl, the father of contemporary phenomenology, called Lebenswelt, the world of life.

Luigi Fassi

Eric Wesley
Spafice