HOCKEY PLAYERS
The immanent static
in the photographic series “Hockey Players” by Elena Siniscalchi
“Knowing means establishing sign relationships,
signalizing something through something else, and thus
opening up a space of difference and distance within
which, and not elsewhere, knowledge plays and is
realized, in a process which by its nature is always
characterized by new openings and never from a
definitive closure”.
(Carlo Sini, “The language of signs”, 2012)
If it is true that everything has its opposite, we can oppose the idea of immanent static nature to the concept of flow where the object represented by Elena Siniscalchi (Kiel, 1969), the hockey players, become “signs”, ideograms able to evoke new meanings.
The “Hockey Players” project was born as a vision in 2005 and is part of the broader research path of the artist-photographer who has always been interested in capturing the symbolic languages behind the moving forms in reality.
University studies in literature and a passion for the theater
nourished his photographic journey which she undertook with Giuliana Traverso, especially with a passion for black and white photography and portraits.
Her photographic investigation focuses on the study of the
relationship between “identification” and “distinction of the other”. The center of interest is the search for the signs that emerge in the mimicry of faces, in the expressiveness of gestures and which belong to “invisible communication”. This theme occurs in all the projects that the artist carries out in
parallel, like facets of the same coin.
One of her first projects “Nonverbal Photography”, exhibited at
the Spazio Oberdan in autumn 2011 in an exhibition entitled
“Voices from silence”, is dedicated to the observation of the non-verbal communication of the deaf and their sign language.
In the ongoing project “Mothering and mirroring” Elena
Siniscalchi investigates the infantile communication between
mother and child which gives rise to symbiosis and reciprocity. “The expressions on their faces – writes the photographer – are
often aligned and show a similar mood. The maternal face is a complex sphere of signs that the child soon learns to interpret”.
Thus in the photographs of “Autism InsideOut” we discover the expressions and the many small, almost invisible gestures that make up the non-verbal language of autistics.
The photographer herself well defines her work as “a silent
conversation between the players who synchronize and
oppose each other with elegance and lightness in a timeless space. In the white ice their silhouettes are harmonious ideograms that belong to the collective imagination. The figures, contemporary and at the same time ancient, are crystalized in a moment of the game which becomes the sublimation of the battle, transforming itself into a
harmonious, and at the same time hieratic, dance”.
From these premises we arrive at the “Hockey Players”
series which includes a selection of about twenty shots, printed in black and white in three formats with a limited edition of five for each subject. These are photographic images in natural light that represent professional ice hockey players taken individually or in pairs, in moments
of outdoor play. The figures in black, which emerge from
the dazzling white of the ice followed by their own shadows, seem motionless in the synthesis of their
movement.
In these works the influence exerted by the works of the
great photographer Mario Giacomelli from the 60s is
evident, although Elena Siniscalchi is not so much
interested in the rendering of movement but in seizing the
perfect moment capable of stopping the forms in an
immanence never defined and completed. Furthermore, the
choice of black and white underlines the tendency to
research the stylization of reality with a graphic imprinting
that reminds us of the immediacy of the engravings or Chinese calligraphy she studied and cultivated.
In the background the lesson of the philosopher Carlo Sini,
in which the photographer found the theoretical foundation for her intuitions, according to which “To expect, imagine or dream that a sign finally coincides with the thing
signified is equivalent to the dissolution of both: the thing
and its sign” (from C. Sini, The language of signs, Jaca
Book, Milan, 2012, p. 130). In the same way Hockey
Players represent not only themselves but what they can
evoke. A crack is created between signifier and signified,
but it is precisely from this crack that the meaning of “other than oneself” emerges in order to finally be able to get out of the binomial representation/represented and enter the metamorphosis of signs.
Elisabetta Mero Lartquotidien (December 2022)
The immanent static
in the photographic series “Hockey Players” by Elena Siniscalchi
“Knowing means establishing sign relationships,
signalizing something through something else, and thus
opening up a space of difference and distance within
which, and not elsewhere, knowledge plays and is
realized, in a process which by its nature is always
characterized by new openings and never from a
definitive closure”.
(Carlo Sini, “The language of signs”, 2012)
If it is true that everything has its opposite, we can oppose the idea of immanent static nature to the concept of flow where the object represented by Elena Siniscalchi (Kiel, 1969), the hockey players, become “signs”, ideograms able to evoke new meanings.
The “Hockey Players” project was born as a vision in 2005 and is part of the broader research path of the artist-photographer who has always been interested in capturing the symbolic languages behind the moving forms in reality.
University studies in literature and a passion for the theater
nourished his photographic journey which she undertook with Giuliana Traverso, especially with a passion for black and white photography and portraits.
Her photographic investigation focuses on the study of the
relationship between “identification” and “distinction of the other”. The center of interest is the search for the signs that emerge in the mimicry of faces, in the expressiveness of gestures and which belong to “invisible communication”. This theme occurs in all the projects that the artist carries out in
parallel, like facets of the same coin.
One of her first projects “Nonverbal Photography”, exhibited at
the Spazio Oberdan in autumn 2011 in an exhibition entitled
“Voices from silence”, is dedicated to the observation of the non-verbal communication of the deaf and their sign language.
In the ongoing project “Mothering and mirroring” Elena
Siniscalchi investigates the infantile communication between
mother and child which gives rise to symbiosis and reciprocity. “The expressions on their faces – writes the photographer – are
often aligned and show a similar mood. The maternal face is a complex sphere of signs that the child soon learns to interpret”.
Thus in the photographs of “Autism InsideOut” we discover the expressions and the many small, almost invisible gestures that make up the non-verbal language of autistics.
The photographer herself well defines her work as “a silent
conversation between the players who synchronize and
oppose each other with elegance and lightness in a timeless space. In the white ice their silhouettes are harmonious ideograms that belong to the collective imagination. The figures, contemporary and at the same time ancient, are crystalized in a moment of the game which becomes the sublimation of the battle, transforming itself into a
harmonious, and at the same time hieratic, dance”.
From these premises we arrive at the “Hockey Players”
series which includes a selection of about twenty shots, printed in black and white in three formats with a limited edition of five for each subject. These are photographic images in natural light that represent professional ice hockey players taken individually or in pairs, in moments
of outdoor play. The figures in black, which emerge from
the dazzling white of the ice followed by their own shadows, seem motionless in the synthesis of their
movement.
In these works the influence exerted by the works of the
great photographer Mario Giacomelli from the 60s is
evident, although Elena Siniscalchi is not so much
interested in the rendering of movement but in seizing the
perfect moment capable of stopping the forms in an
immanence never defined and completed. Furthermore, the
choice of black and white underlines the tendency to
research the stylization of reality with a graphic imprinting
that reminds us of the immediacy of the engravings or Chinese calligraphy she studied and cultivated.
In the background the lesson of the philosopher Carlo Sini,
in which the photographer found the theoretical foundation for her intuitions, according to which “To expect, imagine or dream that a sign finally coincides with the thing
signified is equivalent to the dissolution of both: the thing
and its sign” (from C. Sini, The language of signs, Jaca
Book, Milan, 2012, p. 130). In the same way Hockey
Players represent not only themselves but what they can
evoke. A crack is created between signifier and signified,
but it is precisely from this crack that the meaning of “other than oneself” emerges in order to finally be able to get out of the binomial representation/represented and enter the metamorphosis of signs.
Elisabetta Mero Lartquotidien (December 2022)