Each exhibition challenge turns into, a minimum of for me, a pretext to attract consideration to a hanging concept, idea or matter. On this occasion, I’ve to thank Stefano Spera for his new exhibition, “WAITING FOR BIAS” because it presents a superb aesthetic and conceptual synthesis of a query that issues us all, exploring our approach of observing, understanding and speaking. As you may think from the title of the exhibition, the weather that circumscribe this space of hypothesis are expectation and prejudice.

Relating to the latter, analysis within the subject of cognitive psychology has not too long ago clarified that it’s not all the time attainable to use completely rational thought. As now we have advanced, human beings have acquired a sequence of computerized behaviours, making heuristic choices to outlive in hostile environments. With out going into all of the scientific particulars, we are able to merely outline them as computerized pondering mechanisms that assist us shortly attain an answer in a selected context. We might name them psychological stratagems for making fast choices with minimal cognitive effort. To sort out nearly all of conditions, our mind depends on prejudices that are sound and examined psychological patterns. There are, nonetheless, quite a lot of conditions that we are able to solely take care of accurately by stepping away from our established thoughts maps.

It will be a mistake to merely resort to such maps when coping with new eventualities. We’re confronted by our bias, that’s, the tendency to create our personal subjective actuality, this doesn’t essentially correspond to info and is developed on the premise of our interpretation of the data we possess, despite the fact that these may not be logically or semantically related to one another, which may result in an error of analysis or lack of objectivity in judgment. This lack of objectivity might be primarily decided by essentially the most primitive, ancestral and instinctive elements of our mind. Because of this cognitive biases can’t be excluded a priori, however we are able to study to recognise them and take them into consideration a posteriori. Seen on this context expectation, that’s the time spend ready in addition to the need or nervousness with which we stay up for an occasion, is our situation as dwelling beings in steady motion. Whereas Beckett’s ready appears to be a nullifying wait, with none hope, Stefano Spera’s ready, his expectation, opens as much as a minimal, complicated, and artistic motion. Revisiting the classics, particularly Greek mythology, Spera has recognized quite a lot of myths and by appropriating their explicit traits he has constructed an area that’s ultimate for reflecting on human nature between previous, current and future. The viewer is led up, down and throughout quite a lot of ranges, getting into and exiting completely different eventualities portrayed in particular person pictorial works and digital prints on vinyl. These are all units by way of which the person and collective creativeness can perceive the occasions of historical past and study to learn actuality by way of fiction. Mythology, psychology, artwork, historical past and know-how coexist and intertwine. 5 figures from Greek myths and heroes have been chosen—Pandora, Icarus, Paris, Oedipus and Narcissus—and we see the proof of their bias by way of the historical past of artwork, their illustration in up to date actuality and their projection into the long run with the assistance of synthetic intelligence, the trendy oracle. This illustration offers us a much less epic, much less brave, and fewer instinctive narrative. The sudden and the unknown are utterly hollowed out . . . need, concern, emotion, instinct and creation are erased. On reflection we would have discovered a solution, an answer for every one, the exact reply, the correct factor to do. Pandora wouldn’t have opened the field, Icarus wouldn’t have plummeted into the ocean, Paris would have made the correct selection, Oedipus wouldn’t have dedicated horrible deeds and Narcissus wouldn’t have been killed by his personal magnificence . . . however might all this ever have occurred?

Stefano Spera’s works divulge to all of us the complexity of our pondering and shine a light-weight on the necessity to recognise our prejudices—to not proceed in the direction of their whole eradication, however reasonably in the direction of a steady and exhausting seek for minimal truths. It invitations us to embrace a place the place our wishes not being realised just isn’t one thing unfavourable, however reasonably a inventive motion permitting and inspiring us to hunt one thing new and higher, understanding that it’ll by no means lead to a closing, good, absolute map, however solely an informed impressed sketch. Ready for one thing to not be realised is a mind-set that challenges humanity’s false need for fast solutions which may obscure the complexity of actuality. Designing and perfecting a know-how that may create pictures for us appears to be the nice dream and promise of contemporary science, taking humanity again to when males made sacrifices to the gods, invoking the oracle to know the long run. Placing calculation and prediction collectively in the identical basket and trusting them blindly could be a harmful mixture. Alternatively we are able to discover a fertile alchemy in understanding and recognising that our data is thankfully all the time partial, that it’s influenced by unexpected, all the time new, partly invisible and inexplicable occasions, which may someday be fathomed, however not all the time, utilizing calculation by way of sure artworks.

I personally imagine that Stefano Spera has succeeded on this job, he has left every of us the house and curiosity to find a sequence of anchor factors throughout the stratification of his pictorial motion, with all its many tiny particulars. This helps forestall us drifting from our state of being concurrently subtle and filled with shortcomings.

—Stefano Monti

at SMDOT/Modern Artwork, Udine
till December 30, 2023