{"id":10965,"date":"2020-09-25T18:07:27","date_gmt":"2020-09-25T16:07:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.spazioc21.com\/valerio-polici-ergo-sum\/valerio-polici-ergo-sum-presentation\/"},"modified":"2026-08-12T16:25:07","modified_gmt":"2026-08-12T14:25:07","slug":"presentation","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.spazioc21.com\/en\/valerio-polici-ergo-sum\/presentation\/","title":{"rendered":"Valerio Polici ERGO SUM – Presentation"},"content":{"rendered":"

[vc_row full_width=”stretch_row” el_class=”riga”][vc_column width=”1\/4″ offset=”vc_hidden-sm vc_hidden-xs”][vc_widget_sidebar sidebar_id=”cs-2″][\/vc_column][vc_column width=”2\/4″][vc_empty_space height=”85px”][vc_column_text]\/ PRESENTATION<\/strong>[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text]<\/p>\n

Sublimating a Vital Experience<\/h2>\n

by Chiara Pirozzi[\/vc_column_text][vc_column_text el_class=”centro”]<\/p>\n

Sublimating a vital experience\u2014this was a necessary exercise for Valerio Polici when he chose to transfer the act of graffiti into photographic shots. A sensitive and psychological evolution led the artist to move away from spray paint as a medium, translating it into photography\u2014a language that allows him to approach artistic research in a new way, with greater clarity of intention. <\/em><\/p>\n

[\/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https:\/\/youtu.be\/SNBCLicGYFc” css=”.vc_custom_1601284098713{padding-right: 20px !important;}”][vc_column_text el_class=”centro2″]In his photographic practice, Polici finds a formula for observing events while maintaining a deep connection with his subjects. His complicity with the world of graffiti writers leads him to investigate their limits and restrictions, smells and moods. Acting at night, when the city sleeps, becomes the stage for a rising emotional experience\u2014one the photographer does not abandon in his lexical shift. His bond with the places he traverses and his fellow adventurers remains steady, along with the emotional state of being protagonists in an underground mythology, like faceless heroes who must define themselves before saving the world.
\nErgo Sum simultaneously represents moments of waiting and action, of fear, visions of pure vitality, or suspended instants shaped by decisions that must be made to avoid the worst. For Polici, the photographic project is an investigation into a context that forged him as a person, approached from a new perspective that transforms reality into something unprecedented\u2014a new world.
\nErgo Sum<\/i> fits into a line of philosophical and artistic inquiry that uses the concept of \u201csupermodernity\u201d as a keystone to describe the relationship between places and human beings. It explores transitory spaces, interstices, boundaries, and peripheries\u2014places where defined identities dissolve into infinite possibilities, generating unexpected cultural and social connections. The image-space becomes that of the \u201cencounter-city,\u201d shaped by collective relationships, where the degree of sociality dictates the minimum conditions necessary for both personifying the city and depersonalizing those who inhabit it.
\nValerio Polici, a fl\u00e2neur-agent<\/i> of his time, begins with an intimate need to depict urban landscapes shaped by personal desires. These needs, rooted in the crew, create new meaningful connections governed by unwritten shared rules\u2014unique bonds beyond familiar environments and \u201ccertified\u201d friendships.
\nIn Ergo Sum<\/i>, environments and humans share the same skin, nourishing one another through reciprocal experience. For Polici, finding oneself in the world is not synonymous with resolution or fulfillment but remains a form of expressive release\u2014tempered between the urban body and human bodies\u2014retaining a sense of claustrophobic anxiety, a compressed space where movement is limited and limiting, in constant tension, seeking a safe haven.
\nThe installation conceived for Reggio Emilia suggests a narrative that echoes and emphasizes the original creative experience. The four large windows overlooking Palazzo Brami\u2019s courtyard open the scene, hinting at the theme without revealing it\u2014instilling doubt in the viewer. The interplay between man and environment and the bonds between individuals remain evident. The idea of concealment lingers, alongside the emergence of fresh, lateral perspectives\u2014the only ones capable of mapping a territory shaped by the perceptions and experiments of those who traverse it.
\nCertainties from outside dissolve into discomfort and blurriness in the gallery\u2019s first room, featuring monitors and sounds. Polici seems to catapult the viewer into a surveillance command center, where the feeling is one of watching and being watched in a constant role-reversal, heightened by the loss of spatial reference points in the dark. There is no resolution, only doubt, fear, and uncertainty.
\nIn the second room, guided by a photograph, the installation suggests the biological and morphological nature of those taking action. Just as a virus infiltrates the body, so too do graffiti writers animate the metropolis\u2019s guts\u2014silent yet present, branding objects that collectively define the urban landscape.
\nValerio Polici reveals in his photographs the full energetic and entropic exchange between environment and individual by exposing his own experience. At the heart of his work are private lives and hidden, unspoken relationships\u2014powerful, necessarily honest bonds born from shared spaces that belong to us only at night. Si fallor sum.<\/i>[\/vc_column_text][vc_empty_space][vc_column_text el_class=”doc”]<\/p>\n