“Un’ascia per il mare ghiacciato che è dentro di noi.”

Non sono un’esperta d’arte e, a dirla tutta, trovo noioso che d’arte se ne “parli”, o ancor peggio, che la si interpreti, la si spieghi. L’arte è emozione. Provata da chi la crea, suscitata in chi la guarda. Chi la ascolta. Chi la legge. Chi la mangia. Chi la respira. Sì, l’arte si vive, ancora meglio senza filtri, senza pregiudizi o preconcetti, senza presunzioni, senza nozioni.

Accade allora che guardi una tela, enorme, e riesci ad ascoltare il rumore delle onde, i gabbiani, a sentire il vento tra i capelli, l’odore di salsedine. Le gocce d’acqua sul viso, le labbra salate. Il senso di meraviglia, le emozioni, i ricordi, i pensieri che spesso al mare hai affidato. I sogni, quelli archetipici, quelli belli, di speranza, dove sott’acqua riesci perfino a respirare.

E che cos’è Arte se non tutto questo? Strati di olio, biacca, colori, emozioni, sogni, pensieri.

Lui è Ran Ortner, quello è il suo oceano. Pieno di contraddizioni, come la vita. Infinito, con il suo incessante e instancabile movimento. Magnetico.

“In my paintings I am interested in holding the moment. I contemplate the collision of opposites at life’s centre, both brutally tragic and endlessly tender. The ocean mirrors the tempo of my body, the beating of my heart, the in and out of my breath. Surging contractions birth swells that rise and then die. Waves like a metronome mark the present, each insisting: now. In the ocean I’m immersed in now. Yet in the ancient body of the sea I feel the root of time. In the pulsing surge I find the wild place of my wilderness beginnings. There is no totem to the irrational more potent. Nothing points to the stirrings of my unconscious more than what lies below the surface. No peril is more ominous. Yet the sea is where I bathe my wounds. Where I get lost in all that is luxuriously infinite. Nothing is more symphonic, more effervescent, more delicately complete than the endless sea.” Ran Ortner 2015

 

“In the ocean I see the collision of life and death: the rising of each wave is life insisting on itself, and in the trough I see death. These high points and low points are all part of the larger dance. You really feel the lament of the ocean, and at the same moment there’s a generosity, because the waves keep coming. These forces are working back and forth endlessly.

The paradoxes of life are all there in the sea. The ocean is often referred to as feminine, but the waves arrive in a masculine surge. As soon as they reach the full extent of their masculine expression, they shape themselves into a tube, a womb.

There are tempests and dark depths. You do not mess with the ocean. It will pummel you and chew you up. It is devastatingly brutal. And yet it can be luminous and delicate and tender. We clean our wounds there. What a reflection of our own impossible nature. We’re so brutal, so base, so horrific, and yet we have the capacity for such tenderness, such warmth, such empathy, such generosity.”

Arianna