Gabriele CORNI's pictures gallery

Gabriele Corni : "Usable"

“The dolls are reflections of our own needs.” Gabriele Corni

Lifeless bodies which, at the same time, are alive. Usable. Dolls with a precise function : to entirely satisfy their owner in everything. One can select their doll, dress/undress her, as they wish. Choose the hair colour, eyes, characteristics and physical features.
Every type of woman exists, all your desires can be fulfilled.

Gabriele Corni presents us with the reality of a display of luxurious products. Perfect. Desirable.
Silent, discreet and beautiful Geishas. Waiting to be chosen, to be used. Ready.

The notion of the woman as an object led to the real objectification of the female body through a substitute. This substitute – the sexual doll - thus became sophisticated, identical in her bodily parts and equipped with audio and physical enabled systems.

Corni presents these clones/slaves as being lifeless. Here an inversion takes place, the doll-object becomes a body-object, a cross between human and puppet, plastic and flesh.
Corni enforces a subtle game, confuses the spectator, plays with the ambiguity insinuated by the shapes and colours which come to life in the suggestive light.
The sensitive details convert your attention towards the human aspects, other details towards the pseudo aspects.
The disorientation leads to the manic observation, that transforms the masks into faces and the skin into porcelain.

Corni can technically carry out such effects thanks to a series of post-production.
He first begins with photography and proceeds to unite the aspects from the human anatomy with those of Japanese dolls. He then holds the elements together, like a smooth sculpture, softening the embodiment, and rendering it extremely pictorial, thus placing this newly created body in an un-definable space.
From frontal views, it takes on a solemn impression, as if representing the Sphinx. When it is held mid torsion, the slowness becomes evident. The pause is a type of suspension that in a similar work, solidifies.
This work of art becomes a sort of container, to hold these “ created guests” for a long period of time.

The definition obtained from these images leads the perfect women to become items of furniture, in every sense of the word, and losing the human aspect. They are refined entities, well displayed, seemingly delicate but with a thick armour. They are untouchable due to their frailty. They should be labelled “handle with care”.
Their bodily presence highlights the emotional absence, assumed elsewhere, far from the onlookers glance and prejudice. The perfection arouses fear and instigates voyeurism, the only way to be in close contact with these ambiguous bodies.
Something clashes.

The sensuousness of the light in contrast to the shadows caused by the natural skin folds staggers ones senses, stimulates eroticism without crossing the limit, however.
Protected by their powerlessness, Gabriele’s “usable” dolls undergo redemption, thanks to their aesthetic perfection, which transforms them in symbolic muses.

Notwithstanding the fact that these bodies have arisen to iconic figures, they however possess personal backgrounds which ooze empathically from their images.
The provocative doll is presented almost with certainty while the infantile androgynous figure seems more rigid, closed and tense. Behind both of these models are different pasts, different masters, not by intent but by course of action.
The attempt to balance sensuous and erotic, real and imaginary is presented to each observer with a series of questions relative to their intimacy, personal orderliness, society, morality and ethics.
In the society of beauty, perfection can dazzle and solitude can lead to extreme decisions.

With this project, Gabriele Corni allows us to view the “metaphoric reflections” of those mirrored in their own works, forcing the weaknesses and emotional tensions to rise.

Elisa Schiavina