The Christ figure flies above the Roman cityscape, arms raised in salutation. Below, industrial facilities and rooftops receive his blessing. Somewhere, a group of bikini-clad bathers lift their own hands, to acclaim his presence in the sky. Praise of a certain sort—more amusement than devotion. They smile and laugh as sunlight blinks off the helicopter’s landing skids, above god’s dangling statue. A quick cut, and the Vatican slides into view beneath the icon, Saint Peter’s horseshoe-ringed piazza filled with people
The opening scene of Fellini’s La Dolce Vita (1960) has long been admired for its collision of sacred and profane images—the admirers’ barely clothed bodies reading, to many a critic, as bathetic counterpoints to the holy form of the lord. And the helicopter, too, that workhorse of the sky, tethering mechanical enterprise to any suggestion of divine work. But intimations of vulgar materiality are not exhausted by the vehicle’s fusillage and acrylic windshield; nor the skin of the bathers. Awaiting some pedestal, the wooden Christ-figure appears to be a groundless idol—another all-too-human enterprise.
Nico Vascellari’s Vista Interiore Terrae (2021) deepens the dialectic between iconoclasm and iconicism established by Fellini’s helicopter-statue. Recapitulating the metaphorical spiral of rotor-blades and hanging man, Vascellari’s video drills deeper into the vortex of body-machine chimera, its relation to higher planes of being, and figure-ground gestalt. The video opens with the artist sitting in a grassy field, a concerned look on his face, as an anonymous attendant injects him with sedative. The artist reclines, and is further ministered by others who strap him into a gurney, as he quickly falls unconscious. Implied burial preparations complete, blasted leaves and flapping clothes precede the artist’s takeoff—just as he slips into a cognitive abyss. As soon as it has begun, the video hard-cuts to a black screen. A few seconds later, Vascellari’s limp form reappears, flying through the clouds on a long rope attached to the chopper’s underside. Climbing through the aerial vault, the snow-capped pinnacles of a mountain range become visible—to the viewer. Against their sublime crests Vascellari swings, insensible.
The substitution of Vascellari’s anesthetized body for the mute Christ figurine is less a replacement of god by man—much less, this man—than recapitulation of the religious statue’s profane status as cargo. Indeed, Fellini’s lumpen sculpture and Vascellari’s unfeeling frame are two iterations of a graven image—grounded in this world, despite their aerial performance. For Catholics a statue is not divine but, rather, an aid to contemplating god. Only Christ himself was the spirit made flesh. Yet, per doctrine, he no longer occupies this mortal coil. This said, in contrast to the outstretched arms and open eyes of Fellini’s icon, Vascellari’s comatose body more closely engages the dead Christ of the crucifixion—evidencing a sacrifice of flesh for spirit.
Behold a man on a superlative journey, over cloud and valley, bluff and scree—all sights to be seen! And yet, he perceives nothing. Perhaps it is because of his attenuated bodily perception that another mission is implied. In this mechanical drift above summits and fog, another turn in the poetic spiral: Vascellari’s work also reaches out to the protagonist of Caspar David Friedrich’s Wanderer Above the Mist (1818)—He of the mountaintop, depicted from behind. Standing on the edge of a precipice, the Wanderer surveys a magnificent panorama. Hand on hip, he is both self-possessed and acquisitive; a masterful figure in control of the scene below. A frequent cover-image for 20th Century editions of Friedrich Nietzsche’s Will to Power, despite predating the philosopher’s work, the work operates as a cipher for the figure of the übermensch in the view of many.
Lately, however, the Wanderer is also taken to picture Enlightenment ideas concerning the dominion of man over the natural world. Indeed, Friedrich’s hero is the master of all he sees. Here, sight and supremacy converge: As I have written previously, ‘Friedrich’s image speaks of visual distance—a detached survey of the world (beneath) which the philosopher Timothy Morton argues is a pictorial symptom of the Kantian philosophy; the above of the work’s title being indicative of a transcendental/metaphysical perspective […] as if an unlimited “world” of resources exists [below]’.1 Vascellari—to repeat—sees nothing, and will remember less. To what extent is ‘he’ there? Above the clouds but below the engine; in the air but insensible, is he the subject of this experience or an object? Following Morton—without the comfort of a clear subject-object dichotomy the metaphysical grounds for exception evaporate. What results is suspended animation, an in-between.
This medial state invites speculation concerning another kind of sight—inner vision. Indeed, beyond spatial elevation, Vascellari’s flight over the mountain range suggests some deeper journey. The third of the video’s three scenes appears to indicate its direction. After another hard cut, a further black screen appears, dotted with sparking lights. At first these give the impression of stars against a night sky. Yet, after adjustments to focus, more information appears. The celestial intimations are, in fact, reflections in the eyes of deer, captured by infra-red camera. Thusly, the artist’s closed (corporeal) eyes give way to animal ones. In light of the work’s latent crucifixion symbolism, it may may even be said that the former’s mode of vision has been offered up in sacrifice to the latter.
Ecco Homo—behold the man. The words used by Pontus Pilate while presenting Christ, crowned with thorns, to his accusers (John 19:5); and the inscription on many an altarpiece depicting the crucifixion.2 For Vascellari, it seems the question is not just who does the beholding but what. An ordinary man, become sacrificial animal, presented to men? A god made flesh, presented to man the blood-thirsty animal? ‘The disappointed man speaks—I sought great human beings, I never found anything but the apes of their ideal’. Nietzsche’s comment relates to the inability of most persons to access the elevated consciousness of the übermensch—ultimate heir to Kant’s transcendental perspective. Vascellari’s work leans into this distinction, deconstructing it, by fixating on the point of interface between human and animal vision. Is there not communication—perhaps, communion—between the two? In another video work entitled Buio his camera captures encounters between visitors and great apes at a Zoo, mediated by a window. Shot from the human side of the glass, the visitors’ faces appear in reflection, superimposed atop those of our nearest evolutionary kin, like masks. In this overlap, a hard and fast division appears difficult to establish.
Vascellari’s work continually teases points of intersection between humans and animals. Elsewhere, a wall-mounted bronze sculpture features the head of a wolf with part of its face cut away. The resulting surface, polished to mirror effect, reflects the viewers gaze: The wolf, under observation, appearing—or becoming—human. The human, conversely, approaching lycanthrope in a mingled re-presentation. Again, as with the apes in Buio, Vascellari’s work invokes kinship, suggesting affinity with developments in Animal Studies—an emerging branch of the academic (post)humanities. On the other hand, his art cannot be reduced to contemporary readings alone, as it also glances towards the archaic. Indeed, the artist lives in Rome, and what resident of that city—or Italy, in general—is ignorant of its founding myth concerning a pair of brothers raised by a she-wolf?
Elsewhere, Vascellari’s work meditates upon the readability of animal expression. Perhaps, as a cipher for the profound mystery that their conscious experience poses in relation to our own. A well-known series of his features rows of sticks affixed to stretched canvases, arranged according to their formal similarities. Each is a deconstructed bird’s nest; broken down into sequences that indicate the creature’s choices, privileging similar shapes or sizes of twig, for example. But the results appear to imply something more. A kind of notation, perhaps even a message. The lines of the twigs repeat, as if they were handwritten letters or calligraphic code. Indeed, it is hard not to read these gnarled tokens as elements of an undeciphered script. Facing them, confronting the intensity of animal-intention laid out in the sequences, one feels compelled to imagine an interstice between the mind of that creature and our own.
While doing so, learned audiences may recall references to the so-called ‘language of the birds’ extant in various spiritual traditions, including Islamic mysticism. The religious thinker René Guenon drew out the esoteric imaginary attached to this language: “it is considered to be the prerogative of a high initiation—[and so] precludes a literal interpretation. The Quran for example says (XXVII, 15) ‘And Solomon was David’s heir and he said, “O men, we have been taught the language of the birds (ullimnā mantiq at-tayr) and all favours have been showered upon us”. Elsewhere we read of heroes, like Siegfried in the Nordic legend, who understand this language of the birds as soon as they have overcome the dragon, and the symbolism in question may be easily understood from this. […] in fact, birds are often taken to symbolize the angels which are precisely the higher states of being.’3 He continues—‘the language of the birds, which can also be called “angelic language” […] is symbolized in the human world by rhythmic language, for the science of rhythm […] is in fact ultimately the basis of all the means […] to enter into communication with the higher states of being.’4 Certainly, the chief aesthetic device in Nido (2019) is visual rhythm.5
Elsewhere, a monumental video interweaves Vascellari’s interest in esoteric passages between animal and human, symbolic sacrifice, and ineffable virtue. Horse Power (2019) documents an experiment that took place over three days, in which nine stuntmen drove various makes of automobile, each bearing life-size wax sculptures of animals, such as colts, bulls, and more—standing in for the car maker’s characteristic logos—strapped to their open engines. With these one-to-one scale symbols installed, the drivers attempted to activate wild spirits through the vehicles; modulating their driving according to instructions given in various animal-specific manuals prepared by Vascellari. Moving through brownfield sites, the cars were captured by hovering drone cameras. Once more, as per Vista Interiore Terrae, the living, the symbolic, and the mechanical would hang the balance. At one point in the action they would literally collide—in a car crash. Later, at the end of the video, certain waxen creatures appear killed, or wounded—their forms denatured, having melted due to engine heat.
Of course, Horse Power dramatizes a common association between vehicle logos and animals—chiefly, those known for their power or speed. This practice is clearly heir to timeless cultural traditions which involve wearing fearsome animal pelts as a way to project—or assume—a powerful demeanor. But can this practice go any further than skin deep, today—in societies far removed from animist or pagan cosomologies? Can one really ‘become’ the virtues of the deer, or the leopard? Or the Wanderer? Or the Christ? Can one even look upon these virtues directly, or see them through clouds of late-capitalist fog? Hanging from the bottom of a helicopter—recapitulating the position occupied by the drone camera in Horse Power—Vascellari’s figure reminds us an aphorism of his, printed on black flags, running in the wind: In dark times we must dream with open eyes.