Marco Cadioli’s Abstract Journeys and Necessary Lines (2011 – 2013)

“I’m interested in the signs that man does without knowing” Mario Giacomelli

Marco Cadioli is an Italian net artist and teacher who became quite known some years ago for his activity as an embedded photographer in the virtual world of Second Life. His interest in “images that materialize on computer screens“, brought him, more recently, to investigate the data generated by Google Earth and thus continuing his exploration of the aesthetics of digital media .

“Abstract Journeys (also: abstractjourneys.tumblr.com) is a screencapture series from Google Earth that explores the different surfaces and forms which have been transformed by man’s work in an abstract geometric composition”.

In Necessary Lines, his most recent series, Cadioli explores the involuntary land art pieces produced by the machines used for plowing large fields, supposedly connected to satellites through GPS devices. The maps, stuck in a spatio-temporal dimension that is probably already gone, due to the continuous updating of google databases, have been captured by Cadioli and exhibited as proper works of art: “The plowed fields are necessary lines, the lines are the path of the machines on the surface. These lines, seen from above, are just paintings. The same necessary lines painted by Frank Stella in his Stripe Paintings. The same lines photographed by Mario Giacomelli“.

“Art excludes the unnecessary. Frank Stella has found it necessary to paint stripes. There is nothing else in his painting. Frank Stella is not interested in expression or sensitivity. He is interested in the necessities of painting. Symbols are counters passed among people. Frank Stella’s painting is not symbolic. His stripes are the paths of brush on canvas. These paths lead only into painting.” Preface to Stripe Painting (Frank Stella) Carl Andre from 16 Americans [Museum of Modern Art, New York, 1959]”

Below: Frank Stella, Tomlinson Court Park I, 1954
enamel paint on canvas, 220 x 280 cm