Née d’une déception, la série photographique Scala Dei Turchi interroge les liens et dissonnances entre réalité et images mentales. Déçu de découvrir une attraction ultra-touristique à l’endroit où je m’étais imaginé un paysage lunaire et minimaliste, j’ai décidé de photographier cette multitude et d’exploiter ces images comme base pour recréer les paysages que je m’étais fabriqués avant mon voyage. En faisant disparaître toute trace humaine de ces images et en les amenant aux limites de l’abstraction, j’ai crée ma nouvelle réalité pour ce lieu. En fabriquant cet idéal que je n’ai pas pu atteindre, j’ai voulu transformer ce paysage réel en un paysage spirituel, passant du monde réel au virtuel par l’usage du numérique et du photomontage.
In 2017 during a trip in Sicily in his family’s native country, the artist is told about a special place called “Scala dei Turchi”, a white clay beach with stunning and minimalist lunar landscapes. After some quick researches on the internet, he took his camera and hit the road in the stifling heat toward this place.
On the spot, it’s a disappointment. The purity of the place he imagined was totally covered by the private parking lots, the bars and restaurants, turning this place that was supposed to be magical into a packed tourist attraction. Upset, he only took a few photos of points of view he found interesting, thinking he would come back after the tourist season to avoid a crowd of visitors fond of selfies.
Back in Paris, something encouraged him to edit his photos. He decided to use them as a basis to artificially create the mental pictures he imagined during his trip. Erasing humans from these pictures enabled him to get them to the limits of abstraction, generating a new reality. By creating what he couldn’t reach, Richard Dell’aiera turn this real landscape into a spiritual landscape, going from the reachable reality to the virtual world by using digital tools and photomontage, while questioning the links and dissonances between reality and mental pictures.
