In Necessary Lines, Marco Cadioli looks to the earth adopting the point of view of satellites, to focus his attention on the lines that man traces on the planet’s surface along his never-ending effort of appropriation of the natural landscape: “necessary” lines, according to the inspired definition coined by Carl Andre to describe Frank Stella’s paintings in a text from 1959 that has been seminal for Cadioli’s project:

 

“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 […] Frank Stella’s painting is not symbolic. His stripes are the paths of brush on canvas. These paths lead only into painting.”

 

Frank Stella’s modernist faith finds an impressive analogy in the satellite images of the plowed fields, where the tractor insists on the “necessary” lines of the field’s borders in the same way in which Stella’s brush followed the rectangular perimeter and the grid of the canvas: signs traced by man without thinking about their symbolic or aesthetic potential, but only following the internal economy of a monotonous, repetitive gesture, typical of the Fordist model of work; “signs traced by man without knowing about them”, like the ones photographer Mario Giacomelli documented by means of aerial photography.

 

 

Since 2009, the map is the territory of Marco Cadioli’s explorations, whose work focused on the documentation of simulations since the very beginning. Anticipating a now widespread feeling, Cadioli stated the reality of the “virtual” and the necessity to document it with the analytical eye of the photographic medium since the early 2000s, sneaking in the first graphic chat environments, visiting war simulations as an “embedded” photographer, shooting reportages in virtual worlds and finally focusing his attention on the ambitious effort of 1 to 1 reproduction of the world – and of the universe we can map – started by the Google Corporation with projects like Google Maps and Google Earth.

 

 

Marco Cadioli lives and works in Milan, where he is a lecturer at the Accademia di Comunicazione. Selected solo shows include Der Neue Wanderer (Overfoto, Napoli 2009) and Abstract Journeys (Gloriamaria Gallery, Milan 2012). Since 2004 he participated in festivals and group exhibitions nationally and internationally, including: Premio Michetti, Francavilla al Mare 2005; Superneen, Milan 2006; Netspace, MAXXI, Rome 2007; Atopic Festival, Paris 2009 and 2010; FotoGrafia, Macro Testaccio, Roma 2010; Neoludica, Biennale di Venezia 2011; AFK, Casino Luxembourg 2011; BYOB, Museo Pecci Milan 2012; InterAccess Electronic Media Arts Centre, Toronto 2013. More info: http://www.marcocadioli.com/.