Christian Tripodina

“We live in a reality where marvels abound, but only those who have developed their own perceptions can see them.”
(Alejandro Jodorowsky, The Dance of Reality)

Christian Tripodina’s work is characterized by slight gestures that disorient and thus reveal the extraordinary, unique and sometimes magical elements hidden in the folds of our daily lives. His multimedia experiments – positively lo-fi – take the form of videos, installations, drawings, collages, sound objects and performances that focus our attention on nature, construed not as an ideal, but as a possible alternative. His work is permeated by a continuous intermingling of art and life, conveying a subtle critique of technological entropy, hyperconsumption and environmental decay.

In Farewell, goodbye forever (2009) Tripodina climbs a mountain, bringing pieces of wood found along the way and a suitcase containing all that is needed to build a temporary shelter, half pagan altar, half bivouac tent. The wildlife that may inhabit this shelter is present in Fragments (2009), a series of postcards made from encyclopedia pages, in which the animals have been torn out, creating a sensation of suspension and heightened imagination. Tripodina’s poetics, however, are more clearly represented in Orchard. Begun in 2008 with the creation of an orchard on unfarmed land on the city’s edge, Orchard is a work in continual progress that comprises interactions between people involved in the construction of a self-sufficient reality: the house, made entirely of recycled materials, uses solar panels for energy, water diverted from a nearby river, and has a vegetable garden and, indeed, an orchard. The place was designed to make room for interactions with other artists and musicians, and reverberates remotely through a series of projects and events, such as an installation built in 2010 around a case made from the wood of a chestnut tree containing objects “found” by the artist. It is accompanied by a sound recording recounting the various stages of its construction. A performance, Coral Gardens and their Magic (2011) enacts a ritual exchange of objects. A vinyl recording will be made of the orchard’s sounds, transporting us to a land both near and far.

Anna Daneri