Thresholds

THRESHOLDS

In all of my work, the Threshold belongs in different forms to the images inspired by architecture. Reflecting upon the concepts of limit, absence and elsewhere, I explore the Threshold through metaphors of space, symbols of places and, ultimately, presence and absence of light.

In architectural images, I recognize the Threshold in transitional sites interpreted as models of reality: that limit between here and elsewhere, presence and absence unveiling a site’s potential for experiences and otherness. It connects and separates simultaneous visions of interior and exterior that are a border overlooking two worlds, of which one could not exist without the other: everything that joins, separates.

The places I represent are uninhabited, immobile and suspended in time, as if men were ingrained and contained in their spatial emanations, without ever being named. Each work results from a physical encounter and a direct experience. Following a perception and intuition, and the coincidence of a physical and mental position, there is a recognition of a given place expressed in time and space, rendered by means of light.  

My predilection for the zones of transition seems to indicate that Photography, considered as a symbolic language, can be thought of as a Threshold between what is visible and its multiple levels of interpretation: the point of balance between material and immaterial, real and possible.

Photography is a means and an interface, a two-dimensional plane where two opposite flows of information meet and mutually shape each other. One is endlessly streaming from the outer world in its thorough and raw state, and the other from our invisible inner world where images are formed, processed and brought to light. The image plane is an active Threshold placed between the Subject and the Real: Us and It.

Silvio Wolf, 2022

Apse
The apse of a church built with white and grey stones discloses a surprising resemblance to speculative Islamic architecture through its re-presentation in a foreshortened and inverted photograph. This imagery also recalls Maurits Escher’s visionary architectures concave/convex and interior/exterior perceptual ambiguities. Once again, the photographic transposition of a three-dimensional physical place into a two-dimensional virtual space reveals a vision of reality undetectable by the naked eye, or perhaps only perceptible within the illusionary surface of an image?

The Two Doors

This work explores the concepts of Threshold, Limit, and Elsewhere through a conceptual and experiential reflection. It pertains to a real place that exists without being directly visible, nor can it be represented photographically: the invisible space bordered by a double threshold, a mental space identified by the absence of light and the limits that define it.

Mental Space –

What I represent
is the visible image
of my thought.

Of the thought that sees
and recognises itself
in what already is.

Coincidence of physical
and mental position.
Of being and space.

Places of transition.
Internal and external.

Complementary opposition
of ubiquitous antagonists.

I reveal the world
of the unseen.

I represent what I do not know.

The idea of Threshold belongs in different forms to all my work, both in images inspired by architecture and in those that are apparently more abstract. The concepts of limit, absence, and elsewhere are expressed through metaphors of space and symbols of places.
In architectural images, I recognise the threshold in real places that I interpret as models of reality: that boundary between presence and absence, here and elsewhere, capable of indicating possible paths, experiences, and otherness. They are places of transition that connect and separate, simultaneous visions of inside and outside. The threshold is a boundary that overlooks two worlds, one of which could not exist without the other: what unites also separates.
The places I photograph are uninhabited, still, and suspended in time. It is as if man were inscribed in them without ever being explicitly named, as if they already contained him, almost as if they were his spatial emanations. My preference for places of transition perhaps indicates that photography, as a symbolic language, can be thought of as a threshold between the visible Real and its multiple levels of interpretation, as a boundary and point of coincidence between the material and immaterial, the visible and invisible, the real and possible. Photography is an interface, the threshold between the Self and the Real.

Large Myhrab

The Myhrab is the Islamic prayer niche that indicates the direction of gaze toward the most sacred place in Islamic tradition. The Myhrab is not significant in itself, but rather for the void identified by its absence: the void made visible. It represents the most extraordinary symbolic model I have ever encountered: that of a simultaneous presence of absence.
In the Great Myhrab, the niche can be perceived as both concave and convex: in one case it is an absence, in the other an illusion. It is the result of a double perception and negation, because it is neither a place nor a thing. It is missing from the space in which it is located and through this absence it represents a place other than itself, distant and invisible: a void that points to elsewhere.
I think that the Myhrab is the symbol able to give man the power of ubiquity, because it allows believers to be here and there at the same time. It is the place of virtuality, an act of faith, illusion in its real state.
The metaphorical value that the Great Myhrab expresses in relation to photography is striking: just as it indicates a double virtuality, photography, every photograph, is and is not what it shows us: we look and see beyond and elsewhere through it: we see the image and think of the object. Photography is real and virtual at the same time: the reality it alludes to is beyond the image, but transmitted through it. Photography is illusion in its real state and reality in its virtual state.

Canvas

Above the choir seats of a church, a large white stained cloth is suspended in mid-air. The photographic reduction of three-dimensional reality to a two-dimensional image reveals the perceptual ambiguity of planes, mutually conveying the idea of an interior or exterior space, either as foreground figure or background. Is the cloth suspended in front of the apse or is it a recessed space accessed through the two symmetrical edges of its aperture? This image brought to my mind the painting by Piero della Francesca ‘The Dream of Constantine’, in which the Emperor lies asleep inside a camp tent while outside two soldiers watch over him. The threshold to the inside of Constantine’s tent is marked by an aperture with a double curved edge. Della Francesca’s rendering of the tent’s entry resembles the ambiguous shape of the cloth in ‘Canvas,’ which appears inverted from the material and spatial reality of the place depicted. Is the problem the way things ‘are’ or how they appear to us? Can the image be seen as the active threshold between reality in itself, and what our thought can see and expresses visually in the form of an image?

Skylight

What appears as a door is the foreshortened photograph of a skylight in the ceiling of the Revoltella Museum in Trieste, designed by the architect Carlo Scarpa. This image was rotated 90 degrees, so that the opening in the ceiling is transformed in a portal of light that allows neither the inside nor the outside to be seen, but only the immaterial presence of light and its crossing in a space defined by the limit between black and white, light and absence of light.

The Third Door

A wooden ladder placed diagonally across the steps blocks a portal to a steep ascending stone staircase. The open doorway and the closed passage seem to represent the possibility of crossing and an obstacle to its overcoming at the same time. To enter and exit, ascent and descent is impossible; only an in-between state can be experienced.
My work always indicates a process and an awaiting, but never a fulfilment. It solicits the choice of a physical and mental position that requires deciding where to be and how to see, standing on the threshold where two opposite polarities coincide on the two-dimensional plane of a virtual image. What I experienced then, in the presence of that door at the moment of capture, does not coincide with what I see in the resulting image. One is generated by the other; in the gap between the two lies an unstable fracture and a perceivable mystery. In my opinion the mystery lies not in the way things ’are’, an ontology we may never grasp, but how we see and, ultimately, experience them.

SOGLIE

L’idea di Soglia appartiene in forme diverse a tutto il mio lavoro, sia nelle immagini ispirate all’architettura sia in quelle apparentemente più astratte. I concetti di limite, di assenza e di altrove sono espressi attraverso metafore dello spazio e simboli dei luoghi.

Nelle immagini architettoniche riconosco la soglia in luoghi reali che interpreto come modelli di realtà: quel limite tra interno ed esterno, presenza e assenza, qui e altrove in grado d’indicare strade, esperienze e alterità possibili. Sono luoghi di transizione che connettono e separano, visioni simultanee d’interno ed esterno. La soglia è un confine che si affaccia su due mondi, dei quali l’uno non potrebbe esistere senza l’altro. Ciò che unisce, separa.

Mi hanno molto colpito le parole di Pavel Florenskij che, pur lontane dalla mia Tradizione, sento vicine alla mia idea di soglia: “Secondo le parole della Genesi, Dio “creò il cielo e la terra” (Gen. I,1) e questa divisione di tutto il creato in due parti è sempre stata considerata fondamentale. Così nella confessione di fede chiamiamo Dio “Creatore delle cose visibili e delle invisibili”. Questi due mondi -il visibile e l’invisibile- sono in contatto. Tuttavia la differenza tra loro è così grande che non può non nascere il problema del confine che li mette in contatto, che li distingue ma altresì unisce. Come si può intenderlo?”

I luoghi che fotografo sono disabitati, immobili, sospesi nel tempo. È come se l’uomo vi fosse inscritto senza essere mai esplicitamente nominato, come se già lo contenessero, quasi ne fossero le emanazioni spaziali.
La mia predilezione per i luoghi di transizione forse vuole indicare anche che la Fotografia, in quanto linguaggio simbolico, può essere pensata come soglia tra il Reale visibile e i suoi molteplici livelli d’interpretazione, limite e punto di coincidenza tra materiale e immateriale, visibile ed invisibile, reale e possibile. La Fotografia è un’interfaccia, la soglia tra l’Io e il Reale.

Silvio Wolf, 2011

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