Posts tagged: ricardo Alessio
Ricardo Alessio
“As an uncompromising idealist since my early years, my childhood pursuit of art sprung from a compulsion to create something better than what I saw in reality. This was not with the intent of surrendering to the realm of fantasy, but rather in hopes of generating a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy that would allow me and others to re-evaluate what we perceive and evolve accordingly.
As I’m sure is the case with many artists, there is a significant gap between what I would like my motivations to be, and what I find my actual motivations to be in practice. I would very much like to say that I am motivated by a pure desire to communicate on a clear and transcendent level. I would like to say that I am pursuing a universal mode of expression that uplifts people or renders some new truth or perspective.
At the same time, I must admit that a large part of my drive toward quality or quantity of art unfortunately stems from my ambitious nature, whether I acknowledge it at the moment or not. The more I would love to think of myself as a proponent of unadulterated visual information and interest, the more I find myself to be the visual equivalent of a gangster rapper, doggedly pursuing some form of recognition. At the same time, I have to constantly guard against these short-sighted and misdirected motivations, these attempted conquests of completely arbitrary intellectual “territory”.
Thus, my motivations for producing art are a continuous flux between my ideals of a principled and complete approach, and their counterpart in my own pragmatic and self-centered drive to make the proverbial “mark”. In summary, I am constantly aware that the “game” is, by definition, manufactured and irrelevant, a gratuitous challenge. However, I’ve always been obsessed with gratuitous challenges, and am faced with the task of turning vague ambition into a more positive and encompassing force.”
Rainer Maria Rilke might just as well have been writing to each of us: ”Perhaps it will turn out that you are called to be an artist. Then take that destiny upon yourself and bear it, its burden and its greatness, without ever asking what recompense may come from the outside. For the creator must be a world for himself and find everything in himself and in Nature to whom he has attached himself.”
