The project Faster than Christ by Franco Ariaudo is inserted in the wider investigation that he artist has conducted on some scenarios of the possible and on the influence that they can have on our perception of the reality or on that we assume to be possible. Through a series of sketches and actions developed since the 2017 during a residence in the island of Biruchiy, dipped in the suggestive landscape of the Azov sea, the project has initially taken the form of a book, Basilisk or How to run on water, that has explored under multidisciplinary points of view the practice of the run on water and its motivational potentialities in front of the challenges that the human being must face.

The project from COLLI independent art gallery is an extension of this research in the format of show that, in its plastic-sculptural evolution, acquires further senses and meanings. Beginning from a (re) teo-philosophical reading that the act of walk on water occupies in the western symbology and imagination, the project gets away from biblical topic toward other domains, closer to more actual anthropological and socio-cultural worries. Which are the necessary ideal conditions for facing the challenge of the run on water? Which are the physical and spiritual strengths that must be implemented, and which are the prerequisites that would allow a person to run on water? And above all, how can we change our point of view on the reality and start to imagine something impossible as possible?

The space of the gallery becomes a training centre that stage a series of tecno-gymnastic prototypes, that act as potential tools to reach this apparently impossible objective. From the installation PETER Mt14:31, a tapis roulant that desecrate the run on water, depriving it of its extraordinary nature, to the footwears that melt the theological lexicon with the mass production promotional one. The sublime fuses with today’s sport aesthetic, in a playful and ironic gesture of appropriation and hybridization. Like, for example, the poster with the representation of Jesus and the evocative writing Why did you doubt?.  Starting from a para-scientific register, the project Faster than Christ lays the foundations for the theory and the practice of the run on water, in which the notion of the magic and of the miraculous cohabits with a competitive and pragmatic vision, reflecting some contradictions of the contemporary society. Result of multiples suggestions and visions drawn by the natural world and by the science, the show proposes a radical perspective change on the topic, moving the point of view from the utopic to the dystopic that pull us toward a redefinition of the same notion of impossible and of its perceptive limits, in front of the numerous technological and social transformations that we are going through.

The show is accompanied by the artist book Basilisk, edited by COLLI gallery, Viaindustriae publishing with the graphic project of Friends Make Books. The typeface shown by the works in the exhibition is “Sporty”, by Alessio Di Ellena.

The exhibition is accompanied by the artist book “Basilisco”, edited by Colli independent art gallery, Viaindustriae publishing, with the graphic project by Friends make books. More info: https://www.colli-independent.com/store/products/basilisco-how-to-run-on-water