Biography
Alice Grassi’s focal interest is, and always has been, photography and video art, sometimes assembled in quite complex installations.
The artist is pervaded by an experimental taste, her works are at the same time always meticulously planned, both theoretically and practically: the outcomes, then, are some of the most telling mises-en-scéne (be they of objects, or people). Somewhat uniquely, indeed, Alice suggests a way of looking at, and “feeling” the, world that is at the same time attractive and repulsive: a ”cruel hirony” lingers on her portraits, especially the key women portraits, whereby an intimate, psychological and introspective, approach seems to prevail on the social-political declamations.
This seems to be confirmed by her videos, the most experimental, and the most accurate as well, pieces of work: through the technique, objects and animated beings come much to the same nature; unexpected shots portray deformed perspectives intended to inject doubts about the identities we are perceiving: Humans or non-Humans? Conscious, intentional beings, or mechanical, still, artificial shapes? The special interest for psychopathologies feeds such wavering in and out of (rational) self (and world)-consciousness, and drives the public at the very core of Alice’s research: the endless ambiguity of our perception, as much shaped by the external world as by an inner, psychological, dreamful, and perhaps illusory, dimension.
