ARON DEMETZ
by Danilo Eccher

	Following an artist's research means walking next to them in their poetic journey,  accompanying them in their search for linguistic solutions, following their changes with a sort of silent complicity - it's an almost intimate kinship that also leaves room for difference and distance, and must cope with abrupt breaks and sudden separations. Yet all this does by no means affect the shared feeling that echoes an undercurrent of strong cultural affinities, which can nourish poetic sensibilities, open research paths, and support unsuspectedly solid alliances. Following an artist's research, then, means being aware of changes, analyzing choices, evaluating results and accepting risks. Indeed one of the most intense pleasures for a critic is to accompany the evolution of an artist, to be at their side as they move on, to understand their origin and interpret their points of arrival. In this way, criticism is not simply to turn your eyes towards something, to register the existing situation, or to recognize what is new. In this perspective, criticism is a part of the research, plays an active role, is intellectually involved and dynamic, develops its own function in a 'militant' perspective, as was argued some decades ago. In this parallel movement one is always aware that there is an unbridgeable gap, a differing perception of one's own path, which always contemplates betrayal, exploits deception, accepts mimesis and the surprise of double-dealing. The relationship between art criticism and the production of a work results in a spontaneous, healthy state of alarm, a constant sense of insecurity, uncertainty, a subtle instability that inevitably calls for closer attention, an alerting of all senses, a keen, deep feeling that leads to an extremely accurate analysis of every word, gesture, and image. Artists walk about their own territory, listening to many voices and meeting many looks, just as the critic moves across many territories, meeting countless paths and studying countless maps. Yet both of them get a taste of the excitement and thrill of meeting someone new, the curiosity of a new look, the awareness of a new distance. Following an artist's research, then, means accepting the nearness and company of a travel mate who is on the same journey, but never confusing your respective destinations, never imposing a pace, never giving up one's own desires or accepting easy invitations. Thus, for some years I have been following, with respect and attention, the itinerary of Aron Demetz. On the occasion of a major personal exhibition of his works held at Milan's PAC in 2008, I wrote about “fragments of an absolutely mind-blowing, engrossing narration, with bewildered faces that recall the secrecy of Felice Casorati's women or the smooth geometries of Osvaldo Licini; the visionary whisper of  figuration as it transcends the image to face the deception of appearance, to confront mystery and doubt. The same flickering vision that can be found in the photographs of Hiroshi Sugimoto, where reality fades into an impalpable horizon, into a soft architecture, an empty screen. This is Aron Demetz's hazy narration, which rejects the certainty of a schematic, didactic tale to tackle the enigma of a poetry that is barely hinted at, the mystery of an uncertain narrative, the visionary nature of a fragmented look”. Those were the first sculptures of surprising intensity, where the artist knew how to combine his extraordinary technical virtuosity with the desire to go beyond, to find out what lies beyond narrative structures, what hides behind the apparent purity of a clear image. Those early works already betrayed his curiosity for the world behind the figure, a desire for complexity that modeled itself into the metaphysics of the face, the suspended,  hieratic stillness of the bodies, the softened grace of movements. His need for research could not be appeased by his sophisticated sculptural work, his intellectual urge could not be kept at bay by his technical ability, however astonishing. Those early works already revealed his desire to drown into the secrets of language, to wrap the pleasantness of a tale into a more complex, branched-out narration that exploits a wide range of emotions and has all the intense poetry of the material body. So his need for research, exploration, and investigation, became stronger and, inevitably, it emerged - from matter, from wood, the primeval element in the evolution of sculpture. The blood of wood is resin, the thick sap that comes out of the trunk's wounds, and is turned by time into a magic, transparent amber, which kindles fire and fills the air with its wild perfume. The is much more to the use of resin than a choice of material. Resin is associated with a complex natural symbolism: “Aron Demetz's resin, like Mario Merz's bundles of brushwood, embodies an alchemic process of communion with nature, a sort of shamanic rite in which the artist collects the natural fluid from the tree's wounds and spreads it on his works, waiting for the slow crystallization process that will transform its body”. The resin drips on the figure, corroding its skin, just like acid burns internally, causing wounds and scars, which the artist exhibits without shame or embarrassment, a story that does not show pain, does not indulge in monstrosity - on the contrary, it  retains the mystery of a secretly poetic face. These figures have all the traits of a modern Nefertiti, a royal beauty that lasts after death, and can be glimpsed in the looks made transparent by resin - timeless faces of childhood and adolescence dissolved under a layer of dense, viscous matter that could not stifle the mysterious elegance of these figures. The wild violence of a material language, rough and uncontrollable, could not hinder the unfolding of a suspended, detached narrative, a slow walk between the painted walls of the Valley of the Kings, where time was defeated by a pandemonium of images. Lofty, imposing, algid, Aron Demetz's figures embody the emotion of an eternal beauty, the poetic secret of an enigmatic face, which - over and above the wound, the mutilation signaled by resin, bears a serene look, suggests a subtle charm, and evokes an unavowable desire. However, a much more serious disfigurement, a deeper horror is caused by fire, which digs tragic furrows in the wood’s body, blackening everything, creating ghostly, worn-out, torn figures. We no longer have a face, no look, no enigmatic ambiguity – the tragedy has just come to pass, the sculpture withdraws from narration to look at itself in the mirror. What we have is the image of a work that offers itself as sacrifice, admires its own disintegration, gets annihilated in its own matter. The burnt sculptures of Aron Demetz exasperate the need to fathom the very essence of the work. They have given up their narrative structures to concentrate on the actual skin of matter - they no longer whisper visions, but impose the image of their own tragedy. They are pure matter crying out its pain, the wound sewn on Alberto Burri’s sacks, his burnt plastic. In the case of Aron Demetz, this obsessive research on the expressive range of matter is not limited to a technical analysis – on the contrary, it reinforces the expressive project by introducing an unexpected performative element that brings about a complete semantic shift. In fact the work is not ‘treated’ with fire, but is entirely burnt, offered to a purifying, regenerating rite. Therefore, Demetz's is not an exclusively linguistic research, but rather a new symbolic approach that interferes with the very structure of the work, changing its meaning and influencing its outcome. What appears in these works is not reducible to the evocative power of a materiality pushed to its expressive limits - because in Demetz all this is coupled with a new interpretive element alluding to an obscure liturgy, which revolves around the archaic sign symbolism of fire and its fearful spectacle. The human figure is associated with the home, the place of identity, security – yet the aggression of fire does not admit of false idolatry or frail deities eaten up by fire: and as each amulet loses the security and confidence it once brought, everybody must again go down the path of solitude and inner bewilderment. These burnt pieces of wood that show a suffering body and recite their tragedy, have the twofold function of pursuing a rigorous investigation into linguistic grammar and evoking an intense poetic emotion. With an even more self-assured radicalism, an even more exasperated rigidity, and an even stronger engagement, Aron Demetz arrives at his last research through the rejection of all manual weakness, and he does this by exploiting the non-expressive neutrality of the computer - something akin to the need to give up control which, in the 1950s, animated the Zen research of the Gutai group and of Kazuo Shiraga in particular. In these works, Aron Demetz follows the computer isobars, revealing an alien, glacial figure. A 'different' image emerges, which abandons the rough and primitive cutting of wood to unveil a thick hatching spread on the entire surface. The drawing is placed on the sculpture, and the sharp edges of the volumetric scheme and the plastic physicality of the work are combined with the caress of a clear-cut, continuous, winding sign. The skin of the work is wrapped in a blanket of lines that chase after the outline of an uneven spot, or a hollow, thereby drawing a surprising 'abstract' map of the figure. A projectual, aseptic, mechanical atmosphere pervades the body of the figure, sharply incising its narration, guiding its recitation, suggesting new interpretive categories that in fact force the image to become 'humble', suspicious and silent. It is precisely through this ambiguous disintegration, this disturbing suspension of time and narrative, this 'holding of breath' that a series of hallucinated presences seep in. They grow in the wounds of the surface, in the cavities of the body, in the wrinkles of a wrinkled, incised skin. They are mushrooms, moulds, simple organisms that unexpectedly thrive on the sculpture's body, changing its physical appearance, turning its narrative upside down, surprising and visually attacking our look. They are the strongly mimetic signs of an elementary, primitive vitality, a desire for life that attacks every reality, clings to every corner, filters into the tiniest crack. A natural realism that confronts the mechanical zeroing of the figure, resists narrative asphyxia, opposes the 'abstract' rigidity of an increasingly prominent language. These latest works by Aron Demetz mark an important boundary, a threshold, the symbolic force of a border that must be crossed, but cannot be forgotten. Following an artist's research also means acknowledging certain boundaries, accepting the need to cross them, embracing their dreams and resisting their nightmares.