When Masahiro Mori published the theory of the Uncanny Valley in 1970, he was aiming at explaining the emotional response of humans toward an inanimate object: how are people able to empathise so profoundly with robots, puppets and digital rendering of human-like figures? What is that weird tingling sensation we feel when looking at something seemingly organic?
Contemporary art has developed the great capacity of embracing natural shapes and creating artworks that manage to engage the emotional response of the viewers while still addressing the primal instincts of critical suspicion. What Caio Marcolini, Samuele Canestrari and Miroslav Cukovic have all in common is the ability to incorporate a sensibility that appears natural while clearly communicating a muted distress that never allows the viewer to rest in front of their artworks.
The drawings of Samuele Canestrari are amazingly realistic in certain details, but can take a twist of sad sarcasm and sharp critical attitude in their mystical flat universe of graphite and paper, standing bare and exposed without any filter or screen in between.
The unconventional printing techniques of Miroslav Cukovic are born from simple shapes and slowly start developing a will of their own while wandering around on the paper sheet. They are restless being, under the will of their creator, bouncing from one edge to the opposite creating a haze of colour.
The mesh sculptures of Caio Marcolini seem more like an anatomical appendix of the walls on which they are installed that protrude in raw shapes resembling sap coming out of a tree bark. They effortlessly hang on the flat surface and engage the viewer that feels their structure to be closer to that of flesh than the metal of which they are made.
An unconventional trio of artist, with their unconventional works that will transform the location in which they are installed in a space of exploration through their timidly unnatural qualities.