AFAN ATHANOR

Showreel 2011

2011-12-15T11:05:00.001-08:00

Presque vu - Atlas of Untold. The new Alessandro Fantini's artbook

2011-11-12T05:07:00.000-08:00

"I consider painting my most intimate dominion where pursuing the evocation of what I like to define “mysterium interruptum”, “a suspended mystery”, that is something very similar to the experience of the “presque vu”, “almost seen”, when we feel that we’re about to recall a name or a word without being able to tell it. In fact like the more sensual “coitus interruptus”, the pleasure of this impression relies on the anguished awareness of the unspeakable that only the crystallization of momentum rendered by a painting can deliver to the watcher".

Alessandro Fantini, November 2011

More than a decade of meditative studies around the mysteries of Being projected on canvases, papers and videos, constantly fluctuating between stylistic reminiscences of Flemish masters, symbolism, surrealism and glimpses of neo-realist dimensions tied to waking dream intuitions and self-induced hallucinations; more than 450 artworks generated by an aesthetic Stakhanovism nurtured since the first childhood experiments in comics and anime; more than a simple artist obsessed by his own self-centered realm or the latest artistic trend, Alessandro Fantini has always conceived his creative activity as a privileged “detector” of all the unspeakable and enigmatic realities hidden behind the material as well as spiritual sphere.

Standard edition: http://www.blurb.com/my/book/detail/2645519

Deluxe edition: http://www.blurb.com/my/book/detail/2643746

Presque vu (Deluxe edition) by Alessandro Fantini | Make Your Own Book

The paintings collected in this "Atlas of Untold" are the best proofs that the roads of the mystery lead nowhere but to the silent and swarming cities of Unknown.
Indeed, everything you cannot tell by using words that you have "on the tip of your tongue" is what makes art worth of being admired.

When the Metaphor Becomes the Monster: Exclusive

2011-10-27T00:08:00.000-07:00

Remembering EDOnism

When I faced for the first time the idea to shoot a movie in Tokyo, while I was discussing the hypothesis with then soon-to-be EDonism producer Lorenzo Fantini two years ago during his latest stay in Italy, I immediately thought that the script should have deal with something gigantic, frightening and epic. No other city in the world is able to suggest the feeling of a majestic and intimidating human beehive as much as Tokyo. It seemed that all my obsessions for movies like Blade Runner, Akira and Ghost in the Shell as well as my interest in Shintoism, Ukiyo-e art, and Suehiro Maruo, would have take me sooner or later to nowhere but to the enigmatic land of geisha, samurai, Godzilla and hi-tech marvels. As usual, the way I fleshed out the concept and the story was closer to the process of conceiving a painting or a comic than to a traditional pre-production of a movie.

Read the article at: http://roberthood.net/blog/index.php/2011/10/26/when-the-metaphor-becomes-the-monster-exclusive/

Alice Prospekt

2011-10-26T01:59:00.000-07:00

Alice Prospekt by AFAN Alessandro Fantini 2011 by AFAN Alessandro Fantini

Linea Gustav

2011-10-24T09:59:00.000-07:00

Linea Gustav by Alessandro Fantini | Make Your Own Book

Alessandro Fantini | Art Takes Miami 2011

2011-10-15T02:08:00.000-07:00

Alessandro Fantini | Art Takes Miami 2011

- AB URBE INCOGNITA -

http://afantini.daportfolio.com/gallery/328784

More than a decade of meditative studies around the mysteries of Being projected on canvases, papers and videos, constantly fluctuating between stylistic reminiscences of Flemish masters, symbolism, surrealism and glimpses of neorealist dimensions tied to waking dream intuitions and self-induced hallucinations; more than 450 artworks generated by an aesthetic Stakhanovism nurtured since the first childhood experiments in comics and anime; more than a simple artist obsessed by his own self-centered realm or the latest artistic trend, Alessandro Fantini has always conceived his creative activity as a privileged “detector” of all the unspeakable and enigmatic realities hidden behind the material as well as spiritual sphere.

The - Ab Urbe Incognita - solo exhibition project represents a first ambitious attempt to offer an organic and reasoned insight into one of the most prominent theme featured through the whole saga of his oil painted visions: the Unknown Cities built inside human minds.

Biomorphic architectures sprouting out from apparently dead structures; enigmatic archways leading to darker or brighter alleys crowded with memories or wasted by nihilist premonitions; shimmering staircases introducing to hermetic doors protecting truths inconceivable by rational knowledge; retro-avangardist thresholds inviting to eerie interiors encrusted by ambiguous entities unable to reveal their real nature; dizzy shadows protruding from oceans of silent skyscrapers erected on the uniform oddity of modern-day society. Still bigger and far more frightening than the entire world wide net and any imaginable artificial intelligence, the human brain can unfold never-ending cityscapes where each feeling, emotion, thought, idea and fantasy lives as a tormented inhabitant looking for a way to draw the definitive map of a place without definition (a concept that Fantini started to develop many years before Nolan could give a cinematic rendering of it in his movie - Inception - ).

"The Insomnia of Nimrod" is just one of the most evocative paintings of the many ones Alessandro Fantini worked out during his relentless quest for the cartography of the Unknown.

SaatchiOnline Showdown competition

2011-10-13T01:13:00.000-07:00

I entered the @SaatchiOnline #showdown competition. Please vote for me! http://www.saatchionline.com/showdown/view/showdown/8/artist/8120

Winged Lions

2011-09-28T12:00:00.000-07:00

Winged Lions by AFAN Alessandro Fantini 2011 by AFAN Alessandro Fantini

Санкт-Петербург

2011-09-27T11:58:00.000-07:00

Санкт-Петербург

Absorbing the delicate strenght of Winged Lions, Saint Petersburg 21-09-2011

Lorenzo Tucci - Hope by Alessandro Fantini 2011

2011-07-25T01:42:00.000-07:00

NEUMA - The Best AFAN's Film Music

2011-06-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

1.Il Dittico delle Delizie
2.Azimut
3.Venere Grave
4.Login Praeneste
5.MDMA
6.Tiranti Transit
7.Le Cornici della Pioggia
8.La strada per Shakti
9.aVoid
10.Colostro
11.Nepente
12.EDOnism
13.Epithell

An anthology of the best AFAN's film music.

Two bonus outtake tracks will be available with the complete album release.

Composed, performed and produced by AFAN Alessandro Fantini.

AFAN Sound 2011

Neuma by AFAN Alessandro Fantini

In the Mist of Future

2011-05-19T02:10:00.000-07:00

"Composing music has been and still is an integral element of my expressive multilayered urgence. Even though the most prominent embodiment of my creative identity can be considered the visual language, it's the sonic shape that represents the turbine of its aesthetic engine. Somehow music works as the physiologic solution allowing my artistic projects to achieve their poetic and spiritual lubrication and let them swim in the neverending abyss of human as well as overhuman perceptions.
"In the Mist of Future" is one of my first concept albums I planned and edited keeping in mind the need to translate a specific mood through music, sounds and words. My musical worlds often work as ethereal landscapes where I can place the stories or the visual epiphanies I evoke in different periods of my life by writing novels, shooting movies or painting. It's like taking a journey into unknown lands without boundaries and slowly realizing that they have so many geographic features that you can easily transpose them into a detailed olographic map. Some of the songs contained into this album can be listened like impressionistic insights into well-defined zones of the emotive realm I was exploring six years ago, while others are mainly irrational feedbacks to menacing thoughts experienced during my wandering adventures across a misty continent where humankind is still crawling: its Future".

In the Mist of Future by AFAN alessandro Fantini

An illustrated booklet with the lyrics will be available as a bonus item of the full release.

You can listen and buy the whole album at
http://afanalessandrofantini.bandcamp.com
credits

1 - Ouverture
2 - Transeunte 1
3 - Nella bruma del futuro
4 - Transeunte 2
5 - Quasar reveries
6 - Transeunte 3
7 - Coming back to Brandenburg
8- Transeunte 4
9 - Amnihollow
10 -Transeunte 5
11 - Florebit
12 - Transeunte 6
13 - Mistybrain
14 - Transeunte 7
15 - Ab origine

Lyrics and vocals by AFAN Alessandro Fantini.
Keyboards, sound programming, samples and sound editing by AFAN Alessandro
Fantini.

Cover artwork by AFAN Alessandro Fantini.

AFAN Sound 2005

Amnihollow - single from the upcoming album "In the Mist of Future"

2011-05-14T05:06:00.000-07:00

Amnihollow by AFAN alessandro Fantini

Iconosfera trailer

2011-04-28T01:22:00.000-07:00

The Opening of Mammon's Orgy

2011-04-06T11:57:00.001-07:00

The Opening of Mammon's Orgy by ~AFANTINI on deviant ART

Apocalypse in pills by AFAN Alessandro Fantini 2006

2011-03-29T02:19:00.001-07:00

Apocalypse in pills by AFAN Alessandro Fantini 2006 by AFAN Alessandro Fantini

The Century Gut by AFAN Alessandro Fantini

2011-03-22T05:59:00.000-07:00

The Century Gut by AFAN Alessandro Fantini (2011) by AFAN Alessandro Fantini

Nihon-jin desu

2011-03-21T06:24:00.001-07:00

The Insomnia of Nimrod

2011-03-01T08:46:00.001-08:00

The Insomnia of Nimrod by ~AFANTINI on deviant ART

Epithell main theme

2011-02-09T08:48:00.000-08:00

Epithell main theme
Composed, performed and produced by Alessandro Fantini.

The main theme of my new short movie.

Trova altri artisti come AFAN alias Alessandro Fantini in Myspace Music

MMX Enigma Social Song by AFAN

2011-02-07T11:24:00.000-08:00

2011-01-27T00:32:00.000-08:00

Abbrivio by =AFANTINI on deviant ART

Vote it on Saatchi Online Showdown SCOPE New York
http://www.saatchionline.com/showdown/match/showdown/3/artist/8120/art/1188398

Nothing but a fragment (2010-11)

2011-01-08T10:52:00.000-08:00

KETALAR entered Saatchi Online Showdown

2011-01-02T06:25:00.000-08:00

Ketalar by =AFANTINI on deviant ART
"Ketalar, painted in 2007, entered the current Saatchi Online Showdown.
Vote is open until January 6th at Saatchi Online Showdown

TEASER

2010-12-31T11:53:00.000-08:00

Tribute videos

2010-11-28T08:01:00.000-08:00

MUSING ABOUT MOVIEMAKING

2010-11-14T01:27:00.000-08:00

The making of EDOnism can be defined as a kind of gestation, considering that about 9 months have passed between the first outline and the end of the post-production period. During this arc of time a lot of ideas, coincidences, revelations and unforeseen events contributed to the uniqueness of the movie. It has been a grand scale effort propelled by the target of finalizing a project that at the beginning could sound utopist, if compared to the very limited range of technical and financial resources at our disposal. Although the thematic root of the story derived from the seismic emergency that unfortunately characterized the 2009 here in Abruzzo (that’s still a dramatic issue on these days), the earthquake phenomenon doesn’t represent an excuse to give to the movie a more humanitarian or social appeal, as some documentaries and movies have done after the disaster. Indeed, what interested me most was to give a poetic representation to the link between the inner realm of human soul and the enigmatic exterior world, a theme that has been often at the core of my previous movies (as well as paintings and novels). Somehow the earthquake becomes the symbolic projection of a human interior cataclysm, an extraordinary event subverting the concept of reality, slowly getting wider proportions and involving the entire community of a city. Tokyo provided a colossal set to the movie, an emotive environment that neither digital effects nor scenography will ever be able to reproduce with the same visual power, offering the perfect physical backdrop to the metaphysical journey of the protagonist. Indeed its breathtaking amount of details properly evoked the hyper realistic visionary ambiance that I imagined while I was writing the script.
I’d like to dedicate Edonism not only to all the victims of earthquakes, but also to the people still trying to restore their humanity among the ruins of their soul.

http://www.edonism-movie.com

Alessandro Fantini at the National Group Exhibition Premio D'Annunzio

2010-10-22T12:46:00.000-07:00

Alessandro Fantini's paintings "Tat Tvam Asi", "Mulungu", "Spiracula", "Ophelia and Perielio" and "The Horizon of the Events" will be displayed at the national group exhibition "Premio D'Annunzio" set inside the Flaiano's Auditorium in Pescara city, Abruzzo, Italy, from 25th to 31st of October 2010.

EDOnism end titles - from the original soundtrack composed by Alessandro Fantini

2010-08-28T03:54:00.000-07:00

The New EDOnism poster

2010-07-01T03:36:00.000-07:00

Edonism poster 3 by ~AFANTINI on deviant ART

Since nowadays I'm getting more and more tired of seeing photoshopped and/or computer-generated posters and illustrations, I feel even more motivated to keep creating images completely drawn and colored by my right hand and fingertips. All the layers I need are already stratified in my geodetic imagination. This poster is the best example of how minimize the range of tools in order to achieve the maximum aesthetic result.

EDOnism trailer 2

2010-06-30T00:15:00.001-07:00

EDOnism Trailer 2

Edonism trailer (2010)

Trailer edited by Alessandro Fantini

Edonism

Director, editor, animator, screenwriter and soundtrack composer: Alessandro Fantini

Producer, art director, co-writer, casting director and location manager: Lorenzo Fantini

Line producer: Miles Elliott

Assistant producer: Lucy King

Post production supervisor: Nate Jensen

Make up artist: Kana Yoshida

Cast: Sacha Mühlebach, Helene Salvini Fujita, Hiro Super, Lucy King, Lorenzo Fantini, Kyle H., Nate Jensen, Tony Evans, Alessandro Fantin, Cyrus Malekani.

Genre: Sci-fi thriller, drama, adventure

Shooting format: HDV

Runtime: 65 min.

Country: Italy, Japan

Language: English

Filming locations: Tokyo

Release date: June 2010

EDOnism website: www.edonism-movie.com

EDOnism trailer

2010-06-03T00:00:00.000-07:00

EDOnism Teaser

2010-03-19T04:22:00.000-07:00

Teaser 2 edited by Alessandro Fantini
Music composed by Alessandro Fantini
Tv Announcer: Bianca Allen
Vocals: Helene Salvini Fujita
Produced by Lorenzo Fantini

Status: Post-production

Director, editor, animator, screenwriter and soundtrack composer: Alessandro Fantini

Producer, art director, co-writer, script consultant, casting director and location manager: Lorenzo Fantini

Line producer: Miles Edelsten

Assistant producer: Lucy King

Make up artist: Kana Yoshida

Cast: Sacha Mühlebach, Helene Salvini Fujita, Hiro Super, Lucy King, Lorenzo Fantini, Kyle Hauptman, Nate Jensen, Tony Evans, Alessandro Fantini.

Genre: Sci-fi thriller, drama, adventure

Shooting format: HDV

Runtime: Estimated 70 min.

Country: Italy, Japan

Language: English

Filming locations: Tokyo

Release date: June 2010

Alessandro Fantini Interview - Buongiorno Regione - RAI TRE 4-01-2010

2010-01-05T09:45:00.001-08:00

EDOnism Teaser 1

2010-01-03T10:16:00.001-08:00

EDOnism (2010)

The first teaser of the upcoming feature movie directed by Alessandro Fantini and produced by Lorenzo Fantini.

TEASER 1 Directed and edited by Alessandro Fantini
Photos by Lorenzo Fantini
Music composed and performed by Alessandro Fantini

Follow the making at: http://fantini.typepad.com/edonism

EDONISM - An Independent movie Production in Tokyo

2009-12-16T11:27:00.000-08:00

Edonism is the tragic story of James Hallway, an English businessman from The U.K.

He came to Tokyo looking for the dream and a life with his beautiful wife, Sophie. Instead he found a life of toil, torment and alcoholism. Unable to face his descent into self destruction, Sophie left, abandoning him to his downward spiral into the gutter.

When things can't get any worse, his grip on reality is stolen from under him as he experiences all manner of hallucinations and ulitmately a coma.

When he is revived he begins to learn some terrifying truths about his condition and his connection to a long forgotten legend from ancient Japan.

Together with the resourceful Dr Geena Landlord he attempts a desperate quest of discovery that leads them both to the very heart of conspiracy involving a secret government order and the enigmatic being known as the The Cat Fish .

Alessandro Fantini

Is an independent artist / writer / filmmaker, who is currently active in the contemporary arts and film scene in Italy.

We are looking for talented actors and actresses to join in this exciting project, which will be entered into international film festivals and shown on European TV channels.
http://fantini.typepad.com/edonism/

The breath of William Kurelek

2009-11-25T12:57:00.000-08:00

I think it's a pity that nowadays the name of this talented and visionary artist survives just in Canada. The story of my obsession for William Kurelek dated to the discovery of his masterwork "The Maze" that happened accidentally when I was a child reading a large book about psychiatry belonging to a friend of my father. The detailed and disturbing sagittal representation of a human skull full of boxes containing small iconic scenes (reminiscent of those ones depicted by Magritte, Ernst and Dali) impressed me so deeply that I couldn't forget it for a long while, even if I wasn't able to know who was the painter since the book didn't provide the name of the author. The mistery enveloping both the painting theme and its creator boosted even more my fascination for the image. Somehow his Bosh-like and bruegelesque taste reminded me an intense state of mind I perceived when I was very young staring at the little figures on the basement of an old globe in my house.
Accidentally the last year I found again the same large book in the house of a friend of mine, but this time I checked out the illustration references at the end of the volume and, following the several clues on the web, I finally managed to find his name. Since then I studied his life reading rare canadian books and discovered further impressive pictures and drawings he made during the period he spent at the London Maudsley Hospital when he painted "The Maze".
I started to paint this picture while I was simply musing about all the ancient feelings I recovered when I found again that gruesome Kurelek's self-portrait. I cannot explain rationally why I paint this urban landscape. All in all, showing what you cannot express through words and logic, might be the reason paintings are made for...

Alessandro Fantini's atelier 2006 © Alessandro Fantini

2009-11-17T02:03:00.001-08:00

Alessandro Fantini's atelier 2006 © Alessandro Fantini, inserito originariamente da AFAN Alessandro Fantini.

Deluxe edition of The Sinovial Gaze - the Art of Alessandro Fantini

2009-10-27T02:30:00.000-07:00

The Sinovial Gaze - Deluxe edition

The Art of Alessandro Fantini

€31.00
Hardcover, 141 pages
Available on Alessandro Fantini's Storefront

The Sinovial Gaze-The Art of Alessandro Fantini embodies the first attempt at gathering more than a decade of creative and hallucinative experiences lived by the “multimedianic” artist Alessandro Fantini in a unique visual ride along more than one hundred luxuriant color illustrations. The book depicts the progression of Fantini's quest for the medianic rendition of his most inner pulsions and visions. Since the early 90s, with the discovery of the oil painting and the surrealist concepts, his artworks higlight a turbulent tension towards the cinematic and narrative syntaxes that will soon led him to deal with shortmovies, novels, comics, videoart and music languages. The book is structured into three sections which explore chronologically the pictorial and graphic dimensions of his visionary craftmanship. This 2009 hard cover deluxe edition includes new notes and more recent artworks in bigger size.

"Alessandro’s devotion to oil and canvas has rewarded us we with enough medianic meditations on the nature of the human mind to keep us transfixed for many years to come. His discipline and persistence from early childhood through his teens and now into his adulthood has taken the viewer on an incredible journey through an isolated landscape that invites dialogue, challenges preconceptions of existence, and teases us with sexual imagery that writhes through both foreground and background.

Alessandro is fascinated by the interior of the human mind, and more precisely his own. His art is defined by the eerie images of the transmogrification of the human body, its transience from youth to age, from life to death, from ethereal to grotesque animalism. The complexity of his images refuses to be defined precisely and they’re often unsettling in their depiction of our psychic core.
Alessandro shows heavy influence from Dali, especially in his early paintings. Employing many of the same techniques and compositions as that mad old Spaniard, Alessandro refined and evolved his painterly skills. His earlier works are a cacophony of colour, passion and violence that bursts from the canvas.

The young painter exploring his sexual desires is most clearly evident by the fantasy females and phantasmagorical muses that haunt the ruined walls of castles and churches. Indeed they’re a recurrent element throughout his works, as we’re faced, uncomfortably so at times, with the raw, burning Eros that knaws deeply at the hearts of men."

Excerpt from the new Lorenzo Fantini's foreword.

NEPENTE TRAILER

2009-06-11T11:35:00.001-07:00

Paintings and movies are artificial plants born from the seed of Vision one has in one's mind. The practical gesture of moving the brush upon the blank surface of canvas recalls that one of tattoing the pale skin of a dead body. Visions to me are so cruelly concrete that painting them has the same value of giving life to their spiritual flesh. Now the cyber space, the high definition technology, the virtual realities, the digital film-making, the 3D and 5.1 audiovisual experience, the web streaming are announcing the end of the “Multimedia Era” and the beginning of the “Multimedianic Age”. Therefore, even when I just paint or direct a movie, what I unleashed on the canvas or on the screen is nothing but the “imprinting” of these medianic visions which contain all the high definition realities of the Invisible. Visions mean listening to the images and watching the sound. Over the years I applied this concept to everything I managed to create in order to stay faithful to the source of my irrational and biological pulsions, since I never considered my art as a simple activity separated by my daily life. Many of my short movies, art videos and novels such as "The Rain Frames", "Endometria", "Amnihollow", "aVoid", "Body Locked" deal with the recurrent theme of the transmogrification of matter and of human body, often signifing the substantial ambiguity of being, where illusions, hallucinations and dreams are made of the same tissue of our so-called reality and sometime are able to unveil realms more concrete than our own world. In my new feature movie "NEPENTE"that will be premiered in the next weeks, I developed these themes linking them to the new existential crisis of human identity in the era of the social networks, forums, blogs and chat rooms where the massive proliferation of imaginary personalities has dramatically increased the fragmentation and the distortion of our Ego.

NEPENTE TEASER 3

2009-05-16T05:01:00.001-07:00

The third teaser for the new Alessandro Fantini's movie "NEPENTE".

Teaser 2

2009-05-11T08:42:00.001-07:00

TEASER 1

2009-05-10T08:29:00.001-07:00

-----------------------------N---------------------------

2009-05-06T00:35:00.000-07:00

Lorenzo Tucci The Sky by Alessandro Fantini 2009

2009-04-15T14:36:00.001-07:00

Lorenzo Tucci - The Sky (2009)

Video of the track from the upcoming Lorenzo Tucci's album "Touch"

Directed and edited by Alessandro Fantini
Animation and artworks by Alessandro Fantini
Produced by Lorenzo Tucci

"The Sky" played and produced by Lorenzo Tucci

www.lorenzotucci.com

Daimon (2004) part two

2009-03-14T01:58:00.001-07:00

Directed, edited and produced by Alessandro Fantini.

Daimon (2004) part one

2009-03-11T12:48:00.001-07:00

Directed, edited and produced by Alessandro Fantini.

The Sinovial Gaze - The Art of Alessandro Fantini

2009-01-01T13:54:00.001-08:00

http://www.lulu.com/content/3229469
http://www.amazon.com/Sinovial-Gaze-A...

Alessandro Fantini's imagination knows no bounds: his visions have their own story, their own world and their silent messages a truly singular creation. - Jean Michel Jarre, world-wide renown composer, author of million-selling albums such as Oxygene and Equinoxe

"The Sinovial Gaze - The Art of Alessandro Fantini" embodies the first attempt at gathering more than a decade of creative and hallucinative experiences lived by the multimedianic italian artist Alessandro Fantini in an unique visual ride along more than one hundred luxuriant color illustrations. The book depicts the progression of Fantini's quest for the medianic rendition of his most inner pulsions and visions. Since the early 90s, with the discovery of the oil painting and the surrealist concepts, his artworks higlight a turbulent tension towards the cinematic and narrative syntaxes that will soon led him to deal with shortmovies, novels, comics, videoart and music languages. The book is structured into three sections which explore chronologically the pictorial and graphic dimensions of his visionary craftmanship.

Among the featured artworks there are the David Lynch's portrait (below right) displayed at the London Brick Lane Gallery, the erotic oil on wood board "O.B.E." featured in the Fantini's selfportrait printed on the Jean Michel Jarre's AERO album booklet, the celebrative painting of the Jarre's "Oxygene" 30th anniversary, the canvas Memories of Dreamsinspired by Blade Runner, and the tribute to Stanley Kubrick personally donated to his wife Christiane Kubrick. Comments and notes by the artist himself, Jean Michel Jarre, Charles de Lauzirika, Claudio Castellini, Lorenzo Fantini, Samuel Toole.

Printed: Paperback book, 130 pages, 7.44" x 9.68", perfect binding, white interior paper (80# weight), full-color interior ink, white exterior paper (90# weight), full-color exterior ink

Published and distributed by Lulu.com

"Alessandros devotion to oil and canvas has rewarded us we with enough medianic meditations on the nature of the human mind to keep us transfixed for many years to come. His discipline and persistence from early childhood through his teens and now into his adulthood has taken the viewer on an incredible journey through an isolated landscape that invites dialogue, challenges preconceptions of existence, and teases us with sexual imagery that writhes through both foreground and background." Lorenzo Fantini excerpt from the foreword

Alessandro Fantini - Tiranti Transit part 3

2008-11-19T09:38:00.001-08:00

Alessandro Fantini - Tiranti Transit part 2

2008-11-18T01:07:00.001-08:00

Alessandro Fantini - Tiranti Transit part 1

2008-11-13T06:43:00.001-08:00

TIRANTI TRANSIT (2005)

Directed, edited and produced by Alessandro Fantini

Here it is an interesting review provided two years ago by the american director and writer Patrick Meaney

Tiranti Transit is a short film by Italian director, Alessandro Fantini. It was interesting approaching this film because I can see so much of my own work in the film, both the triumphs and the failures.

The film's in Italian, and I didn't have access to the English dialogue, but I think it's so well made that you don't even need to understand the dialogue. The primary concern is building a mood, and what lingers with me after viewing the film is not the story, it's more this feeling of melancholy and warmth. In that respect, it's a very prototypical European art film. I haven't seen that much of his work, but it's reminiscent of Antonioni, with a decentralized narrative and a focus on aesthetic qualities.

I think that's what makes cinema so powerful, a Wong Kar-Wai film wouldn't work in any other medium because it's not solely about the story, or solely about the aesthetics, it's about the fusion of music and visual to create a singular feeling. The score in this film is fantastic, moody and Blade Runneresque, it's a large part of why the short works as well as it does.

The best moments in the film are at the end. There's a fantastic shot where the woman opens a door inside and there's a cut to a wide open road, which we then see her standing on. It's a great moment of surreal cutting, using editing to make a transition that's not possible in reality. This leads up to the really nice ending of the film.

My big issue with the film, something that's true of a lot of low budget, digital works, is that some shots just feel like home video, and that takes you out of the story. It's the biggest concern in working with digital, I absolutely love DV and would gladly shoot it over film, but it means that you need to better, to ensure that each shot has the care you would spend for a filmbased take. Even David Lynch had some really sloppily composed shots in Inland Empire, it's tough to nail every shot and a few here just didn't quite work. But, it didn't fully take me out of the story's mood, and I was able to quickly shift back in and reengage with the story. Maybe some color correction would resolve that issue, or more likely, just a higher end camera.

The other thing I wasn't sure about was the zooms. Some of them were great, but some felt a bit arbitrary. Some filmmakers use the zoom lens in great ways, most notably Robert Altman. I feel like with the zoom you either have to be really slow, or really fast. If you use the default camera speed, it can feel rote. But, I'm not sure if I'm reacting that way just because I know about cameras and can see how it worked. However, I'm still glad that he tried it, because some of those zooms made for great moment.

I'd rather watch a film like this than a polished Hollywood movie that doesn't have any energy in the shooting. I'd rather have a few shots that don't quite make it if it means having some of the fantastic compositions that appear throughout the film. As I've said many times before, I'd rather see a film that aims high and doesn't quite make it than something that has no ambition and nails it. So, the flaws of this film don't mean that it's not a great viewing. This film is a world you can slip into, and I really enjoyed my time there. And, the ending had a primal power that I found very affecting and well done.

If you want to view the film, it's on line here, and there's more information on Alessandro, including some fantastic art, right here. at his site.

Alessandro Fantini - Colostro - trailer 2008

2008-08-23T08:45:00.001-07:00

THE SINOVIAL GAZE - THE ART OF ALESSANDRO FANTINI

2008-07-25T10:43:00.000-07:00

THE SINOVIAL GAZE - THE ART OF ALESSANDRO FANTINI

130 pages, 7.44" x 9.68", perfect binding, white interior paper, full-color interior ink, white exterior paper, full-color exterior ink

The Sinovial Gaze-The Art of Alessandro Fantini embodies the first attempt at gathering more than a decade of creative and hallucinative experiences lived by the “multimedianic” artist Alessandro Fantini in an unique visual ride along more than one hundred luxuriant color illustrations. The book depicts the progression of Fantini's quest for the medianic rendition of his most inner pulsions and visions. Since the early 90s, with the discovery of the oil painting and the surrealist concepts, his artworks higlight a turbulent tension towards the cinematic and narrative syntaxes that will soon led him to deal with shortmovies, novels, comics, videoart and music languages. The book is structured into three sections which explore chronologically the pictorial and graphic dimensions of his visionary craftmanship.

Among the featured artworks there are the David Lynch's portrait displayed for the first time at the Brick Lane Gallery, the erotic oil on wood board "O.B.E" featured in the Fantini's selfportrait printed on the Jean Michel Jarre's AERO album booklet, and the tribute to Stanley Kubrick personally donated to his wife Christiane Kubrick. Comments and notes by the artist himself, Jean Michel Jarre, Charles de Lauzirika, Claudio Castellini, Lorenzo Fantini.

Alessandro Fantini teaser 2008

2008-07-15T12:05:00.001-07:00

TEASER

The Semilunar Passage

2008-07-04T04:25:00.001-07:00

Il Varco Semilunare - The Semilunar Passage

Alessandro Fantini releases his first art book devoted to documenting 15 years of graphic enquiries and preliminary medianic sketches, flamboyant apparently illustrative pencil and black ink drawings and portraits spreaded over 140 pages with more than one hundred black and white plates. Commentaries, poems, newspapers excerpts and memories by the author himself support this intense journey through the AFAN's ambiguous and everlasting creative anamnesis. Available on Lulu.com at this [link] in the italian language soft-cover edition. The english version will be published sooner.

Cheat together: My Test for a Contest

2008-06-24T05:49:00.000-07:00

No. You're wrong. The image displayed on this post doens't mean that I'm converting my blog to a conventional advertisings container 'cause I renegaded my art purist philosophy. Actually this is one of my advertising visual creations submitted for the on line contest launched by Emporio Armani some months ago on the web for which I also created a video that I linked on this blog at the end of april. Even though I admit that I enjoed a lot to deal with the language and the mediatic code and rythm of the commercial (I've experimented something similar last year with my cryptic teasers promoting my novel "Endometria" on YouTube and Libero Video) exploiting the edenic and atavic charm of a protected harbour of the adriatic coast surveilled by a paradoxical as well as "biotech-like"oil platform raised on the sea horizon, I cannot say the same about my reaction to the proclamation of the winners of the two contest categories. Annalisa Nappi, who simply put "together" the two cylindrical parfums in a "ready-made" composition, could make even Andy Warhol, Marcel Duchamp or Piero Manzoni feel ashamed of their art . There isn't much more to say than the next time I will take care to suppress my imagination, so let's discover the winning director. Who's Joseph Cardo? Had he the credentials to join this contest open to every artists not linked to the Emporio Armani staff as the rules cleary stated? Could his video be defined "genial" or, at least "original" and faithful to the submission rules and therefore worthy to win the first prize and becoming the lucky director of the new "Get together" advertising campaign? Answer to the first question: Joseph Cardo is a very well known international fashion photographer who has already the neverending curriculum of a consumed professionist who made advertising campaigns, videoclip, calendars and portfolio for Vogue, Glamour, GQ, Traveller, fashion houses like Basile, Burani, Krizia, Cardin, Coveri, Balestra and has created the cover photograps of the last Vasco Rossi cd (if you don't know who's this pop-singer then you're lucky to not live in Italy). All in all he had the same credentials of the other 2799 artists to submit his creation 'cause as far as I know it seems that he hasn't sisters, brothers or cousins among the Emporio Armani staff (I suspect he didn't need them anyway). Thing changes when we consider the format requested by the contest rules. Why? The pdf of the video guidelines I downloaded from the contest website reported the following line: 4/3 lenght: 30 seconds maximum whatever the medium (video, flash, animation, etc.) - wmv, mov, avi, mp4, mpeg, mpg and 3gp. If you check out the Cardo's video you wil notice a strange anomaly: indeed the video format is 16/9. C'mon, what's the problem? It will be easy to convert it to 4/3! Sure, but many of the contest participants believed that the guidelines were inviolable and that if 4/3 means 4/3 it cannot means also 16/9! But maybe many of the participants don't know that usually in Italy rules are made to be slightly changed or, to use a more polite and modern word, to be "reformed" according to the needs of the people (sometime very few people). In any case, we have to recognize that the powerful, state-of-the-art imagery propelled through the 30 seconds of this commercial was so astounding that Giorgio Armani himself has been so amazed that he forgot completely the guidelines, the concept of the "Get together" parfums campaign, and maybe he forgot the contest itself. A boy with a very "boysh" and "urbanlike" beard of four days ( it's a fact that the urban traffic don't allow you to reach so easily the bathroom) wanders in a dark and cinematic "losangeleslike" street playing "hide-and-seek" with a black street lamp smelling the air pollution of the city (do you really think that a scent can defeat the smog of a city like that?). Then, in the other half of the split-screen suggested by the vertical line of the street lamp (a genial mention of "When Harry met Sally" and "The Rules of Attraction") a pale and "prearaphaelitelike" girl with the sensual expression of a "Milkorova" mannequin waves her head in a pre-orgasmic rush. The end is really superb in its unpredictability: after touching the girl's neck and trying to kiss her, the "boysh boy" comes back to play "hide-and-seek" with the same street lamp of the first seconds. Simple and direct, don't you think? A great lesson of pop semiology! If you happen to walk alone in a desert city street by night and you meet a girl (oh God, is she true? or is she Amy Winehouse just escaped from a party?), all you will be able to do is to rub your body against a street lamp instead to talk with that mermaid and invite her in your hotel room. That's the risk of smelling the not "so healthy" contemporary fragrance of an urban road so strangely desert. Therefore the last, most important question is: did Armani really need to create a web contest and wait for three months to engage Joseph Cardo in directing his new advertising campaign? Is there someone in his staff that could remember him that there are email, phone numbers and agents to call a professional fashion photographer like Cardo? But to tell the truth, now everyone knows that the real Advertising campaign was the Contest itself, so now the genial Giorgio can count on 2798 different commercials produced for a same product spreaded all over the web, all of them commissioned for free! That's the definitive proof of his succes: he's really the son of the Machiavelli's country! All my respects Mr. Giorgio and thanks for having get me together with your unpredictable fragrances.

Inside the set out of space

2008-06-16T01:55:00.000-07:00

Before starting greater projects I use to test and develop new little and big intuitions all by myself, experimenting and exploiting the most improbable devices in order to achieve my main purpose: escaping from Reality without leaving Reality. These visions reach me mainly while I'm painting or writing something totally different from their content. Sometime I can manage to get them while I'm in a crowded place (squares, parties, city streeets, supermarkets, family lunches) where noise level is so high that my mind has to isolate itself to preserve its integrity, allowing to hidden thoughts and subtle emotions to resurface suddenly. I'm beginning the filming of this new short movie knowing it will be my last low-budget indipendent production located in my home town. Two weeks of insane monsoonlike storms has revealed the debris of old claustrophobic fantasies belonging to my remote childhood. However I'm fully aware that this place will never stop fuelling the engine of my phantom ship.

She suckles the shades

2008-05-30T04:13:00.000-07:00

May has been surely one of the most prolific and lifegiving month that I have experienced so far. Not only I found out new ideas and visual concepts for my next movie project while I was painting the new canvas that I completed just this morning, but I has been able to finalize and register to the Writers Guild of America my first screenplay entirely written in english. Now it's time to build the foundations for both my upcoming works: this afternoon I'll put the acrylic white ground on the blank cardboard canvas in order to prepare it for the layers of oil veils which will unfold the new treshold of the Central Memory I discovered during the shooting of my music video "Body Locked" (hoping to reprise the writing of my new indipendent movie in the evening).
Recently I read again "The Naked Lunch" by William Burroughs and somehow I realized that under this paranoid patch-work of lushious and morbid archetypes there are still hidden substrata of moods tied to other everlasting epitomes of biological fury such as "The Songs of Maldoror" by Lautreamont, "The Colour out of space" by Lovecraft and "The atrocity exhibition" by Ballard. Maybe my renewed interest in the struggle between the metamorphing pulsion of the cells and the annihilating power of Time derived from the return of some childhood reminiscences. Indeed when I was a child I used to hide myself in the darkest spots of the shacks behind my house in the attempt to prevent my brothers or my mother from forcing me to attend catechism or other boring afternoon activitites. So I spent those anguishing minutes among the shaded straw contemplating the swarming population of insects which embodied the court of the pregnant mother cat crouched in the shadow. Saturday after saturday I noticed out the fast inflation of her abdomen and the frightening growth of her pink breasts which were starting to emerge from the hair like heads of little mices. The evening I discovered that six little pink and weat cats were sucking those turgid breasts I felt a sudden sense of panic and loss. The mother cat blowed angrily as she saw me coming in the dark straw, while keeping suckling with a wild tenacity her sons. Ants and flea crowded on the delicate skin of the pets joining the tumult of that feast of growth and multiplication. Since then this climate of terror and fascination has always been strictly linked in my mind to the mutation of the flesh and the feeling of mistery that surrounds the monstruous marvels of biology.

Blending the breaths of Time

2008-04-30T01:57:00.000-07:00

My video for the Armani advertising contest "Get together".
See and vote it on
Emporio Armani contest website

Flaming tune

2008-04-11T06:31:00.001-07:00

From time to time I need to clean the palette. The day the oil color incrustation begins to resemble a Pollock's delirium or a Burri's patchwork I've to baptize this morbid orogenic surface with sprays of alcool and waves of fire. When the matter becomes soft again I scrape it off with my putty knife. It's a hard and stressing physical work, but the feeling is very close to a sensual act. It simbolically forebodes the upcoming creative challenge of the large canvas, just like the alchemic "Genesis in test-tube" described by J. C. Barchusen in his book "Elementa chemicae", during which Azoth is put many times inside the bottle together with the fire in order to let the soul oozing.

Digging to the White Void

2008-04-07T02:59:00.001-07:00

Digging to the White Void

Time of deep and bright uncertainty.
I bought two new canvases this morning.
I've got a plethora of new ideas and hallucinative concepts, partly under the influence of my study of the Andrew Wyeth's art book “Memory and magic” and the rediscovering of the ancient mastership of Van der Weyden and Brueghel I loved so much during my first adolescence. I've always been enchanted by that Wyeth's distinctive virtue of feeding the shadows with the sparkling coldness of the Maine rural deserts, as well as the Brueghel's luministic approach of rendering the epic sharpness of gargantuan buildings and chaotic crowds of ant-like people so close to those filling Times Square and Piccadilly Circus.
I has been particularly impressed by the famous Wyeth's “Christina's World” until the first time I saw it on a book many years ago, during a gloomy afternoon spent in a precious domestic loneliness. When I accidentally saw it again in 2004 I has been pushed to filter that sense of geometrical eternity and eerie epiphany in the canvas “Are you Carmilla?”, based upon my recurrent nocturnal anguish crises.
On the other hand, the upcoming paintings can be cosidered like two aerial pillars founded on the revelation of a female mood I recently recognized in the gesture and the “clarvoyance” of a young actress gaze. This is the first time I feel that a girl unknown to my daily world could reveal me much more than any person I have ever met in my “physical life”. It's a perception that reminds me some lucid dreams where an astral entity was trying to rescue me before I fell into an abyssal void. Maybe that's the reason for my being so firmly determined to begin these new picture, since it will be the only medium that will allow her to talk to me. Visions keep being the unique way to know the true roots of our reality shadow.

2008-03-26T02:35:00.001-07:00

The art video "aVoid" directed by the young moviemaker, painter and writer Alessandro Fantini will be premiered in Rome at the Digital Awards 2008, the section dedicated to the black and white art video filmed with digital camera, during the "16mm Film Festival" hosted by the theatre Colosseo Nuovo on friday 28th of march. Enrico Ghezzi, author of cult italian tv programs such as "Blob" and "Fuori Orario" and renowned film critic is the president of the Digital Awards commission which has selected the video of Fantini, shooted at the end of 2007 among several locations in London and in middle Italy. For further information about the event visit http://www.16mm.it