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Virtual Apraxia
Raul Gabriel
The Format Contemporary Gallery
Milan 30/10 -12 /12 / 2014
curated by Guido Cabib
text by Roberto Diodato
catalogo virtual apraxia.indd 1 25/11/14 16:20

Virtual Apraxia
Raul Gabriel
The Format Contemporary Gallery
Milan 30/10 -12 /12 / 2014
curated by Guido Cabib
text by Roberto Diodato
English translation By Dr Tessa Marzotto

Intro
Apraxia (from Greek praxis, an act, work, or deed) is the inability to execute learned
purposeful movements, despite having the desire and the physical capacity to perform
the movements. Apraxia is an acquired disorder of motor planning, but is not caused by
incoordination, sensory loss, or failure to comprehend simple commands (which can be
tested by asking the person to recognize the correct movement from a series).

Gli Incidenti di Raul Gabriel
Testo di Roberto Diodato,
Gli incidenti di Raul Gabriel sono eventi: l’ evento, nodo di relazioni molteplici in
divenire ( i corpi sono insiemi di eventi e non enti materiali occupanti un volume
definito proprio e uguale per tutti gli osservatori) non è né fisico né psichico, ma
virtuale e reale insieme, plesso di percipiente, percepito e rapporto tra questi, gesto
che è pensiero: logos estetico, chiasma o incarnazione del logos. Gli eventi strut-
turano a loro volta nodi complessi intrecciandosi con altri eventi, e assumendo
eventi come parti; svolgono così la funzione di soggetto, ma circolarmente di og-
getto qualora siano a loro volta presi come parti di altri eventi. Soggetto e oggetto,
e attivo e passivo, sono quindi funzioni processuali reversibili, cioè il soggetto non
è subjectum o substratum bensì punto-luogo provvisorio di alcune fasi spazio-tem-
porali del processo. Una situazione ontologica a partire dalla quale possiamo ri-
pensare alcune entità che esibiscono uno statuto squisitamente relazionale. Infatti
gli incidenti di Gabriel fanno cortocircuitare physis e techne ponendoci di fronte a
una poiesis da pensare nuovamente: chi o cosa produce le “cose” che vediamo, che
percepiamo come se fossero il prodotto di una volontà creatrice? Quale potenza
crea qui la dimensione dell’esperienza estetica, l’esperienza più complessa per l’es-
sere umano? Quale relazione tra necessità e libertà viene messa in scena in questa
prova? La convergenza effettiva tra libertà e necessità, potenza dell’immaginazione
e apparato tecnologico, doppia produzione incompatibile, non è razionalizzabile
ma semplicemente si dà, e accade talvolta quale evento artistico. E’ questione che

riguarda l’essere, le cose, il mondo, e che l’opera umana e insieme disumana dell’arte
esibisce esemplarmente. Negli incidenti di Raul Gabriel questa convergenza o potenza
produttiva è consapevolmente ricercata nella genesi dell’immagine: il processo digitale
permette un incontro tra la contingenza estrema del gesto personale e lo sguardo ano-
nimo e agghiacciante del processo tecnologico, che consiste nella trasformazione della
realtà in numero, nella scomposizione della complessità in una complicazione tenden-
zialmente computabile. Così negli incidenti di Gabriel si fa strada uno strano rapporto
tra invisibile e visibile: l’invisibile sensibile. L’invisibile è ciò che rende il luogo un’abi-
tazione, ciò che lo rende mondo-per-noi; l’invisibile non può essere, ovviamente, reso
visibile, eppure non può essere colto come tale, cioè come invisibile, senza il corpo, il
gesto, la voce, lo sguardo… è il senso dell’evento, il quale davvero accade e ha una sua
peculiare concretezza, senza mai lasciarsi afferrare e tradurre in significato determinato.
Ora il virtuale in questione nell’operazione di Gabriel, con il complesso delle sue qualità
percepibili (l’insieme di colori, di tracciati, di densità tattili, di energie, di suoni…) non
è che l’attualizzazione del contenuto di una memoria digitale, la messa in scena di un
algoritmo elaborato in sistema binario. Ciò spinge a interrogarsi sul rapporto tra aisthe-
sis e noesis. Ci troviamo infatti di fronte alla possibilità di una riduzione della percezio-
ne sensibile in termini computazionali, la quale però non implica una riduzione delle
qualità secondarie a qualità primarie, e nemmeno la riduzione possibile del mondo a
numero, bensì dice di una originaria e reversibile solidarietà tra percezione e pensiero
che si esprime in un arco operativo a un estremo del quale si trova una descrizione digi-
tale in memoria informatica e dall’altra un corpo doppiamente sensibile: la concretezza
della cosa e un’ esperienza: una struttura complessa, un soggetto-oggetto risultato di un
progetto inestricabilmente tecnologico e artistico, un corpo che si traduce in entità fan-
tasmatica eminentemente attiva, certamente artificiale, prodotto da tecnica, ma insieme
tendenza “innata”, che non dipende dai suoi componenti “naturali” ma dalla sua propria
“natura”, al mutamento, al farsi esperienza, per il suo essere strutturalmente evento.

Ibrido dunque artificiale-naturale, in qualche senso quasi sistema “vivente”, corpo con-
creto e virtuale che esiste in quanto e solo in quanto incontro, scrittura digitale che si fa
esperienza sensibile, e quindi interattività costitutiva. Ciò induce a concepire la relazio-
ne (l’incontro) come in sé costitutiva di entità e a costruire un’ontologia, ancora in gran
parte inedita, delle relazioni, riconoscente ampliamento dell’arredo del mondo. Incrocio
(pericoloso, per fortuna) tra arte e filosofia, benissimo…
Roberto Diodato
Expiry date work in progress, NIMAX© test lab
Roberto Diodato insegna Estetica all’Università Cattolica di Milano. I suoi ultimi libri sono: Logos
estetico, Brescia 2011; L’invisibile sensibile, Milano 2012; Relazione e virtualità, Bologna 2013.

Raul Gabriel’s Incidents
Text by Roberto Diodato, author of Aesthetics of the Virtual, State University of New York Press
(SUNY), Albany-New York, 2012
Translation by Dr. Tessa Marzotto
Raul Gabriel’s incidents are events: the event, crossroad of multiple ongoing relations
(bodies, for instance, are a whole set of events, and not material beings occupying
the same definite volumes for every observer), is simultaneously virtual and real. The
event is the complex linkage of perceiver, perceived, and the relation between these
two. It is gesture that is also thinking: aesthetic logos, chiastic structure or incarnation
of logos. The events, in turn, give structure to other complex crossroads, by combi-
ning themselves with other events and integrating events as parts. They thus function
as subjects, and equally as objects, if they are themselves incorporated as parts of
other events. Subject and object, as well as active and passive, are therefore reversi-
ble process functions. In other words, the subject is not subjectum or substratum,
but rather the provisional point-place of some space-time stages of the process. This
scenario provides a suitable ontological standpoint in order to take into fresh account
some entities showing an exquisitely relational status. As a matter of fact, Gabriel’s
incidents create a short circuit between physis and techne, presenting us with a new
form of poiesis still to be accounted for: who or what produces the ‘things’ we see and
perceive as if they were the product of a creating will? What kind of power creates
here the realm of the aesthetic experience, which is in general the most complex for
human beings? What relation between necessity and freedom is here at play in this
effort? The actual convergency of freedom and necessity, or imagination power and

technology, – double incompatible production – cannot be rationally processed but
it is just given, sometimes taking place as artistic event. The issue concerns the being,
things, the world, and is exemplarily exhibited by the simultaneously human and su-
perhuman/preternatural workings of art. Raul Gabriel’s incidents actively and wittingly
seek such a convergency or productive power in the genesis of the image: the digital
process allows the encounter between the extreme contingency of individual taste and
the anonymous chilling gaze of the technological process. This latter transforms reality
into numbers and breaks up complexity into generally computable complication. Hence,
a peculiar relation between invisible and visible comes to the fore in Gabriel’s incidents:
the sensible invisible. The invisible is what transforms a place into a dwelling, what ma-
kes it world-for-us; the invisible, of course, cannot be made visible, and yet it cannot be
grasped as such, that is as invisible, without body, gesture, voice, gaze... this is the sense
of the event, which really happens and is provided of peculiar concreteness without for
this being fully grasped and translated into a determinate meaning. Now, the virtual at
stake in Gabriel’s work, with the complex structure of its perceptible qualities (the set of
colours, traces, tactile densities, energies, sounds...) is nothing but the actualization of
the content of some digital memory, the staging of an algorithm implemented using the
binary system. This raises some questions on the relation between aisthesis and noesis.
The issue at stake is, in fact, the possibility to reduce the sensible perception in computa-
tional terms, which does not entails however the reduction of secondary qualities to pri-
mary qualities, nor the possible reduction of the world to a number. It rather assesses the
original and reversible solidarity between perception and thinking, expressed within the
range marked at the extremes by the digital description of computer memories at one
end and by the doubly sensible body at the other end. The concreteness of things and
one experience: a complex structure, a subject-object resulting from some inextricably
technological and artistic project, a body translated into a distinctively active phantom
entity, clearly artificial, the product of technique, but also ‘innate’ tendency towards
change and (self-)developing experience, depending not on its ‘natural’ components but
on its very ‘nature’, because of its structurally being ‘event’. The reference is therefore to

a natural-artificial hybrid, in some respect almost a ‘living’ system, material and virtual
body which exists only as encounter, digital writing, endowed with sensible experience
and hence with constitutional interactivity. This leads us to understand the relation (the
encounter) as in itself constitutive of entities, and to build an ontology of relations, still
mostly unprecedented, which is a grateful enlargement of the world’s furnishings. A
crossroad – luckily enough, a dangerous one – between art and philosophy. Very well...
Roberto Diodato
Raul Gabriel, Irrelevant codes, Virtual Apraxia, 2014
Roberto Diodato is University Teacher of Aesthetics at the Università Cattolica in Milan. His last books
are: Logos estetico, Brescia 2011; L’invisibile sensibile, Milano 2012; Relazione e virtualità, Bologna 2013.

Raul Gabriel Incident #4, steps of development, Virtual Apraxia, 2014

Expiry date work in progress, NIMAX© test lab

Gallerist Guido Cabib during set-up of Virtual Apraxia

Irrelevant Codes
VIrtual Apraxia in progress view

Raul Gabriel, Irrelevant Codes, digital draw on primered packaging cardboard, 130x100 , 2014

Raul Gabriel, Irrelevant Code #2, digital draw on primered packaging cardboard, 130x100 , 2014

Raul Gabriel, Irrelevant Codes, digital draw on Fabriano fine art paper, 130x100 , 2014

Raul Gabriel, Irrelevant Code #22, digital draw on Fabriano fine art paper, 130x100 , 2014

Incidents

Raul Gabriel , Incidents 3d cycles renders on Fabriano fine art

Raul Gabriel , Incident #11, 3d cycles render on Fabriano fine art paper, 60x80, 1/3, 2014

ZOO-S
Raul Gabriel, diptych ZOO #5, bitumen and tempera on canvas, 70x70x2 2014

Raul Gabriel, diptych ZOO #2, bitumen and tempera on canvas, 60x60x2 2014

C-osmos

Raul Gabriel, C_OSMOS, digital draw on residual print on forex , 300x130 , 2014

back cover
Raul Gabriel, Irrelevant Code #7, digital draw on primered packaging cardboard, 30x30, 2014
Bio short
Raul Gabriel is italian-argentinian artist , born in Buenos Aires suburbs in 1966. . After a period dedicated to experi-
mentation in music, and a long journey in Santafe de Bogota, at the end of 1999 visual became his focus bringin him
in Milan,then in London gettin in few years many shows in both public and private galleries and outlining a path that
starts from body, better sayin the biological identity of reality , and his mutational processes interpreted in the different
aesthetical structures and artistic forms.
Raul Gabriel some shows
Palazzo delle Stelline in Milan in 2000, in Periscopio ,public show spotting the most interesting artistic individuals in
Milan and northern Italy, the solo
show at the Mudima foundation in 2003 (Milan), the Quadriennale of Rome 2003-‐2005 , the installation in Battersea
Park (Chelsea London), The project room in Miart with a main gallery in Milan, the solo show at Broadbent Gallery
London in 2006, with a focus on hybridation of media, the video sound performance at the Oberdan Space in Milan (
genetically modified trafficlights concert) in 2006, the solo show in Rome in 2007 at the Pino Casagrande studio gallery,
the solo show “Urban Trash” same year at the Grossetti Contemporary Art Gallery in Milan ,the shows and fairs in Ber-
lin and Miami in 2008 -‐2009, the solo show “Colournoncolour” at the Armory Contemporary Art Gallery in Perugia
in 2008, the multiple installation at the opening of Wunderkammern Foundation in Rome end of 2008,and the outstan-
ding video installation at the two worlds international festival in Spoleto in 2009. Follows these shows the project that
took origin from Gabriel’s Berlin experience with the video “Bak2Berlin” shown at the Fortezza da Basso in Florence
and subject , in its developments, of a new installation and show at the Bologna Art fair in 2010 and then at the Armory
Contemporary Art Gallery in Perugia, titled “Bak2Bike”. There takes origin the “bike removable path” on show at the
Carandente Museum of visual art of Palazzo Collicola in Spoleto until january 2011, and a room dedicated to the “forms
reflections” coming from the Berlin bike project as well. These experiences open to Raul themes relatin’ to “space” and
architecture and in fact in september 2010 Raul Gabriel gets a prize at the Architecture Department of the Sapienza
University in Rome for his project “Silkocoons”, free interpretation of the Silk Road Map, with a show at the World Expo
in Shangai 2010. In october 2010, an event at the Paolo VI Museum of Contemporary Art is dedicated to the artistic
project of Raul Gabriel in a sacred space of the late 50’s. In 2011 The solo shows in Perugia CUBE at the international
architecture festival, and the video installation O-‐One in Spoleto during the 2011 Two worlds Festival. November
2011 the video installation at Artmbassy contemporary in Berlin centre . February 2012 video installation Auditorium,
Rome . March 2012 “Transformations” London. June 2012 the show TOPOS-TOMIE at the Umbrian Foundation of
Architecture . February 2013 international group show “Lumen Ray” at Jerome Zodo Contemporary Milan, December
2013 w0rm$ at The Format contemprary culture gallery in Milan, December 2013 One to One Public Contemporary art
center Pavia. September 2014 solo show within collaboration of two museums in Brescia, october 2014 solo project in
Milan: Virtual Apraxia at THE FORMAT CONTEMPORARY gallery. October-November 2014 Sinopie, Raul Gabriel
meets Lucio Fontana, Lucio Fontana’s room MUDI Milan.

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Virtual Apraxia, Raul Gabriel, The Format Gallery Milan november 2014 text by Roberto Diodato, Curated by Guido Cabib

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Virtual Apraxia, Raul Gabriel, The Format Gallery Milan november 2014 text by Roberto Diodato, Curated by Guido Cabib