Early Birds Leave Rotten Fruits

Pierre Ruault My head all full of stuffin, my heart all full of pain. The exhibition "Early Birds Leave Rotten Fruits" marks, in my opinion, a departure in Andrea Spartà's practice. Like a whispered confession, it reveals a more introspective tone, albeit reserved, in his work. Through our regular exchanges, we shared the experience of being prone to severe migraine attacks that immobilize us. This ailment is temporarily accompanied by a disenchantment with existence, brutally and directly affecting the surrounding environment. For Andrea, this physical and psychological pain takes shape in the central figure of the exhibition, embodied by the Scarecrow from "The Wizard of Oz" (1939). This image particularly moves me, as in his quest for a brain, this character oscillates between deep despair and contagious joy. Much like him, Andrea is receptive to the new poetic dimension that emerges from his observation of the world during these episodes. Despite the discomfort, suffering seems to detach things from reality, offering a renewed perspective filled with possibilities. The halo of artificial lights distorts my field of vision, a violent intrusion into the privacy of my retinas, repetitive, like an uninterrupted percussion. The back of my eye sockets painfully burns. My once cooperative tools of work turn into formidable adversaries. Automatically, I shape two shells with my hands, attempting to make them airtight, with the goal of isolating my gaze from the environment assaulting it. At the same time, I engage in a series of exercises, a choreography of repeated blinks and eye rotations, in a futile attempt to restore some balance in the overwhelming discomfort. Andrea Spartà crafts environments from carefully collected fragments of reality. He selects modest objects – electrical outlets, household sheets, posters of classified ads found on the street, etc. – that have struck him during chance encounters, seemingly without apparent reason, except perhaps a form of empathy towards them. The essence of the artifact, for him, does not lie in the normative dimension imposed by a utilitarian function but rather as an autonomous mass existing freely in the world, endowed with its own physical singularities, embodying something almost more real. From these findings, he weaves mental representations by manipulating various visual and poetic threads. First, the spatial arrangement of identical objects in abnormal quantities is revealed, arranged without apparent logic. The accumulation of small smiling figurines with outstretched arms, representing the Scarecrow, creates a disturbing tautological play capable of destabilizing our understanding. This strangeness is also repeated on the ceiling, with an unusual profusion of suspended smoke detectors. The incessant flashing lights, independently generated by these machines, form a strange asynchronous constellation. Simultaneously, Andrea conceives various installations using pre- existing domestic materials at the Limbo site, such as crates of sheets, a ream of paper, and a green plant. These artistic gestures, initially discreet and almost insignificant in their arrangement and shapes gradually reveal themselves in a set of particularly dynamic exploratory domains as the gaze lingers. Eye fatigue, insidious, spreads from my eyes to the defenseless expanse of my skull. Simultaneously, the sound thickens around me, turning every noise into an unbearable cacophony. A distant laugh, the muffled murmur of a conversation, the delicate brushing of a glass on a table, all become shrill cries in my ear. Migraine, like a silent gangrene, takes hold of my head. I find myself powerless, lost in an inhospitable environment. In the end, Andréa Spartà's approach consists of creating a subtle fold in the space of reality, influencing both the repurposed object and our position as spectators, in order to confer another presence to things. The domestic simplicity emanating from his works evokes a strange sense of melancholy, without a clear source, a sensation similar to what we feel after reading the very last page of a novel or returning from a journey.Approaching a mimicry too excessive to be entirely sincere, the Scarecrow emerges again. But this time, it is accompanied by the torrential tears of a neurasthenic fruit, generated through the intervention of artificial intelligence and then captured in a small drawing taped to the wall at child's height. These figures seem to carry within them the melancholy that disrupts space. One day, Andréa confided in me that he feels a possessive anxiety in his daily life, an anxiety closely linked to the heavy burden of responsibility he feels towards the objects around him. The use and separation of these objects appear to him as both a mourning and a relief. The hours ahead stretch out before me, the headache depriving me of my professional or social obligations. To be honest, I am indifferent to it all. At this very moment, my only desire is to escape from the world, to immerse myself in a silent solitude, engulfed by darkness in total passivity. I engage in a methodical ritual: every electronic device, from the microwave to the phone charger, from electrical outlets to the smoke detector emitting the slightest glow, is invariably unplugged in the apartment. I am reminded of Henri Michaux's collection "Bras cassé" (1973). In the suffering caused by an accident, the poet experiences another way of being in the world, which he calls his "left self": "The one who is the left of me, who has never in my life been the first, who always lived in retreat, and now alone remains, this placid one, I kept turning around, never ceasing to observe him with surprise, me, brother of Myself." I believe that the Scarecrow draws its essence from a similar perspective. It is this same curiosity that Andréa feels for this other, both a stranger and yet his own. Lying in my bed, I await the liberating sleep. Migraine deprives me of my usual escapes: watching a movie, reading a book. I am forced to share an intimacy with my thoughts and my anxiety: "My head all full of stuffin. My heart all full of pain." The echoes of the song "If I Only Had a Brain" sung by the Scarecrow occasionally resonate in the room, a rare consolation tolerated when the pain allows. "If I only had a brain!" The room becomes an inviolable shelter, where each object, gradually, gets lost in the darkness under indistinct shapes and blurred outlines. Suffering transports me into a novel experience of reality, stretching its ethereal veil around me. My room, transformed into a new zone, reacts with a captivating strangeness to its own environment, creating an altered reality that fascinates me. 1 Henri Michaux, "Bras Cassé," Paris: Fata Morgana, 1973, p.17