OSSERVATORIO TEORETICO

Ontological Perspectivism and Mimesis (Text from 2008©)

The Western philosophical tradition is born with a suspicion. Plato distrusts the artistic image because he conceives it as mimesis, imitation of an imitation. The structure is hierarchical and implacable: the Idea constitutes authentic being, the sensible object represents a first imperfect copy of it, the work of art reproduces this already degraded copy. The painter who depicts an object is situated at three degrees of distance from the truth of the Idea, producing a simulacrum that moves away from knowledge rather than approaching it. This conception presupposes a fundamental assumption: reproduction necessarily entails an ontological loss. Every passage from one level to another implies a weakening of being, a progressive dilution of the original truth. Multiplication is equivalent to degradation, the copy cannot but be inferior to the model, the distance from the archetype measures the degree of falsification.

The Specular Reflection as Ontological Revelation

Let us consider, however, a different device: a painting placed between two parallel mirrors. Here mimesis operates according to a radically different logic. The specular system does not degrade the image through infinite reflection, but multiplies it while preserving its integrity. Every reflection maintains the formal fullness of the original image. The reflected object possesses the same definition, the same presence, the same ontological density as the first. We are not witnessing a descending scale toward nothingness, but a horizontal proliferation of simultaneous existences. Multiplication here does not subtract being but expands it. The mirrors reveal a latent potency in the image: the capacity to manifest itself in infinite places without fragmenting, to generate variations that do not compromise essential identity. Every reflection maintains a direct and immediate relationship with the source, without hierarchical mediations. This operation dismantles the Platonic conception of mimesis as progressive distancing from the true. If every reflection preserves the same ontological fullness, then multiplication is not dispersal but revelation of what being has always been, not a fixed and immobile point in the Hyperuranion, but a generative potency capable of manifesting itself in multiple forms without losing itself. The object does not suffer a diminution of reality through the reflective process. It discovers instead its intrinsically plural nature, the capacity to be simultaneously present in different configurations while maintaining identity. The copy here is not a degradation of the original but its expansion, not a distancing from truth but a multiplication of its modes of existence.

"Ontological Perspectivism"

A new conceptual framework thus takes shape. We are not speaking of epistemological perspectivism, how we see things, but of ontological perspectivism, how things are. Every reproduction, every reflection does not constitute an error of reality with respect to a unique and privileged model, but an authentic manifestation of it, endowed with full ontological status. Truth ceases to be a fixed point from which everything derives and becomes the dynamic sum of all its possible manifestations. Not a hierarchical pyramid with the Idea at the apex and the degraded copies at the base, but a reticular structure where every node possesses the same ontological weight. The universe is not impoverished by the multiplication of images, it is constitutively enriched by the coexistence of parallel and simultaneous levels of reality. Here the decisive rupture with the Platonic tradition emerges. The work reflected in the mirror is no less real than the work on the canvas. They are two ontological facts that coexist, two ways in which being manifests itself without one being privileged over the other. Reflection does not subtract reality from the reflected object, it creates a new space of existence where that object manifests itself anew, whole. This vision dissolves the obsession with the original, the search for the privileged point of departure from which everything would derive. Reality exists in multiple forms without any one of them being able to claim the status of "true" with respect to the others.

Ontological perspectivism reconfigures the relationship between identity and multiplicity. The identical can generate infinite variations without dissolving itself.

V R

Mimesi 7b e Azione temporale. (Esperimenti Temporali). 2008- 2024-2025©. in origine cm 70x54x17 - successivamente cm 70x35x28, acrilico su tavola, legno, specchi.. Opera realizzata in 18 anni. iniziata il 22 gennaio 2008. Ripresa il 7 settembre 2024. il processo di scomposizione e trasformazioni è stato terminato il 10 luglio 2025 alle ore 10:35.

esperimenti temporali opere

↑

← Osservatorio teoretico