My recent body of work is titled Knots.It is made of painted and raw jute twisted into various shapes, remains of dismembered paintings of mine, held in the chosen shape with brass wire. The origin of this work is my increased difficulty to deal with the limits imposed by the traditional square format.
The first iteration of this series involves jute’s painted canvas shaped in closed loops hanging from the ceiling. In mathematics and in the iconography of several cultures ( Ancient Egypt,Hindu, Buddhism) the infinity symbol is shaped as a knot and embodies the relationship between time and space, and the seamless transition and transformation of the inside into the outside and viceversa in a perpetual movement. In my work the closed loop is explored with colors to enhance the ambiguity of these transitions Dangling from the ceiling these pieces cast shadows on the wall, suggesting a parallel realm and the idea of the double. I still regard these pieces as paintings; they've simply escaped the confines of the stretcher and can be viewed from multiple angles.
The second iteration are objects placed on a surface, crafted using the same technique. Here, I investigate the challenges of static form and the intensity of the color merging with its support, resulting in a rich, velvety appearance. Color is indeed a very important part of my work, as it suggests atmospheres and moods.These forms are small organic architectures with references to the natural world. It is important for me that there isn’t a privileged point of view: each view carries different suggestions. My choice to continue using canvas and colors testifies to my intense relationship with painting.
The search for space in painting is in fact what pushed me to abandon the two dimensional structure and delve into three dimensional work. For 27 years I explored painting in different mediums. I worked primarily in abstraction but always with the suggestion of depth and space, emphasizing the surface by mean of texture, glossiness and opaqueness as a boundary between the viewer’s side and the painting space.
When I felt that the way I was addressing the obsession with boundary was no longer satisfying, I decided to cut a painting into pieces and suspend them in a strainer with fish wire. This floating aspect felt liberating, as there was no more struggle with the physical limitation of the canvas, giving me a sense of freedom. This transitional work I called Archaeology of a Painting.
From that point, I began working directly on the cut pieces, creating the three-dimensional works that I call Knots.
The idea of perpetual cycle is present also in the choice of using remains of previous paintings that I felt unsuccessful as whole and that can rise to a new meaning.
In my forays into the world of figuration, based on interpretation of old masters, the surface and colors have always been of primary importance to mark the importance of an element of the composition crucial for the message I want to convey.