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The political elation of the Sixties drove art towards the impersonal.
The creative force behind the image was invisible. Now, however,
particularly in works by Chia, Clemente, Cucehi, De Maria and Paladino
in Italy, the hand of the individual artist art is happily no longer
divorced from the conceptual impulse. This hand shows itself in the
capacity of the work of art to display a subjectivity that makes use of
all the tools of expression and every kind of language.
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The young Italian artists feel compelled however to use a means
expression that is always subject to the rigorous rules of language. But
language no longer follows the logic or the coherent, linear paths of
recent years. Rather the new means of expression is rooted in an open,
shifting nomadism that refuses to be trapped in predictable, logical
development. The fundamental idea behind the new work is that of a
drift, a movement with no predetermined directions, no points of
departure and arrival, accompanied by a desire to find each time a
provisional mooring in the gradual shifts of sensibility within the work.
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Subjectivity asserts itself through its very fragmentation, through the
accidental nature of an image which never claims to be a unitary or
“cumulative” moment; it is always as a precarious vision, never grasping
or attempting to grasp the meaning of the world and the accompanying
idea of the infinite. Here, the image becomes the repository of a mere
hint of potentiality, expressed through the means of art, i.e. grace and
passion.
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The works of the young Italian artists convey not so much private,
autobiographical subjectivity, but rather the structural elements that
characterize it: mutability, transience, contradiction and emphasis on
detail. The new work is permeated by a sensibility that is energetic,
not aggressive. This is associated with a notion of pleasure, and to the
idea of a “guarantee” within art, that of successfully creating the
minority reality of a personal image deriving from the artist’s
individual impulse. Mutability derives from the transient character of
style, which can never be guaranteed continuity or stability. The young
Italian artists in fact use languages that are both different and
differentiated, references to cultures both remote in time and also
close to our own. A fan-like sensibility promotes images that surpass
each other and move away from poetics and a traditional faithfulness to
it. Obviously, the image oscillates between figurative and abstract,
between reference to an excessive figuration and the balanced reticence
of the abstract, decorative motif.
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The transience is in the creation of the work, which is never hampered
by academic perfectionism, but is always in transit between the creative
drive and the stability of the result. Moreover, the image always
catches fleeting sensations, such as the witticisms in the work of Chia,
the sense of matter in that of Cucchi, the suspension of time in
Clemente, the music of colour in De Maria, and multipurpose motifs in
Paladino. Time as a relentless flow becomes the defining moment of works
that contain the embryo of their own supersedence.
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Contradiction arises from the refusal to be confined within the geometry
of a coherence tied to a fixed, ideologically bunkered idea of the
world. The images are the symptoms of an inexhaustible reserve that is
not held in check by a univocal language. Ironic, dramatic images,
bright, neutral signs continuously cross the surface of the work, never
characterizing and defining things that are intended to be mobile and
open.
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Emphasis on is required to capture minute sensations and thoughts. These
artists are opposed to the focus on the monumental and heroic that
dominated the art of the Sixties. Detail is the anchor of the temporary,
the support of an art that operates on the slope of sensibility and of
the “state of grace”. The humble skill of technique also dictates an
anti-heroic and ironically domestic behaviour. It is no coincidence that
these artists constantly resort to drawing, which allows a refined and
fleeting, dynamic and flowing expression. Drawing makes it possible to
capture the rapid transitions of sensibility, its spread beyond the
restrictions of matter and paint. The sign does not encounter obstacles,
on the contrary it permits understated images that are agile and open.
Drawing allows allusion without peremptoriness, it allows the expression
of a state of mind without any need for a definitive and categorical
description.
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The drawing in the works by Chia, Clemente, Cucchi, De Maria and
Paladino is sign, stroke, image, effigy, line, outline, scribble, doodle,
landscape, map, diagram, profile, silhouette, sketch, illustration,
figure, foreshortened figure, print, split, model, tracing, caricature,
chiaroscuro, graffiti, engraving, map, lithography, pastel, etching,
woodcut. The tools may be: charcoal, pencil, pen, brush, compass, set
square, pantograph, slide-rule, ruler, stumping, stencil. The procedure
can be arabesque, tracing, composing, copying, erasing, correcting,
shining, drawing. The result: field, contour, shade, decoration,
perspective, sketching.
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Often in these artists the drawing produces intimate and emblematic
signs, it works through shadow and delicate shading, perceiving a
“second soul” in things, discerning elusive and unpredictable visions
beneath the apparent vision of mundane things that are apparently closed
and unequivocal. Furthermore, it tends to manifest itself as a trace of
a wider, more concrete image, choosing to stay in a deliberate state of
transience. The transience derives not only from the shadow or shading,
but also from the very little space and time its execution requires.
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The drawing always seems to reveal the artist’s assault on the
immaculate space of the paper. Here, public and private coincide: the
threshold of expression occurs even before any sign is implemented, it
starts at the point of the mental processing of the image, in the
movement and trembling of the hand on the paper.
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Sandro Chia works through an array of styles, always underpinned by
technical skill and by an idea of art that seeks its raison d’être
within itself. These reasons consist of the pleasure of a painting freed
at last from the tyranny of novelty, and relying instead on the artist’s
ability to use various “means” of achieving the image. There are
numerous references, everything from Chagall to Picasso, to Cezanne, to
de Chirico, to Futurist, metaphysical, twentieth-century Carrà. But the
recourse to style is immediately reabsorbed by the quality of the result,
at the intersection between technical skill and “state of grace”.
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Painting becomes the field within which manual dexterity and concept
finally find a balance. In Chia, images always go hand in hand with a
title, a caption or a little poem painted directly onto the canvas to
reveal its internal mechanism. The pleasure of painting goes with the
pleasure of wit, the ability to integrate the passion of the creation of
the picture and the protective distance of irony.
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The work becomes a moving circuit of internal and external references,
all at the service of an image offering a dual quality: as substance
bothpictorially and intellectually. In the first case the image is
fulfilled by the materials of which it ismade up, and in the second, it
presents itself as a stunning demonstration of an idea: an ideal of art
only exists if embodied in the texture of language. Chia ‘s image is
always crystal clear.
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Franceseo Clemente works on the progressive displacement of the style,
on the undifferentiated use of several techniques. The underlying idea
is that of art that is in no way dramatic, and that can create an image
where repetition and difference intersect thanks to the nomadism of
lightness. Repetition stems from an intentional use of stereotypes,
references and stylisations that allow the idea of conventionality to
come into art too.
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Such conventionality however is only apparent, as the reproduction of
the image never happens in a mechanical or slavish way. On the contrary,
it tends to create subtle and unpredictable variations, producing a
shift in the reproduced image. This shift, and the idea of time
suspended deriving from a state of relaxation, result in imperceptible
differences. This is possible because Clemente works on the displacement
of the signifier, on a chain of assonances, of visual analogies that
free the image from all obligations and references.
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All this creates a new contemplative state of the image, a sort of peace,
removed from the clamour of its traditional references and given a
different orientation one that is explicit and deceptively conventional.
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The extreme explicitness tends to produce an image that does not display
any effort or awkwardness vis-à-vis its surroundings. As if imbued with
an oriental discipline, the new image does not betray any emotions, just
a natural state of calm.
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Enzo Cucchi radicalises painting practice, taking the picture as a means
rather than an end. Painting becomes a process of accumulating various
elements, figurative and abstract, explicit and allusive, and combining
them seamlessly. Materials both within and outside the painting interact
on the surface of the picture. Everything responds to a dynamic,
unstoppable movement that drags painted shapes and colour lines beyond
all laws of gravity. The painting is a provisional repository of
energies that evoke images, densities of painting materials and ceramic
extensions beyond the traditional canvas support. This type of work
finds its roots in the fabric of a deliberately “minor” painting, tied
to an anthropological and cultural territory that is exquisitely Italian.
From the point of view of visual language, Cucchi’s paintings seem to be
inspired by Scipione and Licini. The young artist’s use of colour as
smudge is influenced by Scipione, while the dynamic sense of space and
the freedom to place the figurative elements outside any naturalistic
reference are reminiscent of Licini. The space of the painting or of the
paper is not a background for the image, but an emanation and a source
of energy in itself. The concept is that of an art that adheres to
things while at the same time setting in motion a chain of mobile
contacts and relationships to the extent of transfiguring them into
signs of another position, that of a “dynamic landing”, where high and
low coincide.
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Nicola De Maria transcends the boundary between the frame of the
painting and the surrounding space; his visual field is the meeting
place of many references. Painting is a tool to represent the
progressive shifting of sensibility. Mental state and psychological
state fuse in an image that operates by the fragmentation of visual
data. The result is a sort of interior architecture containing all the
resonances and emotions embodied within the work.
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Each fragment lives a system of fluid relationships; there are no
privileged or central points. De Maria replaces the notion of space with
that of a field, a dynamic and network of relationships rich in
potential whose visual constant is abstraction. They share the same
movement as music; there are no pauses, but an enveloping continuum of
signs, an environmental painting incessantly referring to a single
rhythm, a single beat, that of pure subjectivity.
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The architecture of the work is flexible, each time supporting the space
within which it sets itself. Concreteness and rarification alternate via
the juxtaposition of painted wood elements marking out the environment,
and compact areas of colour silently referring to indescribable states
and metal conditions captured in the absolute.
Through the alternate use of geometric and organic signs, the language
used is both the manifestation and internalisation of the artist’s
sensitive state, and as an instrument of song and lyrical
representation.
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Mimmo Paladino’s work is surface painting. He is a proponent of surface
as the only possible profundity. Thus all the most manifest data of
sensibility emerge visibly, making cultural allusions and deep-seated
inner references to the psychological condition. Painting becomes the
place where subtle, intangible motives are translated into image. Signs
from the abstract traditions, influenced by the works of Kandinsky and
Klee, and more pompous signs in the figurative vein intertwine into a
single, organic motif.
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The different moods of sensibility are thus condensed and offer the
possibility of free association. The rarification of each different mood,
mental and material, finds its rightful place on the surface. Paladino
is never autobiographical, as everything becomes a pretext for painting.
The geometry of the sign is immediately disrupted by the myriad
figurative elements integrating gently into the rest of the composition,
without leaps of chromatic tone.
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The idea underpinning the image is that of the fragment, of detail
dilating and aggregating into another detail. The mood sustaining the
composition and the overall state of the painting is fortified by
references to languages derived from the history of art. The surface of
the picture becomes the explicit threshold of the image, even when the
latter seems to extend beyond the confines of the frame and the wall.
Signs are ciphers that colour and decorate the skin of the painting.
