Page 48 - The MoMA/ Guggenheim issue of World of Art magazine (2003)

Transavanguardia

new subjectivity CASTEllO DI RIVOlI
museum of
Achille Bonito Oliva ContemPorary art

the political elation of the sixties drove art towards the impersonal. the TORINO
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.
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.
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.
the works of the young italian artists convey not so much private, translation © emanuela guastella and ros schwartz
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 CasteLLo di rivoLi
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, the drawing in the works by Chia, Clemente, Cucchi, de maria and Paladino
decorative motif. is sign, stroke, image, effigy, line, outline, scribble, doodle, landscape, map,
the transience is in the creation of the work, which is never hampered diagram, profile, silhouette, sketch, illustration, figure, foreshortened figure,
by academic perfectionism, but is always in transit between the creative print, split, model, tracing, caricature, chiaroscuro, graffiti, engraving, map,
drive and the stability of the result. moreover, the image always catches lithography, pastel, etching, woodcut. the tools may be: charcoal, pencil,
fleeting sensations, such as the witticisms in the work of Chia, the pen, brush, compass, set square, pantograph, slide-rule, ruler, stumping,
sense of matter in that of Cucchi, the suspension of time in Clemente, stencil. the procedure can be arabesque, tracing, composing, copying,
the music of colour in de maria, and multipurpose motifs in Paladino. erasing, correcting, shining, drawing. the result: field, contour, shade,
time as a relentless flow becomes the defining moment of works that decoration, perspective, sketching.
contain the embryo of their own supersedence. often in these artists the drawing produces intimate and emblematic signs,
Contradiction arises from the refusal to be confined within the geometry it works through shadow and delicate shading, perceiving a “second soul”
of a coherence tied to a fixed, ideologically bunkered idea of the world. in things, discerning elusive and unpredictable visions beneath the apparent
the images are the symptoms of an inexhaustible reserve that is not held vision of mundane things that are apparently closed and unequivocal.
in check by a univocal language. ironic, dramatic images, bright, neutral furthermore, it tends to manifest itself as a trace of a wider, more concrete
signs continuously cross the surface of the work, never characterizing image, choosing to stay in a deliberate state of transience. the transience
and defining things that are intended to be mobile and open. derives not only from the shadow or shading, but also from the very little
emphasis on is required to capture minute sensations and thoughts. space and time its execution requires.
these artists are opposed to the focus on the monumental and the drawing always seems to reveal the artist’s assault on the immaculate
heroic that dominated the art of the sixties. detail is the anchor of space of the paper. here, public and private coincide: the threshold of
the temporary, the support of an art that operates on the slope of expression occurs even before any sign is implemented, it starts at the
sensibility and of the “state of grace”. the humble skill of technique point of the mental processing of the image, in the movement and trembling
also dictates an anti-heroic and ironically domestic behaviour. it is no of the hand on the paper.
coincidence that these artists constantly resort to drawing, which sandro Chia works through an array of styles, always underpinned by
allows a refined and fleeting, dynamic and flowing expression. drawing technical skill and by an idea of art that seeks its raison d’être within itself.
makes it possible to capture the rapid transitions of sensibility, its these reasons consist of the pleasure of a painting freed at last from the
spread beyond the restrictions of matter and paint. the sign does not tyranny of novelty, and relying instead on the artist’s ability to use various
encounter obstacles, on the contrary it permits understated images that “means” of achieving the image. there are numerous references, everything
are agile and open. drawing allows allusion without peremptoriness, from Chagall to Picasso, to Cezanne, to de Chirico, to futurist, metaphysical,
it allows the expression of a state of mind without any need for a twentieth-century Carrà. But the recourse to style is immediately reabsorbed
definitive and categorical description.
46 WORLD of ART