Page 7 - Contemporary Art and Old Masters

language, Cucchi’s paintings seem to be inspired
by Scipione and Licini. The young artist’s use of
color 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.
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.
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.
The architecture of the work is flexible, each time
supporting the space within which it sets itself.
Concreteness and rarefication alternate via the
juxtaposition of painted wood elements marking
out the environment, and compact areas of color
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 internalization of the artist’s sensitive
state, and as an instrument of song and lyrical
representation.
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.
The different moods of sensibility are thus
condensed and offer the possibility of free
association. The rarefication 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.
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 color and decorate the skin of the
painting.
Achille Bonito Oliva,
art critic and historian of contemporary art, one of
the most important art critics and curators of the
20th and 21st centuries.
First published: © World of Art – Contemporary Art Magazine, pg.47–47, Issue 6, vol 3, 2003
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