Page 7 - La Biennale di Venezia 2022 issue of World of Art Contemporary Art Magazine

anthropological and cultural territory that is exquisitely referring to indescribable states and metal conditions
Italian. From the point of view of visual language, captured in the absolute.
Cucchi’s paintings seem to be inspired by Scipione Through the alternate use of geometric and organic
and Licini. The young artist’s use of color as smudge is signs, the language used is both the manifestation and
influenced by Scipione, while the dynamic sense of space internalization of the artist’s sensitive state, and as an
and the freedom to place the figurative elements outside instrument of song and lyrical representation.
any naturalistic reference are reminiscent of Licini. The
space of the painting or of the paper is not a background Mimmo Paladino’s work is surface painting. He is a
for the image, but an emanation and a source of energy proponent of surface as the only possible profundity.
in itself. The concept is that of an art that adheres to Thus all the most manifest data of sensibility emerge
things while at the same time setting in motion a chain visibly, making cultural allusions and deep-seated inner
of mobile contacts and relationships to the extent of references to the psychological condition. Painting
transfiguring them into signs of another position, that of becomes the place where subtle, intangible motives are
a “dynamic landing”, where high and low coincide. translated into image. Signs from the abstract traditions,
influenced by the works of Kandinsky and Klee, and more
Nicola De Maria transcends the boundary between the pompous signs in the figurative vein intertwine into a
frame of the painting and the surrounding space; his single, organic motif.
visual field is the meeting place of many references.
Painting is a tool to represent the progressive shifting The different moods of sensibility are thus condensed
of sensibility. Mental state and psychological state and offer the possibility of free association. The
fuse in an image that operates by the fragmentation of rarefication of each different mood, mental and material,
visual data. The result is a sort of interior architecture finds its rightful place on the surface. Paladino is never
containing all the resonances and emotions embodied autobiographical, as everything becomes a pretext
within the work. for painting. The geometry of the sign is immediately
disrupted by the myriad figurative elements integrating
Each fragment lives a system of fluid relationships; there gently into the rest of the composition, without leaps of
are no privileged or central points. De Maria replaces chromatic tone.
the notion of space with that of a field, a dynamic and
network of relationships rich in potential whose visual The idea underpinning the image is that of the fragment,
constant is abstraction. They share the same movement of detail dilating and aggregating into another detail. The
as music; there are no pauses, but an enveloping mood sustaining the composition and the overall state
continuum of signs, an environmental painting of the painting is fortified by references to languages
incessantly referring to a single rhythm, a single beat, derived from the history of art. The surface of the picture
that of pure subjectivity. becomes the explicit threshold of the image, even when
the latter seems to extend beyond the confines of the
The architecture of the work is flexible, each time frame and the wall. Signs are ciphers that color and
supporting the space within which it sets itself. decorate the skin of the painting.
Concreteness and rarefication alternate via the Achille Bonito Oliva
juxtaposition of painted wood elements marking out Art critic and historian of contemporary art, one of the most
important art critics and curators of the 20th and 21st centuries.
the environment, and compact areas of color silently
First published: © World of Art – Contemporary Art Magazine, pg.47–47, Issue 6, vol 3, 2003
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