Italia - Casagrande & Recalcati
The painting of Sandra Casagrande and Roberto Recalcati has subtle affinities with the language of the cinema. The time factor is mysteriously contracted: like in a slow-motion film sequence, the petals of a peony seem to unfold slowly to allow the onlooker to appreciate the sensual matter of oil painting, describing the creamy and satin-like surface of the flower, the gradual unwinding of the petals from the centre of the corolla to the outside. With the same slightly hypnotic steadiness, Casagrande and Recalcati describe the details of an engraved gem, of a mythological animal, of a fruit or a series of fruits, presenting the same subject in a series of non-identical frames to obtain complex decorative cycles that have the impact of a perturbing hall of mirrors, in which time really seems to stand still. This effect is supported by skilful formal devices: the rather close viewpoint makes the description of the details more hypnotic; the object is cut out from the background, with a result which, from icon paintings to film posters to Pop art advertising, focuses the attention, making the object itself (flower, vase, jewel, animal) an enigmatic and absolute presence, like symbols that appear in dreams.
And just as in dreams (or in a successful, classic thriller), the ultimate sensation is one of mystery, which is all the more provoking because it springs from this unusual exaltation of the visible: the more everything seems explained, narrated, magnified like under the lens of an investigator, the more the final meaning of what we see escapes us, remaining remote and elusive.
Text by
Gloria Vallese
Italy- Antonella Barina
A ring of young palm trees planted for OPEN 14 forms a protected and protecting vegetal architecture, devoted to meditation and to reciting poetry.
In the centre, a comfortable low salvaged seat with a tempting cushion.
The concept with which this living sculpture is created is the friendly and cultural ritual of planting a garden, a garden in which to welcome people. The first gesture of friendship is towards the plant itself, the palm tree, nowadays disdained due to its outdated fortune as an exotic ornamental element in nineteenth- and twentieth-century gardens. Without considering that, due to the tropicalisation of the climate, the palm tree is spreading rapidly all over the world at the expense of less adaptable species, with the result that the human species has dubbed it “a weed”: according to the artist we should reflect on this definition, which indicates an opportunist and racist principle of selection, one that can unfortunately be applied to other species and categories, even within the human community, and seriously accept the unequivocal signal about climate change that is sent to us by the proliferation of palm trees.
As these palm trees grow, from the seeds of other palms in the garden of Antonella Barina, a scholar, artist and eclectic intellectual in Venice, they may form a little vegetal temple with a circular colonnade inspired by the temple of Athena Pronaia, “guardian of the temple”, in Delphi, of the fourth century BC; the same goddess is also known as Athena Eileithyia, due to her role in the fertility process, and as Zosteria, “who assists women in childbirth”.
Text by
Gloria Vallese
Italy - Alex Angi
Turbo Jungle – NATURAL Renaissance
Matter is form and, as such, it is life for Angi and synonymous with hope and communication.
Angi uses the matter of his time, plastic, to give man a second chance, to make him understand that he must go back to being the absolute star of the show using the materials and techniques of his time. Only scientific progress can lead us to a new start, to a “Natural Renaissance”.
Angi’s plastic jungles develop in space, exploding like a virus; environmental contamination is fundamental in his art. He’s a kind of crazy scientist, able to transform waste, renewing it and giving it new life… where he walks, flowers bloom.
His matter is poetry, plastic buds peeping out of the earth in a jubilation of colours and filaments, infecting man and his world with optimism.
Materials resulting from chemical studies that blend and interact with Nature, various filaments entangled in an apparently confused and random way like the thoughts and paths of life, which periodically retrace their steps to take new directions and bloom into something unexpected and, as such, magnificent, stimulating, unique.
Text by
Serena Mormino
Iran - Mahdiyar Arab
Mahdiyar was able to make shapes of animals and his imaginative creatures from 3 years old quite creatively and without training in two dimensions by using paper, and later little by little after a few months, his parents acquainted him with clay material. They became aware of his talent in this field astonishingly. He was also able to make all his interesting statuses in the shortest time without using any tools and training. The maximum time that he consumes for making a status has been between three to five minutes. Due to investigation and research on his high spirit and art works at the age of five, the psychologists noticed that at that time he had the talent and qualification of a thirteen years old young boy with 148 IQ scale. The existence of his creativity and high ability was due to the extraordinary calculation and quick mental ability that would take less than few seconds between observation, recording and analyzing. It is essential to mention that the talent of this young artist is in a way that he is capable of making his imaginative statuses without looking at his hands in less than possible time. This has astonished many of the art artists and critics inside and outside of the Iran. He uses a complete realism style to make his statuses. He uses solid material, it means that he does not make the parts of his considering status separately to join them, but he starts from head all the way down and ends to the feet.
Our outstanding artists of our dear country Iran such as master Pedarami, master Moghdam, master Kafshchian, master Espahbodi, master Akbari, master Nasehi, master Mousavi Zade and other artists from different nations wondered about the talent of Mahdiyar.
Mahdiyar has realized 23 tableaus and 30 standing statuses: Master Farshchiyan Ashora’s tableau that he has made it into status and figure; Ghadir tableau that was presented under special circumstances and in the presence of few staff of mass media and a group of artists and authorities in Niavaran palace exhibition; the rest arts mostly related to living environment and wilderness.
Text by
parents of the artist
Greece - Maria Kompatsiari
Using representation as a starting point, the painter has followed a path through personal experimentation and investigation in both color and technique, which have led her to the construction of an abstract visual language.
Her abstract landscapes are processes of the mind and spirit which contain existential situations and escapes, open to variable readings. Her visual language is characterized by a tender yet violent, individual vocabulary. Tender in the way she approaches her theme; violent because of her extreme color contrasts. Through her journeys, adventures of matter and form, and through her personal, persisting process of investigation, the artist aims towards an ultimately soothing visual confession.
In the work created for OPEN 14, the artist invades into outdoor, public space, breaking the confines of her two-dimensional, illusory painting. She does so with the same eloquence, using the main structural components of her visual language: dynamic juxtapositions between the linearity of her drawing and the explosive intensity of color, breads, inversions, traces, scriptures, spreads of rhythm and form, cymose and sinuous arrangements, that she unravels through the illusionary handling of the canvas’ surface. She masterfully transposes this illusory manipulation of space and time into the three dimensions and she invites the spectator to multiple readings.
The cube and its spreads, constructed so that one encloses the other, become symbols – vehicles of spatial perception and experience, incorporating the concepts of removal and travel, bearing the charged symbolism of some random flight, escape or daydream. Through the use of the outer wooden construction/shell, the cube’s basic structure encompasses the boxed paintings within the enclosed shape of a sui generis miniature of an imaginary gallery. It encloses an ironic comment on multiplicity, space, dream, boundary, distance, intimacy, rupture, density, void, silence, stillness, explosion… ultimately on the anesthetized image of space, the point where the conscious meets the vague.
Text by
Maria Kenanidou