SE
If (‘Se’). Condensed in a single word, as short as it is rich in meaning, Barbara Pietrasanta and Pino Di Gennaro’s title for their exhibition at the Permanente contains the genesis and the core theme around which the exhibition revolves.
Two letters that open up a potentially infinite range of hypotheses and possibilities on which artists reflect – and invite us to reflect – through their work.
Di Gennaro and Pietrasanta ponder the profound uncertainty pervading today’s world and its issues: from climate change to migration, the fragile fabric of contemporary society.
The works on display invite visitors to reflect on what would happen if each of us were more mindful of the epochal challenges we face and if each of us were to make a concrete commitment to reverse the course of those global phenomena threatening the planet.
The choice of dealing with such complex issues is the result of a natural evolution, the last stage of a path that has led both artists to broaden their horizons compared to the more intimate and introspective issues that had informed past works.
Di Gennaro and Pietrasanta now address social, political, and environmental problems through works that are not exactly explicit or direct, but rather allusive, requiring in-depth reflection and long periods of processing.
Such is the way of art: rather than being descriptive or didactic, it conveys meaningful information and messages through lyrical and poetic language.
The two artists want to launch a message of hope that may prompt us to actively look for solutions and build a Self that can implement a paradigm shift: the condemnation of the faults of our time comes with a productive element, a pars construcens, aimed at a realistically achievable positive change.
The choice to design an exhibition in which paintings and sculptures can dialogue with each other strengthens and consolidates the contents being conveyed. The audience is thus invited to discover a series of references focused on the relationship between man and nature.
The will to create a collaborative work is particularly evident in the three large installations in which Pietrasanta’s paintings are placed in close contact and in direct relation Di Gennaro’s sculptures: two distinct creative worlds come together in a common project, a four-hands piece, which highlights the common features in their work.
Both have chosen to mainly exhibit works produced in recent years, so as to better express the most current results of their research. Their previous works are not neglected, however, for at their core they already contain the general direction towards which later works will be oriented.
The stylistic and thematic multiplicity found in Di Gennaro’s latest works is showcased by interweaving in-the-round sculptures with wall works, with a remarkable variety of techniques and materials, ranging from bronze, papier-mâché, ceramics, and wax, taking on several forms and animated through constant chromatic experimentation.
While he has devoted a significant part of his career to working with bronze, this exhibition is also interested in the more delicate and fragile materials, such as papier-mâché (the focus of his work in recent years) and ceramics and wax (his latest discoveries).
Wax in particular stands as an emblem of the fragility, instability and transience permeating the exhibition’s thematic core, and counterbalances the solidity, monumentality, and the sense of eternity that is naturally inherent to bronze.
Certainly, the wax sculptures are particularly interesting, and represent a new chapter in Di Gennaro’s artistic journey. As he himself points out, the great creative freedom it implies means he can let himself be guided by the material and its malleable and magmatic character, without resorting to preparatory models.
Made of the very material produced by bees, and containing shapes and inserts that explicitly recall those of combs and hives, these works examine the progressive disappearance of an insect that is absolutely fundamental to our ecosystem, but is seriously threatened by climate change and pollution.
This same theme is the inspiration behind another series of works, in this case employing ceramics, another material Di Gennaro has recently begun working with.
A field of wildflowers (‘I mille fiori delle api’) presents itself as a multitude of small tiles with a core of raw terracotta at their centre, arranged in a large wall display. Not unlike small hives, they are enclosed by polychrome ceramic elements, multi-coloured flower petals that open up from their vertical arrangement.
In all these works, the chromatic experimentation being carried out over the last few years certainly stands out, particularly in the lively and bright polychrome ceramics and the wax sculptures’ coloured inserts.
The papier-mâché sculptures, on the other hand, are dominated by an intense blue. The idea of a world deep underwater comes to mind, but also one high above in the sky. In The sky at my fingertips (‘Tocco il cielo con le dita’), the sculptures are dotted with small holes and craters the artist made with his very fingertips, and are combined with lustrous polished metal inserts.
The works distributed across the walls are framed by the slender shapes of trees stretching in an ascending motion, skyward, and towards an indefinite cosmic space, an ‘elsewhere’ in which one may wander as if in a dream state.
In Nomadic Forest (‘Foresta nomade’), the shapes of its trees take on the most varied forms, ranging from a semi-naturalism complete with leaves and roots to a dense and tangled intertwining of sinuous and geometric elements. The result is an elegant conversation between the glossy bronze and the oxidised and polychrome surfaces, inviting the viewer to enter this enigmatic forest and the artist’s creative universe.
Though these works are often connected to environmental themes, Di Gennaro addresses in his Notes (‘Appunti’) another issue of great relevance today: the loss of materiality in the practice of writing and the gradual disappearance of paper and ink, as transferred and reduced to the purely digital and virtual.
To amend this, and to return to the tactile dimension of writing, Di Gennaro has created a series of wall works in bronze and papier-mâché whose surfaces are furrowed by his own sign alphabet, standing for the many glyphs found in writing systems worldwide. It is a form of resistance to the loss of the more tangible dimension of writing and to what seems to be its increasingly irreversible dematerialisation.
Like Di Gennaro, Barbara Pietrasanta mainly exhibits recent works, providing us with a significant insight into her work over the last few years.
In the Awakening cycle, begun a decade ago, an intimate component is still predominant in her portrayal of several women as they are first waking up, caught in that suspended moment between the ecstatic world of night and the unexplored coming of day.
In more recent cycles, however, her attention is increasingly redirected toward the problems of contemporary society, from migration to climate change. The Shipwrecks cycle in particular marks a turning point in her work.
Addressing issues of this scope means broadening the horizon with respect to the intimate and introspective dimension of the investigation of the human soul that has always characterised his work.
By questioning man’s control over nature and global issues today, Pietrasanta raises a cry of alarm against the phenomena that are testing our world and the times we are living in, all the while trying to look to the positive, and not giving up hope that things will change for the better.
Though she often depicts scenes of anguish and apparent hopelessness, she does include an underlying strength in believing in change, a belief coming from within that is essential when it comes to facing the wider problems.
Women play a key role in her paintings. Often suffering, bruised, scarred, they are never fully defeated or overwhelmed. They are women who, as she herself puts it, have survived; women who, however alone and vulnerable, embody resilience and the courage not to let themselves be crushed by life and still hope for better days for themselves, in their intimate and personal sphere, and for others, collectively.
They come to represent humanity fighting for survival after a shipwreck, be it real and metaphorical, and of our powerlessness in the face of the more extreme forces of nature, and of injustice in modern society.
Whipped by incessant winds, suffering thirst, half-naked and helpless, curled up alone, the women portrayed by Pietrasanta still seem to find the strength within themselves to endure crisis and decry climate inaction, loneliness, and indifference.
The destroyed shipwrecks, the withered silhouettes of the wind-beaten trees, the deserted and indefinite scenes of loneliness and abandonment where these women stage a story made of emptiness and existential anxieties, whose epilogue, though unwritten, is open to change and hope.
Water is a recurring element in her paintings, not only for its connection to shipwrecks, but also for its regenerative properties, in the same way the wind uprooting trees and sowing destruction can be transformed into a breath of hope, which, as seen in works such as Somewhere beyond (‘Altrove’), leads us toward potential ways out.
In her paintings, the clear and sharp details are only partly perturbed by the wind and atmospheric effects we are exposed to there, paired with a whole range of colours: soft and delicate tones, often in shades of grey and blue, will now give way to the light and acidic, now the gloomy and pasty (as seen in Blackdance), setting aside and forgetting altogether the more vivid and bright colours one would associate to pop art.
What most strikes us when looking at her work is the ability to protest against the great evils of our time while employing an intimate and collected language, one that can delve into the anxieties and voids of the human soul, bringing together psychological inquiry and evocative force, socio-political imagery and introspection.