Centro Culturale Valdese -
WALDENSIAN CULTURAL CENTRE
April 7-29 2001
Paolo Paschetto room
Engravings and drawings
AND LIGHT WAS MADE
Text
by Gianfranco Schialvino
AND LIGHT WAS MADE
Back in 1992, Pino Mantovani had
noticed a sharp contradiction between the freedom of the creative gesture and
the complication of texture in the making of Elisabetta Viarengo
Miniotti’s work, and had defined this contrast as the most interesting aspect
of her artistic output. In this exhibition, where we find drawings and
pastels with a marked divisionist sense of colour (tesserae, iridium,
iris powder) along with the engravings, this duality in which Mrs.Miniotti
involves herself in a process that finally seems
to favour the quality of the
sign becomes absolutely evident. A
careful analysis of this process, of the long
uneven road leading to representations accomplished by an artist’s
inspiration, is made easier by the presence, in this exhibition, of a large part
of her repertoire, but I am going to focus
on only two subjects, as the final stage of a long and
complex development: trees,
mainly birches, and waters.
In the trunks and in the details
of the barks, the freedom of lines is absolute. In my opinion, the wide range of
direct actions on the matrix, including the drypoint, the burnisher, the
roulette and even etching outside
the wax, represents an escape, a
wish for freedom, a way out of rigid college rules, a feeling of elation over
the possession of and control on, the subordinate and submissive medium: just
like the buoyancy of a top gun
nose-diving to break the sound barrier aware of his perfect command of the
flying machine. Likewise, Mrs.Miniotti has the mastery of the plate which
accepts any artist’s whim, any layering, any scraping
as it it were wrought by a sculptor’s hand.
In the waters, however, one can
notice a change of mind, an exodus (or katabasis), a repentance, a
back flow, in other words a gradual
return to set rules, the acceptance of a standard,
the abhorrence of misprints and the
favouring of technicalities.The turning point is represented by “Immersion”
,of
1994, where the previous harshness of the sign on the trunk node almost matches the violence of the foreign body breaking the fluid stillness. Indeed, the choice of water as a subject seems to reflect a need for protection, for shelter, for immersion in a reassuring and consoling amniotic fluid of Panicism and in Arcadian hedonism.
This
choice may also signal the attainment of a new goal, a base camp at a high
altitude, or even maturity after going through the stages of learning
(the Interiors
in Calandri’s style and the Compositions
in Soffiantino’s manner) and of
awareness (the above-mentioned Woods
in her own, unmistakeable style). As is the case with butterflies, the outcome
is a metamorphosis: the sign
that was just a mark becomes
a substance and finally a drawing. It may also be a journey, a direction:
from
the painter’s studio, the door, the city
back to wilderness. In the air, the trees lift their branches to the sky, like upraised
arms or hands, fighting the wind. In
water, you get this confident feeling: I can swim, I can tame the hostile
element that accepts and supports me.
But let us consider the drawings
again to understand that there is a
resolution at last, even if the battle (i.e., research, testing, strategy) is
still going on. The command over the sign looks like a constraint, a bond. The
technique, that precious store, becomes a heavy, cumbersome burden: it is an
equation that calls for a result. The struggle involves independence, the
breaking of bonds, of bars, the opening of new horizons. This
duality seems to be insuperable, but in Elisabetta’s case it is a
continuous turning over of functions and positions: rational composition and
visionary strain, hypnotic whirlpools and
bureaucratic padding, piratical sallies of abstraction and cold
technicalities, harsh, burning acid bites and soothing waxy ointments. It is
from the pieces on this
chessboard (the game rules and the player’s genius) that the latest
sheets derive, etchings and pastels placed side by side, pregnant of alphabets
and arrangements, of languages and
harmonies. The alchemy of fusion of bodies and elements, of
transformation by fire or acid, of sublimation by means of purifying
distillation, leads to clearness, to the philosopher’s stone healing the scar,
to an extreme synthesis: the fragments (tesserae, crumbs, crystals, confetti)
finally gather in the melting pot of
inspiration, a kaleidoscope in which the
boundary (cage, perimeter, edge, bond, constraint) creates the figure that changes,
transforms and unexpectedly renews itself at each turn of the cylinder, but is
always commanded by one necessity,
prime mover and ultimate goal,
synthesis and essence, creation and god, or, at least, deus
ex machina: light.
Gianfranco Schialvino
Elisabetta Viarengo Miniotti
mail@eviarengominiotti.com
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