50 CONTEMPORARY ART
NUOVA WAVE A selection of contemporary artists out of Italy to note by Gianluca MARZIANI
P
resent times have gifted us with some wonderful visual surprises. Gone are the days when the aesthetic quality seemed cumbersome, with the light of center stage brightly shining on the process behind the work – on the painting that intensifies and develops the representation, the expressive styles that transcend the uncertainties of postmodernism. Great artists search for the specific style that sets them apart from all others, an autonomy which frees them from pre-existing forms of art and any set-in-stone formula. Today it means to take from the past without overdoing it, so that the final shape is a juxtaposition of its origins and not just a reminder of the similarities to its inspirations. The work accumulates and synthesizes, wiping away those memories in a sense that is classical but arises from a contemporary mix. After all, you are following the anthropological evolution of the web, the new social soul, living consciousness that affects actions and determines our position in the world. Here the most interesting artists reflect the process of the digital language, developing ideas with a thought method similar to that of computers. Hence the revival of a hybrid painting that is unclassifiable, neat and tidy in appearance but in reality unsettling, dramatic, as unstable as the society in which we live. A hyper-realistic approach to painting, with excessive expressionism or obsessive perfectionism. In reality, a black and white method with no grey areas to connect genres and archetypes fills a passionate and powerful framework, alive in its transformation, “bad” to the right extent. STEFANO ABBIATI (Milan, 1979) scours the photographic universe of the web, the magazines and blogs, paper and digital archives, seeking that certain something held in the semantic ambiguity of the image, that touch of infectious insanity pulsing beneath the surface of “normality”. The digitalized photographs are the starting point, the root of the artist’s painting process. The finished image seems immersed in a cloudy mist, floating under water, in a type of geological stratification that transports the image away from pure realism. The work brings the essence of life into sharp focus before it all then dissolves, to the point where the work resembles a foggy trip down memory lane. A cerebral painting, like a mind that processes, records, overlaps, fixes, alters, removes... SILVIA ARGIOLAS (Cagliari, 1977) invents scenarios combining the fairy tatle with the horror style of Maurice Sendak, populated by anthropomorphic creatures, struggling with the rawest essence of primordial life. A playful appearance hides links with archaic rituals, Pagan cultures, regional traditions along the dramatic thread that connects life and death. To do so, the artist paints in a spirited and expressive manner, bulimic in the rhythm of color, but without losing control of the essence, the details, the moods. You feel an emotional tension that accompanies every story, every character, every action, confirming the symbolic attitude that balances the emotions within the work. The artist’s relationship with the Sardinian culture is hinted at, filtered like a coded message through her gazes, confirming in a technological world how valuable one’s roots still are. STEFANO ABBIATI. I RACCHI, 2013. MIXED MEDIA ON BOARD AND PLEXIGLASS. 87 X 115 X 9 CM. COURTESY ROMBERG.
OPPOSITE PAGE, TOP: SILVIA ARGIOLAS. IL BENE E IL MALE DENTRO LO STESSO UOMO, 2013. 31.49 X 39.37 INCHES. PRIVATE COLLECTION, ITALY.