Scratches and varnish
WORKS
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DE-FORMA by Chiara Materazzo - 2007
Don't look at anything. Keep the love and fear within you. This is the Look.
Roland Barthes, in his Notes on Photography, teaches us about the many different levels of seeing. Knowing how to see beyond appearances, the need to see behind two wide-open eyes, where the deepest human feelings are found. In Adele Lotito's work, the faculty of seeing returns as a tool of knowing, as an interpretation on different levels going beyond the apparent limits of visual and sensory perception. Through the dissolving of shapes, that reminds us of clouds, the artist breaks down the obstacles that the human eye perceives, becoming aware of many aspects of reality, not only the apparent ones. Her close, deep and platonic universe is much more real than we can describe, a transcendental "I", using Husserl's definition, that encompasses in itself the possibility for everything that finds its origins in the empirical "I". Therefore, reality itself, because, in reality, there is the possibility for all that surrounds us.
Adele works on the patina left by the smoke on the surfaces, whether it be paper, wood or aluminium. What she is interested in, is making the support opaque/matt with the painting, uniting them with gold, or silver, eliminating the formal-informal, chiarscuro, light-colour binomial. Looking at the Dittico Silenzio 2 (Diptych Silence 2), or at the works, Infinito, Prezioso, Luna, (Infinite, Precious, Moon) we are captured by a giddy lyricism, like the markings left by smoke, pushed towards the depths of the powdery and dark matter, until we touch bottom, and then reascend to the skies. The surfaces, rendered opaque, give a sense of shadows, just as they breathe, becoming lighter in the air, wavering, suspended between the earth and the sky, in a feeling of permanent contemplation, a recurring feature of her work. The difficulty of observing is her, like our, unconsciousness. Art, against a globalized and alienating system, has the advantage of being able to push our soul towards the beyond. Knowledge and intelligence, wrote Jean Dubuffet, are weak instruments compared to imagination. Ideas are inert gases. When the imagination is blinding, the intellect raises its head. Adele presents a vision of a free universe, the search for a changed/altered truth, and a beauty without plans or limitations.