Diego Collovini
In the infinite the color
What we “see” is not simply
given, but is the product of past experience and future
expectations.
H. Gombrich
Essentially, Luciana Cicogna painting falls
into two distinct and separate phases: in one, we see the
unwinding of the creation of the forms, in the other we
discover her expression within the act of applying the paint.
They represent two features of a single action – though
they are made at different times – which discover
their essence only at the moment of their composition. At
the same time, each of these currents, whilst seeming to
follow its routes, does not exist without the other. Indeed
their inseparability finds its raison-d’etre at the
very last moment, the moment of perception.
Cicogna suggests that we interpret and re-construct that
which has as its starting point the perception phase, and
this enables us to analyse her work from that state of seeming
uncertainty and formal unevenness that one finds when seeing
her work in its entirety. What makes it so intriguing is
thus its sense of spontaneous instability for which we are
pre-warned by the lack of a primary and obvious pictorial
form; in other words that which is of the surface when considered
as the base of the painting or of its formal composition.
In the work of this Venetian artist the pictorial plans
are as one seen through those often indefinable shapes,
like symbolic shreds, images of material visions which are
attached to an ideal place, whose dimension is marked by
the same chromatic intensity by the light and by the volume
of colour. Luciana Cicogna’s works are presented to
be understood within a random and difficult context, which
is yet an open question. Consequently a first connection
is made: form equals surface; however, we can not feel to
have identified the work from this, because to this, as
an essential and irrenouncable action belongs the action
of painting. This represents the ultimate action through
which the artist gives consistence, even material, to the
shapes and enlarges upon the variety of the language used.
The consistency of the compositional act is thus confirmed
materially, firstly as that of collage, - the compositional
moment in which it is the substance which gives body to
the colour, and another, - more exquisitely pictorial, which
harmonises the various compositional levels and which has
more to do with the illusory characteristics of colour and
brushwork. Thus the quick and rhythmic brushstrokes, the
alternating of warm soft colours which bring us to a fantastical
and imaginative perception – seemingly real but as
deceptive as our memories; so much so that if we wish to
discover some sort of reality, we can find everything that
we imagine in our mind’s eye: shapes floating in nothingness
– figures held suspended by a thread - from a symbol
which still reminds us of other things, rather like the
horizon which creates another space, even larger than the
painted space, which is as immeasurable as infinity itself.
But there are also other elements that make us look at Luciana
Cicogna’s works, other clues that further throw into
confusion the certainty that we seek to see. They are other
imperceptible feelings- sometimes coming as they do from
the artist’s personality which interweave and confront
each other in the different game of realisation, rather
like an immutable process, which, if on the one hand goes
in search of the present and its transformation, on the
other hand watches the artistic and creative process. Thus
the artist undertakes a perfect retreating route. And here
we can find a real idea of “Venetian-ness”;
the changing colours of light which area a striking record
of one who has lived these changes day after day in that
alternation of seasonal moods which the city lavishes on
those who live here. All the sense of colour goes from different
extremes, to re-live those cotton-wool tones of the grey
cold seasons, or to integrate one’s self in vivid
sunny seasons with that red-hot blazing light which belongs
to those intense and brilliant moments of the hot periods.
This is the embodiment of the act of painting, an ongoing
discovery of a light which rises with a daily transformation
of colour which is always different; it is a creative act
of re-making a journey, which unfailingly brings one to
personal artistic experiences, but also to those related
to the History of Art. In the works of Luciana Cicogna one
catches a glimpse of the certainty of the experience and
the sureness of the validity of the languages acquired through
her artistic voyages. No single way of painting, no single
way of creating shapes, no single way of giving solidity
to the images- but every possible way that painting allows
or which life itself has assembled.
However, I do not believe that one can reach a single definition
to make these experiences concrete. Neither do I believe
that they can be pinned down to a single period in the artist
in the artist’s creative life. It is an ongoing and
reflective task of analysis and a research into the infinite
language of painting. Everything is a journey without maps,
often beyond any pre-ordained or rational plan, but also
from possible perceptive certainties. The probable references
to the painter’s experience, - and they do nothing
but confirm this - the communicative strength of painting,
its ability to grasp not only the immediate existential
moment, but even that broader one- and therefore less precise-
form that infinite space that within is very axiom of immeasurability
becomes a metaphor for the creativity of art and the deceptiveness
of painting.
November 2000
Translated
by Jeremy Magorian
