Massimo Donà

SACRED CONSONANCE
On the artistry of Luciana Cicogna

"Beauty is something else, absolutely something else. The inaccessible, the unknowable. The unknowable we know but don't wish to confess to; it's what we know deep down inside ourselves."

Andrea Emo, Quaderno 387, 1978, p.94.

What Luciana Cicogna has always been obsessively questing for, in her work, is a 'perfect' equilibrium; a true and real reflection of ou-topia. A reflection on the possibility of always achieving it.

Certainly, what the Venetian artist tries patiently to project onto the transparent screen of her work is a ou-topia consigned to the undefined of the imagination - showing herself to be aware of the purely poietic nature of harmony.

For Luciana Cicogna what is, in point of fact, absolutely evident is that our daily existence 'lacks' such status; and her acting 'shows', so to say, that only such a lack can move us towards the fleeting, uncertain, and yet necessary territories of the aesthetic.

Hers is therefore a substantially 'classic' approach that recoils from the high-sounding motives that have misled a good part of modernity by having us too often believe that quite different values and quite other objectives are at play in the unsettling vicissitudes of artistic production.
Therefore her way of working is most 'exemplary'.

A warning for those – and they are the majority – who continue to believe that we should expect an indication for the teleologically disposed general rules of daily life from the power of the aesthetic. As though all we could hope for is a sort of message adrift in a bottle at the mercy of the unpredictable vicissitudes of destiny; that only a few, however, are given to decipher and to transform into an ethos capable of directing universal events towards the 'good', and therefore the praxis of all and of nobody.
Her panels, her canvases, her watercolours, in a word resist this blackmail: and they unmask it in the very act of their silent placing of themselves on show.

But they do it with discretion; educated to that 'decency' that ought to mark our every action, or rather our every concrete attempt. That alone can bear witness to the awareness of an, in any case, exacting exposure – that which every work of art, in fact, constitutes, in that it is able to strip itself of any obsolete ornament (independently of the more or less explicit intentions of its 'author'), and in primis of those always and in any case borrowed from the inexhaustible store of 'good intentions'.

Luciana Cicogna seems to be quite aware of this; and not just because of any theoretical elaboration that has consequentially led to such an outcome, or perhaps because of an arbitrary and, anyhow, 'faint-hearted' decision to opt out from the difficult and risky game of polis.

No, the Venetian artist seems to have perfectly understood - an understanding that is, above all, concerning her 'works' and concerning her creative practice, before concerning her person and her existential choices: that the work – which she cannot however stop herself from bestowing a perfectly autonomous and free life on - is called to deconstruct every useless mask; that it is invoked, that is, to thwart in toto the seductive effect produced by the garment that she would have liked to have dressed it in from time to time.

Luciana Cicogna, in short, knows very well that in her works the 'spirit' of the creation, as well as the rhythm of an existence that will render it substantially unable to be judged, will expose her to the other (that same with which normally one tries to negotiate an in any case sustainable coexistence) devoid of every defence. Albeit, perfectly impotent. And therefore entrusted to that silent 'objectuality' that, alone, can reflect the naked and unforeseeable existence that destiny delivers, independently from our expectations, but that, at the same time, acts within us and in our original acts as the original condition of its own strategies always able to be re-planned.

This the root of a lack of relevance that renders the Venetian artist's work more than ever 'prophetic'. Aimed, that is, at warning us of a possible future for art and its simple - and for this reason - destabilizing eruption will always and in any case be a conjecture. Almost as though telling us that, yes, precisely the fragile equilibrium it fosters (and restored to a still possible experience) can impose itself in the form of the sacred exemplarity of the event.

And to convince us of the fact that, precisely in her delicate consonance – or, in the imperceptible differences that, on her mobile surfaces, seem directed to regaining an already almost lost balance; precisely in such 'movements' without destination, we should in some way learn to recognise the irrefutable 'reflexion' of an indecipherable voice, but, just for this reason, absolutely true; or, lacking contradiction. A mute voice like that desperately sought in the deepest heart of the significance by a great poet such as Hugo Von Hofmannsthal.

Therefore Luciana Cicogna's works invite us to suspend judgement; and for this reason we find them 'trustful'. That is, they do not impose themselves – overwhelmingly- on the observer; and they do not oblige us to take part. Altogether, they never take sides; and they succeed, for this reason, in thwarting all our attempts at classifying them in the niche of abstraction or in that of mimetic realism.

Some forms that constitute the perfect icon of the purely 'possible' are therefore made to 'vibrate' softly and 'breathe' in their always undefined frame. At the same time, the most evident 'negation' speaks of all this, of what could be 'tree', 'heart', 'human body', but also 'butterfly' or 'flower'… reassigning all this possible existence determined 'to its always individual being'; that is, to that enigmatic singularity that no concept and no universal category could ever inscribe in the order of 'what' (and therefore of the significance).

Pure existences sustained by uncertain 'relationships', never abstractly geometric, but always driven by scraps, unbalances and asymmetry, that by themselves could have given back the power of an in any case evident 'harmony' to its original 'undefinability'. And so, to its real 'freedom' – to a freedom that should never have been – so, that familiar to our daily teleological hybris, but rather that ever and only recognisable in the naked thing with which we all inevitably have to do. Therefore, in its imperceptible oscillations: in the sweetly serene rhythm of an existence that has to do with 'grace'. And so, with an attitude that is pure 'talent'; and that alludes the unfathomable mystery kept in the rare gestures which the human being is sometimes capable of. And that the most recent production by the Venetian artist knows also how to give to the cumbersome power of gold.

Yes, because gold too, that began discretely and softly to appear in Luciana Cicogna's last works, does not require any drastic 'conversion'. That is, it does not look back to the unsustainable power of the Sacred; that which, among other things, a long and golden tradition had 'convinced' us of.

No, also in this case, the sacredness in effect implicated, has instead to do with the delicat revelation of a 'silent' and 'intimate' affection – we could almost call it a maternal one. Just like that of a mother for her own children; furthermore, like that which makes us all part of the same family – that has nothing however to do with genos… that is, with a belonging that too often divides and separates rather than uniting. With a belonging thanks to which, therefore, every sharing should be, above all, merciful understanding, but never an arrogant or fateful definition.

Therefore, the sacredness implicated by her recent 'Oroalberos' recalls a root that 'frees': and, precisely in this prospective, does not impose any submission. But induces us, rather, to again discover an unusual, delicate and slow rhythm: no long chained to the brusque accelerations imposed by life and by its daily necessities.

And so this is how Luciana Cicogna's soft coloured backgrounds inscribing our glance constitute a chance as precious as regenerating; to which our existence and its useless seeking of sense are invited to observe as the exemplum of a 'possible' always open in front of us. Certainly, unusual, and perhaps also unproductive, but precisely for this dedicated to educating us to an innocent and originally mobile… sweetly oscillating rhythm – that no one could ever stop us from recognising in the free and wilfully 'harmonic' mirror of the true artistry.

February 2009