| LOGIC OF A VOYAGE TOWARDS THE ACTUALITY OF MEMORY (D. Guzzi) |
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Pastels and oil paintings. A single bond; a not always unequivocal narrative. A bond ideological rather than effective , someone might reasonably say, both on the level of contents and of results. We believe, however, that there could be no stronger and more obvious unity than the unity in these pastels and paintings. A unity measured, for example, through the balance of shapes which are both peremptory and interlocutory.
hint at a tension. A unity, moreover, measured through the re-emergence and the dialectic of memory in present day. And lastly, a unity shaded by the idea of loneliness. But of course, if we then analyze the connective tissue of the images (one should correctly say, of the qualities of the material), the degree to which the pastels - not, then, simple colored/drawings - are processed and filtered will be easily noticed, as well as how the artist attains his tones through slow constant toil, which is expressed by overlapping, by very subtle weaving and by the mixture of different hues. This where oil painting does not envisage - or wouldn’t t generally envisage - a chromatic processing directly on the canvas. This, of course, doesn’t maintain the primacy of any of the one aver any other. In the paintings, however, colour seems to present itself as eloquent drafting. The drafting is, clearly, summed up in a space, in measure, in an idea of ambiance. Rather, hinted at and evoked than narrated. At any rate an environment , as the scene of silent contemplation.
Light then. A somewhat frozen brightness. Northern brightness, even through its tensions seem Mediterranean in culture, nature and themes. This could be the origin of a certain alienation. A certain separation between what is observed by the pointer and the way in which he conveys it, transforming it into an image. There is, therefore, a sort of backwards meditation, at least through meaningful deviations and mostly concerning the logic of the shapes - it seems important to inset on the word logic, since every passion is anyway clearly diluted - almost up to the point of becoming on code of objectivity, obviously relived in contemporary terms. This might also be mediated through the distinctness of a tecnicist's correspondence. A correspondence which is not only revealed by the accuracy of plots, but also (for example) in certain accents of shadow as in some framings, in some views and half figures which confer rhythm to the balances. Light contributing to convey the colour through strictly tonal contiguities, but for the rare insurgence of an ultramarine blue or of a crimson as signs of open and sought after dissonance. It follows that Amendola cannot but be close to verity. For him, in fact, painting essentially means reliving reality. In such reviviscence, nevertheless (and it is no paradox), he verges on abstraction. And not just because his images ore always definite (almost if cut with scissors, charging the brush with the task of precisely outlining the profiles of people and things), but because they are always, or mostly, particulars of whole. Memory, is hinted at. Amendola does not hide the fact of being, to a certain degree, in debt with it. Io the point of translating it, iconically, into an ancient statue, an ancient fragment. It is thus he poses the problem of dialectic living. As if to underline that there is no fact beyond memory. This is what those ancient images, which seem to want to communicate the some valence as the objects which coexist with them within the painting s spatiality. Memory is, finally, made fact. And everything is realized in a hic et nunc dimension outside time. Nor can we avoid noticing that even in the works of Amendola which don't hint at it directly, that there is the idea of voyage , a word also appearing in some titles. The voyage has a double symbolic valence. It evokes, on the one hand, distance and adventure. On the other hand voyage is also
a symbol of truth, peace, immortality; a symbol of the search for and discovery of a spirituous centrality. In this sense it is obvious that it cannot belong to this pointer s vision. A search for peace obtained through the balance of shapes in space. And of unequivocally definite balances. Beyond any reading, there is something more, as in the pictures entitled Transparence. The pointer representatively proposes the interior-exterior subject. Which, translated into a few words, means tight and backlighting. And because this valance, as has been pointed out, is somehow tuned to a technicist language, we find Amendola focused on a spot and looking upon the exterior through subsequent images and zooms. Which, once more, stimulates the interaction of both real and abstract shapes, of geometric locutions and anthropomorphic Suggestions. And again, through the filter of a pane of glass, it renews the impression of a cold tightness. Up to making the image in the third canvas (Trasparenze n.3) become more problematic than the others. Indeed it is refraction and the overlapping of pieces of truth, by being thus observed, that accentuate and multiply their interlocution. In the tight logic of an exacting score separating distinctive points of the canvases and the narratives . Lastly then, not a voyage towards the unknown but towards the remembered. Towards a codification of a natural osmosis between post and present.
Domenico Guzzi ("La Vetrata" Gallery Exhibition Catalogue, Roma, 1998)
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