“Antonella Zazzera. Discreet clamors” by Federico Sardella, 2007

Chatting with Antonella, one hears her repeat that work of art and artist in some way coincide. She finds it stimulating when she notices the same occurrence in other artists that she loves and frequents.

And if this principle, in her opinion, is valid for Carmengloria Morales, Giuseppe Spagnulo or Nicola Carrino, it is more than valid for Zazzera. The Work of Art is the Artist, she peremptorily affirms. The being, the harmonic research on matter, or the art, are one unique thing, realized through uniqueness, unrepeatability, and lyricism.

Antonella Zazzera is distinguished by an apparent fragility but is also endowed with resistance, stubbornness and obstinacy. A thin layer of porcelain masks a ferrous core full of discretion and silence as well as desire and explosive fire. So too is her work. It is discreet and dazzling, full of awareness and references to the past, distinguished by an unsettling and rare originality.

The “Armonici”, the sculptures presented in this exhibition, have a very tight link with Antonella’s previous works. A natural evolution and spontaneous consequent takes place with respect to the works of the past few years. From the “Madri Matrici”, constructed with layers of plaster and sound insulation coating on gauze, to “Frammenti”, derived from the ritual procedure of beating the “Madri Matrici”, which detach themselves from the body which generate them in order to acquire their own life and be catalogued and kept as artifacts.

The artist also photographs small plates of Vetronite (fiberglass), a material constructed from copper and glass powder, on which she performs scratches, gloves and incisions, as if to allow pictorial work to be projected onto these surfaces. The plates, once photographed, show otherwise imperceptible gleams, pure bodies and the presence of signs and traces. In the “Armonici” we find the same signs and the same tracks, the same spontaneous and natural forms. The “Segnotraccia”, as called by Antonella, is the total identification between being and artistic material. It is the gesture of the prehistoric man who, day after after, renews himself by finding other spaces and modalities. Buried in the fiberglass, the “Segnotraccia” materializes and, detaching itself from its surface, it goes to construct, indeed, the “Armonici”: forms not forms generated by light…bodies of energy. These sculptures made of copper wires of different shades, through a long sedimentation process which takes place both on the ground and on the wall in the space that contains them, are in a harmonious relationship with the “Segnotraccia”. Light is intended as a transmuting element, which slowly weaves shapes, giving life… it shapes dynamic surfaces, generated by exasperated rhythms. A light that nourishes the body of the work and makes it alive, dressing it with discreet clamor. A light which exalts and detects lines of force, weaves shapes and forms shimmering, variable and inflamed structures. The “Armonici” have soft tendencies, never broken: the curve, the place of identification between man and nature, dominates over everything. Lights, shadows, colors, reflections, and juxtapositions animate the sinuous forms. Forms that show themselves in all their splendor with an underlying timidity and certain modesty, never strutting but naturally posed.

 

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