“Antonella Zazzera” by Mauro Salvi, 2006
Art is the search for harmonic values of space, trace and light and all that derives from their combination. Art history studies these combinations in different eras and draws accurate conclusions in relation to the contemporaneity of individual artists. Zazzera’s arrangement displays itself in the search for these three fundamental elements, favoring light and trace, and assuming the value of space from experiences close to her contemporaneous nature as an artist.
One step at a time because the artist is a profound and tireless researcher. We must carefully follow her in her creative journey.
It is good to attribute to her a specific research among the various pursued by artists. Her artistic path demonstrates pure and absolute values, not conceptual ones, which with trivial ignorance, contemporaneity tends to associate every thought.
It is not a world of narration or visual stories or interior visions of a surreal or metaphysical reality. The careful use of the pure artistic values decanted by every mimesis and every conceptual application has been handed down to us by all the great masters of ancient, modern and contemporary art. Finally free from illustrative constraints, abstract art is to history as the French Revolution and the Industrial Revolution is to the advancement of humanity towards its own individuality.
To better understand Zazzera’s sculpture, we must discuss something else. It is necessary to turn back, far away, very far away, in ourselves. To appreciate Zazzera’s sculpture and to have a sensation of light and motion fused in harmonic relationships, let us try to contemplate the luminous vibrations of a vast expanse of slightly rippled water: universal genetic heritage.
We go backward in art history and ask why Fidia reproduced a luminous vibration in the drapery of the sculptures of Parthenon at the end of the fifth century B.C.? This is not curiosity, this is to understand the art. It is a restoration operation or quest to perfect a work of art now opacified by multiple common places, superficial and fashionable observations. Why have Fidia, Cavallini, Giovanni Bellini, Bernini, Medardo Rosso, Segantini, Boccioni, Dorazio and Zazzera given value to the luminous vibration, marking it with a trace that exalts it? What is a work if not condensed or the synthesis of the harmonic values that are within us, that sustain us, nourish us, place us naturally in unknown dimensions?
Following the pursuit for light on matter, the light that shows us the material in its form and color, light that is itself life and form, is one of the many ways of art. In fact, some have expanded the research on space and others on the trace and others have added the narrative to these elements. The narrative would be the monumental and individual part of the historical moment lived by the artist.
The contemporary artist does not have to account to anyone for his production and can approach the harmonic elements in their absolute purity and materialize them.
This is Zazzera’a operation: to fix the light on the matter and liberate it in dynamics that run through our spiritual body just as much as the blood and lymphatic network runs through every animal and vegetable. Zazzera’s sculptures emanate the meaning of life and of becoming. There is prescient dynamism that is enclosed in the density of the light that darkens and thickens as in a clear night, when the sky shines and one examines, more profoundly, the light than ever before. This continues until eclipsing the sense of reality and dialogue with the light of pulsing stars (that is, with ourselves).
The line, which is the universal expression of a ray of light, infinitely multiplies in Zazzera’s sculptures. It loses its geometrical identity and becomes light itself, leading us to observe its chromatic variations, in the tonal range of light and dark maximums. It unfolds and thickens, a constantly changing orientation that generates space. The space is filled with its essence and could continue in its infinity if there was not the limit of human possibility.
The final space, or the completed work, within its own limit (i.e. the form of the work) is ultimately an element of profound reflection for the sculptor.
The space of the work or the completed work is the source of great studies in contemporary art. Trace and light are essential elements in order for the space of the work to live, but they are also parasites and convenient exploiters of that space. It is the space itself of the work that must support all the weight of the invention. Zazzera addresses this turmoil and opens up a hope in the advancement of the concept of space in contemporary art. The space of her sculptures is obtained by the form that lies in itself, which underlies the force of gravity both flatly and curvilinearly, thus defining the image of the work. Some sculptures have jagged surfaces; they sharpen themselves, tending to merge with the space that is outside the work itself.
It is not a new method of interpenetrating the perimeters of the full and the empty. Let us remember Bernini’s Apollo and Daphne. A surface of Medardo Rosso, it is understand, is so intricate that it does have an easy positioning for anyone. All artists must commit themselves to this challenge. It is the limit of matter that only science can solve. Like her fellow artists, Zazzera, too, is trying to dematerialize space through the use of light.
The artist’s use of light allows the sculptures to appear harmoniously arranged; they evoke a superior nature of perfection, idealism and typicality.
The plastic values present a luminous effect through the play of thick lines of differing variations in thickness and tone. They are not abstract contour lines but are indeed part of the body with the subject itself.
We can say that Zazzera possesses the art of drawing lines in a plastic way.
These are lines that go beyond their own extremes, making other lines and other planes pay heed, in an almost a continuous roundness of the work. This generates an effort that goes beyond the subject itself; there is genius that surpasses art itself, art understood as a binomial of idea and technique.
The beauty of these sculptures does not consist so much in the work as in the splendor that shines in them, both in their parts and in the whole.
The monochromatic copper scale is taut and extended, leaving time and space to harmonize the passage of tones that appear blurred and gradually homogenize.
The rays of light affecting the bright and not opaque surface produce reflections that reach the eye, participating in the spiritual complement of the refined form, which emanates both stillness and motion at the same time. It reflects a mastering in an admirable psychological temperance of calm, serenity, impassibility irradiated by the intelligence of the pursuit. From the sculptress, we expect great works that in their vastness can widen these qualities.
Zazzera leads us to an inner vision. In fact, we must not be deceived by their external charm, nor must we stop at the vision of the form, but rather the transformation of form into light and then into spiritual essence. These works lead us to look into ourselves and to discover the “Harmonic Being” within us.