Pia Gazzola, presents in this exhibition a selection of works on paper and photographs related to the theme of the “book” and to the expressive and silent form of Nature, made of signs.
She is of Veronese origins, has studied and worked between Paris, Rome and Vienna, where she has lived for several years. Moreover, in this new exhibition project the relationship with the “quality of time” is for her fundamentally important, she analyses its different variations through the study of the communicative features of art.
«…The imaginary is not formed in opposition to reality as its denial or compensation; it grows among signs, from book to book, in the interstice of repetitions and commentaries; it is born and takes shape in the interval between books. It is the phenomena of the library».(1)
In the exhibition room where Studio la Città monthly hosts artists who are independent from the market logic and whose artistic quality is undeniable, works from the series Partiture vigne, Due passi e Doppie Pagine/Libri, are exhibited in a show imagined and designed specifically for this space.
Pia Gazzola literally conceives the ancient metaphor of Nature as a universal book, in this case written by Nature, author of the calligraphies and sheets that actually assemble it. As in fact emerges from her works on paper, the different varieties of plants act autonomously as writing tools: covered in ink, they move on the paper like in a dance, drawing marks that are actually a lasting trace of their behaviour, which is driven by various external conditions, like the wind blowing, the strength of their fibres, their spontaneous growing and so on.
«… This objective is achieved in the book that Pia Gazzola has made ‘hands-free’. There is no representation in this book, no intervention of bodily expression; there is a direct transportation of mobility to the paper. With her communicative initiatives Pia proposes the contemplation of Nature and its authority through the transparency of a direct and immediate step.» (2)
The development of this poetic started with the series Segni di Segni, very important for the genesis of all the works the artist intimately links to the theme of Creative Nature. The authors of these artworks, made on cotton paper, are once again vegetable elements, makers of their graphic sheet, defined by actions and reactions, by the scope and rhythm of more or less predictable or arbitrary forces.
Pia Gazzola’s work has always been based on the fascinating idea of the strict relationship between the art of communication and Time, to be intended in its chronological and philosophical meaning. The project that highlights Pia Gazzola’s artistic process is indeed Capire al Volo, that took the artist three years to complete, from 1998 to 2000.
In this work, through the flight of homing pigeons, Pia Gazzola transfigures the ancient technique of pigeon post to carry messages, in the light of the virtual means of communications and new technologies. The pigeons, travelling from different European cities towards Vienna, carry numerous fundamental concepts that we also find in the works exhibited at Studio la Città: the phenomenon of internet, the crossing of borders and the transformation of messages caused by time and space.
«…The fascinating idea of this project is the relationship between communication and information, in which the important thing is not the real message, but the means of transmitting it…» (3)
«… Obviously, the speed of a homing pigeon is not impressive if we compare it to the electronic data. However, how relevant is the time we save thanks to digital communication compared, for example, to our life and the time we have for reading?…» (4)
- Michel Foucault, “Fantasia of the library”, in “Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews”, 91.
- Juan Navarro Baldeweg, “Escritos”, ed. PRE-TEXTOS, Madrid 2017, pp. 210-215
- Gerfried Stocker “capire al volo / im flug verstehen” ed. GABRIELE MAZZOTTA, Milano1999, p. 91
- Wolfgang Kos, “capire al volo / im flug verstehen” ed. GABRIELE MAZZOTTA, Milano1999, p. 104