Close your eyes Since its beginnings, the Industrial Revolution has created a major disruption and imbalance in the lives of human beings. While it has undeniably contributed to improving the quality of life of men and women, it has also had a disastrous impact on the environment with the abandonment of fields, deforestation to use wood as fuel and pollution to name but a few. On the other hand, it is enough to think that the reflection on the relationship between man and nature had already emerged with Romanticism at a time when the gradual establishment of industry was revolutionising social reality with important and serious repercussions for the countryside. Therefore, even 19th century painters perceiving this epochal change began to observe nature differently and empathise with it. It is no coincidence that artists have such a sensitivity that they are able to read between the lines of reality; they perceive certain problems in the folds of appearances, grasping and highlighting dynamics that are concealed or not very evident. Giusy Lauriola fully falls into this category. Analysing the artist's poetics, one can clearly see how reflection on the surrounding reality underlies her pictorial language. The expressive code thus unravelled on canvas is the result of an emotional attention to those small details, often ignored because they are swallowed up by the frenetic vortex of today's life, that make up the scenery of everyday life. Thus, a staircase with lush and unusual plants, almost as if it were a small, little-used green oasis, becomes the incipit of considerations on nature and how nature, exasperated by modern industrial civilisation, attempts to regain space as soon as it can. And those surfaces redeemed from the ravages of indifference and standardisation become breaths of oxygen for the lungs and the soul. So the relationship between human being and nature is the focus on which Lauriola's latest production is concentrated, finding completion in the canvases created for the site-specific exhibition at the San Sisto Aranciera, a building constructed in 1926 to give shelter to those plants most affected by winter temperatures. Right here in this strip of Rome steeped in history, a dimension of temporal suspension is perceived. This protective atmosphere towards delicate plants, in a place where the bucolic idyll still shines in the heart of the city, deeply inspired the artist. Thus, leaves and flowers, shrubs and branches are elevated to co-protagonists in the new works. We witness, for example, the sprouting on the pictorial surfaces of white petals, icons of purity and transience, filled with oriental suggestions. They are discrete presences set against backgrounds in which the colour scheme deprives the eye of real spatial references. The eye is enveloped by an undefined aleatory sensation that conveys a natural feeling of calm and tranquillity. Therefore, what we observe in Lauriola's works is the dissolution of the phenomenal world, or at least its decomposition, in favour of a metaphysical reality in which the depicted object appears as the pivot on which the entire compositional architecture rests in a close relationship between figure, gesture and colour; the artist structurally relates his inner world with the outer world through a narration where the images are dense with concepts linked to symbols and the basic abstraction has the capacity to welcome and involve reflective thought. The mangroves depicted, for example, embody the icon of strength and the will to survive in a reality that is in itself not easy, the affirmation of a life project even when conditions would exclude it. These plants have external roots that raise the trunk out of the mud to protect it and even utilise the brackish water by expelling a large amount of salt. Lauriola in this way indicates that our feelings must be high and deep, like the aforementioned roots, in order to move us away from the mud of exaggerated individualism; and we must take our cue from the filtering action of the plant's leaves or bark in order to remove all the residual waste of everyday life from us. In the dualism between basic abstractionism and figurative symbolism, the human presence is introduced by objects related to the sphere of everyday life that refer to a conscious enjoyment of the environment. Chairs, armchairs and interiors announce women and men without making them manifest, leaving the observer with a feeling of experience linked to his or her own emotional sphere. These objects also have another fundamental function in Lauriola's latest production. Through these, the artist invites us to stop, to close our eyes to enjoy the breath of creation and thus finally be able to see a new reality to be experienced in harmony with Nature. Carlo Ercoli 7 6
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MTI4OTA5