Organic transgressions
Magazine article "Kaspiterina" by Daniele De Agelis coordinated by Nazareno Luciani - by Daniele De Angelis
“Now, the “wonder” – the “monster” – is essentially what transgresses the separation of the kingdoms, mixes the animal and the vegetable, the animal and the human; it is the excess, in that it changes the quality of things to which God has given a name; it is the metamorphosis, which shifts from one order to another; in a word, it is transmigration” (Roland Barthes).
The intentionality and the manner in which works of art are created are subject to constant changes, which modify their appearances, forms and elements; yet a persistent wave, like a background radiation, uninterruptedly connects man’s expressive achievements. From this point of view, the words of Roland Barthes, written in an essay on Arcimboldo’s painting, adapt immediately to Giulia Corradetti’s digital works, while at the same time establishing a conceptual link with the 16th century painter’s art.
The wonder felt by the eye, the glance that to better see and know is lost in the minutiae – decomposing and recomposing a multiform reality, is the predominant sensation in front of works in which the mixture, and fusion of different elements, is the main characteristic. Everything seems natural and logical, or at least possible: from landscapes to plants, from shapes to colours, even if nothing, in its entirety, is. The procedure is subtle and does not pass through irrational upheavals, but through accumulations of real and concrete substances, assembled in impossible sets. The detail thus becomes a link with what is known and, equally, a component of another totality, external to nature, because it is the fruit of imagination and technique.
Like a botanist Giulia Corradetti notes, in photographic shots, details of flowers and plants that, poured into the computer, become the concrete material of her works. By digitally re-elaborating colours, textures and shapes of vegetables captured from life, and inserting others created virtually, the artist arrives at compositions in which the real and the fictitious merge, in an apparently indiscernible continuity. The new plants, thus originated, have the appearance of curious succulent plants or unknown sea anemones of coral reefs, with bright and flashy colors, far from what is known and, however, strangely close to it. These entities require, in fact, as in Arcimboldo’s painting, to approach and move the gaze carefully, over and over again, so as to split the unity into its individual parts. A protean universe appears, then, where stems, leaves and thorns, of different kinds, are placed side by side in a mimetic way but always recognizable in their individuality. In the complete compositional organicity, the single elements do not lose their specificity; the main body lives of the single bodies, in a fusion that is conceptual and spiritual balance of opposites. This new nature is immersed in a pure and candid space, as a digital dimension can be; the plants soar alone or in small bushes, in the void of white or around brightly coloured geometric structures, also created by the artist by carving blocks of foam rubber with scissors and cutters. Once again natural and artificial, manual and virtual, they combine in an osmotic way, giving life to a playful and imaginative metaphysics, where the biological prodigy is an artistic prodigy.