Multiple identities is the exhibition project that on October 21 opened the fall season of Ceravento, an art gallery in Pescara, and involved the artist Viviana Castiglioni, in a solo show curated by Ivan D’Alberto.
Viviana Castiglioni, Identità multiple, installation view at Ceravento, 2023, photo Iacopo Pasqui, courtesy Ceravento
Castiglioni in these canvases presents us her research, started a few years ago, that revolves around the need to space with color, an element that imposes itself in her oil and acrylic works, giving strength and brilliance to the painted shapes, which are more or less layered in tones. Through the different color veils, we enter the light and paused setting slowly and the works, side by side in the space, create contrasts and cross-references between the fields, also thanks to the small mirrors paired with some characters, who communicate with each other in apparent silence. In the waves on the horizon above the boy’s (or girl’s?) thoughts in Mare (2023) there is the same blue that appears, with more texture, in the young man’s blouse in Aperitivo tra i banani (2022) and in the pool of sleep in Geometrie (2022).
Viviana Castiglioni, Identità multiple, installation view at Ceravento, 2023, photo Iacopo Pasqui, courtesy Ceravento
The portraits propose in a small and dense surface the artist’s aesthetic vision, based on the veritas/vanitas binomial, projecting the gaze in and out of these magnetic meta-images. The viewer undergoes, in fact, almost a hypnosis in discovering himself/herself first in the mirror and then in the painting next to it, in a rapid shift that allows him/her to identify deeply with the faces depicted. This mechanism generates apparitions, in which the viewer finds himself/herself in the tension created by the artist, and in the situations portrayed in these small windows, often wondering whether what one sees corresponds to a real or deceptive dimension. The journey through these short dreamlike episodes is accompanied by contemporary melodies of Sardinian origin, the same of the artist, which contextualize some scenes with an everyday sound.
Viviana Castiglioni, The coffee of disappointment, 2022, mixed media on canvas panel, photo Iacopo Pasqui, courtesy Ceravento
From the sea to the urban sounds, we slowly penetrate a world made up of subjects on the one hand familiar, whose history we are trying to understand, and on the other hand completely unknown. We can feel the instantaneous yet prolonged connotation of these views, which we could potentially observe for hours at a time, imagining events behind the undefined protagonists (Momenti felici, 2023; Aria, 2022). As in polaroids, time remains suspended, and in this case allows us to appreciate not the memory of a lived event, but narratives, to reveal hidden facts from the impenetrable faces (Come tu mi vuoi, 2021; Fallo di notte, 2020).
Viviana Castiglioni, Tutto subito, 2023, mixed media on canvas panel, photo Iacopo Pasqui, courtesy Ceravento
The absent physiognomy of subjects finds its perfect definition in the oxymoron Multiple identities, as it highlights the individual’s possibility of being in one identity or in a multiplicity of them, of questioning one’s inner self. Each person can freely choose who he or she wants to be and in what way, at any time of his or her existence, and looking in the mirror observe his or her truth, whether unique or multiple, without ever feeling stuck in a reflection that does not represent him or her. Viviana Castiglioni attends us to the need to bypass conventions and break through superstructures, imposed social labels, and harness our inner strength to speak directly to ourselves and finally “find ourselves”.
Info:
Viviana Castiglioni. Identità multiple
curated by Ivan D’Alberto
Ceravento – C.so Vittorio Emanuele II, 161 Pescara
21/10/2023 – 23/12/2023
ceravento.it
After graduating in Cultural Heritage, she moved to Milan and finished her studies at the IULM University, where she specializes in contemporary art and communication. She currently lives in Pescara and works in a cultural association, collaborates with an art gallery and is a contributor for Juliet Art Magazine and Rivista Segno. She is in constant exploration of the artistic contemporaneity and its multiple readings.
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