The idea is the incipt of the story. They are stories to be told, letters that form words, words that form images. Imagination is the continuum of the story. Fantasy, reality, alteration of meaning, heroes and anti-heroes unfold. Painting is the epilogue of the story. The metamorphosis of the whole, the awareness of colour, the final presence of the figure.
Valentina Artone, “Tales to tell”, installation view, Galleria ACAPPELLA, 2024, courtesy of the artist and the gallery, ph © Danilo Donzelli Photography
Valentina Artone – an artist from Abruzzo born in 1999 – is the prologue to an emerging narrative, i.e. one that is emerging from the aesthetic landscape of painting as the opening bars of a story in full narrative development. Action and narration are base and frame in which to circumscribe and describe. Pulsion and the need to bring together listening and feeling generate a fusion of languages that first stimulate the imagination, then combine thoughts and words into forms and colours. Artone is figuration in painting. The action of the figure is clearly legible in its staticism and at the same time dynamic in its gestural fluidity. Like a text in full reading, no detail is left to chance and the marks and strokes of colour reveal unpredictable twists. She also experiments with plasticism in objects and frames: the former as a three-dimensional element with an interpretative character, the latter as a hermetic container in which to enclose undefined and unreal images. The artist pushes her research into wide-ranging readings, most of which belong to ancient literature. She counters this with the infinite generative possibilities of artificial intelligence as a contemporary response to her reflections. The artificial images are the pre-text, from which she transcribes onto paper the graphic impressions that her words have translated.
Valentina Artone, “Tales to tell”, installation view, Galleria ACAPPELLA, 2024, courtesy of the artist and the gallery, ph © Danilo Donzelli Photography
For her first solo exhibition at Galleria Acappella in Naples, Valentina Artone is exhibiting a recent series of works under the title Tales to tell. There are several distinguishing features of the exhibition: the small number of works exhibited (eleven), the small size, the wooden bases, the ‘sepia’ effect that manifests the overall view of the exhibition due to the almost unified chromatic choice of earthy and sandy colours. From this aesthetic feature, the theme told in this series comes from Apuleius’ Metamorphoses. The familiar language from the 2nd century A.D. book ensures that the message of transformation – which turns from magical to spiritual – reverberates in Artone’s interpreted process. One example is In Custodinscensa, which, through fluid, bodily forms from behind, recalls Love and Psyche’s betrayal of the drop of oil. The distortion of faces and limbs in her figures appear grotesque, illogical, but in truth conceal a curiositas as the book itself has been handed down for centuries. The unpredictability of the stories linger on the paintings in the exhibition and remain suspended, changing with the gaze of the imagination.
Valentina Artone, “Tales to tell”, exhibition view (“Sortilegi”, oil on panel, 30×18 cm, 2023 / “Solicopia”, oil on panel, 18×30 cm, 2024), Galleria ACAPPELLA, 2024, courtesy of the artist and the Gallery, ph © Danilo Donzelli Photography
The young artist – who currently lives and studies a master’s degree in painting in Brussels – follows a generation of emerging artists in the field of visual arts. She is driven by taking up past elements and reinterpreting them with contemporary keys made of sentient and sensitive inputs and outputs. There are many stories to tell and Valentina Artone finds writings, shapes and colors to read and transcribe differently. For her, AI is a support for a genuine experience, without getting carried away by those artificial pitfalls that deviate from the classic aesthetics of making art.
Info:
Valentina Artone. Tales to tell
03/05 – 10/06 2024
Galleria ACAPPELLA
Vico S. M. A Cappella Vecchia 8/A, Napoli
www.museoapparente.eu
Art Curator and Art Advisor, graduated in Visual Arts and Cultural Mediation, with Master in Curatorial Practices, born in 1995, lives in Naples. He collaborates with Galleries and Independent Spaces, his research is mainly focused on Emerging Painting, with a careful and inclined gaze also on other forms of aesthetic language.
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