Vision of freedom and justice. Vision of a world between utopian concreteness and fiery achievements. Vision of another world made of nobility of soul of virtuous women. A primordial environment and generator of reasonableness and naturalness, an elsewhere that burns like a phoenix to give new life.

Dove brulica l’altrove is the indicative (and perhaps interrogative) title that Veronica Bisesti – a Neapolitan artist born in 1991 – chooses as the first glance on the vision of this world. Between rhetoric and allegorical, his vision is transformed into tangible matter, alternating light and heavy, full and empty, large and small. The sequence of these adjectives is the metaphorical result of the aesthetic research of the artist: a research that starts from afar, from the study of writers who belonged to distant historical periods, such as the late Middle Ages. It is here that Bisesti deepens, with current continuity, the figure of the author Christine De Pizan, historical character who proposes new literary models to rethink the role of women in society. “The Book of the City of Ladies” (1405) is the text that inspired Veronica’s artistic visions: it is the basis for telling and outlining an energetic refinement of life, a propulsion towards an egalitarian future between being and nature. Under the guidance of Reason, Righteousness and Justice, stands a visionary fortified city, inhabited only by women: queens, warriors, poets, soothsayers, scientists, martyrs, saints. Veronica Bisesti does not dwell on pure feminism and the gender difference described by De Pizan’s thought, but goes further, captures the essence to render grace to this vision, with personal contemporary pride.

All this materializes on the occasion of his first solo exhibition at Alfonso Artiaco’s gallery in Naples, where he embarks on this artistic literary journey in a nebulous wall painting with golden colors. At its center there is a tribute to the writer, a small miniature as a generator of thoughts and connection of elements. As a point of origin, it is divided into the brass sculpture placed in front: a coral-shaped telescope with a multitude of lenses that allow you to look from multiple points of view.

Pioggia primordiale is a large watercolor, which suggests the first act can give energy to life. Watercolor, like drawing and charcoal on paper, are preferred materials for Bisesti: he describes them as light and precarious, but full of beauty, because despite careful control, it is randomness that makes something new germinate. The rain is never regular, the direction of the roots neither, but it is the result of these osmotic combinations that will eviscerate existence. In the wake of this thought, in the central room of the gallery of Artiaco, the artist places a sequence of nickel-plated and shiny stones, one for each virtuous lady described in the book.

The work Strumento di misurazione is an aloe leaf made of brass, whose thorns, through the incision of millimetral notches, become measuring points. Chosen for its inherent beneficial properties, it becomes the basis of a new metric system for building a future community, focused on care. In the succession of these works alternate drawings on paper, depicting a hybridization between being and nature, under a sun as a metaphor of energy manifestation. In conclusion Specchio, an obsidian stone – which in ancient times was used as a mirror – reflects on its literal workmanship and, figuratively, on the visions so aesthetically realized. On it are engraved the words: “the veins, the insides, the deep, the origin” as a reflective warning addressed to the viewer. Veronica Bisesti, with her young vision of the world, lets carry herself and others in the discovery of a world that goes elsewhere, not placeable temporally and physically.

 Info:
Veronica Bisesti. Dove brulica l’altrove
29/06/2023 – 09/09/2023
Galleria Alfonso Artiaco
Naples