On 7 October 2023 Marignana Arte gallery opened “Viridis”, a solo exhibition by Silvia Infranco which will remain open to the public until 16 December 2023. The new project intends to present the latest developments in the artist’s research, which the curator of the exhibition Marina Dacci defined as «an act of love towards life, the search for a harmonious-evolutionary dimension of the world.”
Silvia Infranco, Viridis, installation view, photo credits Enrico Fiorese, courtesy Marignana Arte
The exhibition is divided into a series of wax works that intend to address the relationship between time and memory. Wax is a material that has always been present in the artist’s experiments and works. In a certain sense she wants to reconnect with a historical tradition, linked to its use in various disciplines: from medicine to science, from everyday life to art. Wax is therefore an organic substance which, due to its ductility, lends itself well to being the medium through which it is easier to insert a symbolic dimension and a series of reflections on the bond between man and nature.
Silvia Infranco, Tellus, 2023, grano, orzo, pigmenti, ossidi, cera, 20 x 20 x 20 cm ciascuno, photo credits Enrico Fiorese, courtesy Marignana Arte
The term “wax” was used in the late Latin definition as “face” while in ancient Greek kàra “head”; today we still use it in the expression “you look bad” to indicate the state of health or the state of mind that we perceive of a person through the appearance and expression of their face. For Infranco this material relates to vital energy, with which she describes the temporal progression, the passage between life and death: this material allows her to suspend time by sealing signs, writings or preserving a material which, due to her experience, gradually becomes more fragile. The aim is to preserve the object, the thought born through the creative gesture that stops the disintegration and determines a new reality positioned between the objective dimension of the world and the subjective one of the artist.
Silvia Infranco, Libro d’artista, 2023, fumigazioni, salvia, carta fatta a mano, 31 x 42 cm, photo credits Enrico Fiorese, courtesy Marignana Arte
Water is an equally important element for the creation of the works: especially in the maceration phase of the papers, it takes on the role of an element that reconnects us to life, rebirth and death. Water is an element that heals, fertilizes, purifies, but decomposes. Through wax and water the artist imprints her memories, since for her these substances are connected to the first elementary experiences of touch and sensitivity, to heat, cold and primary affectivity in general. Just as the priests of ancient Egypt mummified the bodies of the dearly departed through bands impregnated with wax, the artist illusorily preserves through her works not only the material but also the memories, exorcising death and the oblivion that it entails.
Silvia Infranco, da sx a dx: Giusquiamo e Belladonna, 2023, collage con ossidi, pigmenti, carta velina, 50 x 36 cm ciascuno, photo credits Enrico Fiorese, courtesy
In the rooms the observer is then invited to find the connection that has always linked art and science. Starting from Goethe’s writing “Metamorphoses of Plants”, the artist reflects on the general problem of the becoming of forms, which, despite changing, maintain their unity. Manuscripts and ancient printed texts (from herbals to pharmacopoeia accompanied by prayers activating the phytotherapeutic power) were the artist’s research basis for the creation of these works, which evoke continuity between a “magical” past and a technical-experimental modernity, suggesting new forms of interpretation and conciliation between apparently distant worlds. Therefore, through an ontological reflection on the basic parts of the being of nature and with a strong spiritual and existential imprint, we use the works by Silvia Infranco to better understand our interiority as individual people and as part of the human race.
Info:
Silvia Infranco. Viridis
curated by Marina Dacci
07.10.2023-16.12.2023
Marignana Arte Gallery
Dorsoduro 141, 30123, Venice
www.marignanaarte.it
Graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, she subsequently attended the School for Curatorial Studies in Venice. She writes about contemporary art with a particular eye towards emerging artists and experimental research projects.
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