The Poetics of Objects:
A Critical Commentary by Giovanni Bianchi
The works of Massimiliana Sonego are spaces in which floating objects intersect, shapes that float in memory and, almost slipping, settle on the surface of the canvas, manifesting themselves visually.
These object-shapes, delimited by sharp contour lines, create an unusual context of encounter, occupying space by overlapping and merging with each other but still respecting their own identities, which are so dear to the artist and intentionally emphasized by her.
The objects give life to a "passage" through which their relationship becomes an opportunity to document their change over time. The dressers, chairs, music boxes, armchairs, and vases depicted in a synthesis that tends towards abstraction transcend their function, appearing in a two-dimensional, ephemeral physicality that is nevertheless durable.
The artist has a special relationship with the world of objects. They are not "indifferent" objects, but rather "personal," "belonging to her," and "beloved," to be related to her psyche according to a personal principle of identity. Her paintings are evocations of the possessed things that still evoke emotions and activate memory.
Personal, chromatic, and formal projections, emotional and memorial, give life to shapes that rhythmically arrange themselves in space, suggesting stories full of symbolic values. The objects, deprived of their specific functional value, are used as memory aids, becoming disfigured and reinterpreted through the sign and the color, acquiring a new consistency that suggests a feeling of lightness.
In Couple in Red (2008), the images of a nightstand and an armchair, obtained on a red background, are visually resolved into a graphic synthesis and present themselves as two presences that allude to two "figures" caught in a domestic interior, in a close daily relationship.
Often, the shapes overlap in a precarious balance, as in Journey (2020) and in Dresser (2020), and the contours intertwine, giving rise to new forms and an idea of stratification, from the intangible layer, just like our memories in our minds.
The forms of Battlefield (2021) seem subject to a centrifugal force that expands from the center, moving away from the struggle undertaken.
In the paintings, there is a constant search for harmony, characterized by a flowing dynamism that gives lightness to the shapes that float away in a cosmic dance.
Sonego, through essential lines and flat color layovers, starting from the vision of reality, offers the viewer her poetic "truth" of form.
