"Piety of memory and disconnection of sense.
On the painting of Massimiliana Sonego, critical commentary by Corrado Castellani."
The Latin quote "Collìgite quae superaverunt fragmenta, ne pereant. (Giovanni 6,12)" translates to "Gather up the fragments left over, so that nothing may be lost."
The imaginary world of Massimiliana Sonego feeds on the poetic thematization of objects. These objects, presented as two-dimensional figures or emblems, are schematic and lack depth, yet they fill her canvases. Though not standardized, these recognizable icons reappear from one work to another, almost as a self-contained series of profiles. They are related to everyday use items such as sofas, chairs, vases, and ornaments, and represent the protagonists of her paintings, comprising the primary and most evident symbolic code.
It is not easy to unravel the plot of intentions behind this marked and constitutive figurative choice. First, it is necessary to distinguish whether in the repeated representation, the painting seeks to save the objects, whether it intends to enhance their presence or whether the artist's subjectivity aims to save herself through them. The intention could be to preserve the objects from the danger of dissolving into irrelevance and fungibility(1), or to comfort the subject through the contributions and supports provided by things(2). It is also unclear whether the things have eminent value and meaning in themselves, as furnishings of the world, or in reference to the subjectivity that considers them.
Between the two alternatives, I would choose the second: I believe that the focus on an iconic repertoire with still life as an ascendant is to be attributed to the author's subjectivity, to her emotional and cognitive investment that persists on the mute witnesses of what has been, and returns to them because it is subject to the constraint of memory or takes pleasure in abandoning itself to it.
This leads to considering the factor of time, the relationship between present and past, the focus on aspects and moments in which experience has sedimented and of which the artist experiences, together, the tenacious permanence and the progressive distance, with the inevitable alteration of profiles due to memory. Time is the pervasive and unobjectifiable dimension of this painting. Restlessness, unpredictability, and randomness of each configuration evoke it. Objects float, do not impose themselves for consistency and stability, but surface and wander, recognizable but elusive. And above all, they return, from one work to another, in ever new configurations, as presences that one cannot and does not want to be free from. Along with the flow of time, Sonego also presents the efforts to contrast its effects: the fatigue of memory and the loyalty of the heart, the incessant work for the safeguarding of the inherited heritage of contents, images, suggestions.
If time is an implicit parameter, space is the explicitly traversed territory. This painting, devoid of thickness and three-dimensionality, abandons all naturalistic conventions. Everything happens on the surface, yet nothing is flat. The planes of vision, on which defined and cloisonné shapes stand out and pile up, unpredictably crumble and proliferate to the point that it is sometimes problematic to distinguish between figure and background. Depth is denied by the homogeneous painting, but evoked by the articulations and superimpositions of the planes. Every difference between high and low, sky and earth, or rather between floor and wall, is eliminated, given that the representation vaguely alludes to the theme of the interior furnishings.
But it's not a livable environment that is presented, there's no functional distribution, comfort, intimacy. A dream logic, inspired by surrealism, disarticulates the domestic scenes, which appear incongruous and without a center. Every instance of cohesion and coherence is abolished, as well as every difference between eminent and secondary presences. All fragments have the same importance. Any idea of a cosmos, or even just an ordered context, is abandoned. We are at the mercy of chance, of the impossibility of establishing a value system, with the exception of the piety of memory, which insists on collecting, proposing, presenting, with passionate attachment, elements invested with intense emotional and cognitive charges, to which a significant semantic value is attributed, which remains enigmatic and undetermined for the user.
The scenes are crossed by a destabilizing whirlwind. Unity, organic form, is shattered in the proliferation of scales scattered in space and lost in the accumulation of overlapping elements. The legacy of cubism translates into the attitude of multiplying articulations and segmentations, but also in constructivist montages and overlaps. Every reference to a rational aggregation has been lost and the artist's task remains that of gathering disparate fragments that cannot give life to a whole, despite the multiplication of frames highlighting partial and unsuccessful attempts to circumscribe and configure. Massimiliana Sonego's compositional process remains that of assembling juxtaposed components, without the possibility of a synthesis being granted.
It's peculiar that the effect of imbalance and fragmentation is achieved through a clearly defined painting, attentive to every detail, with sharp outlines and monochrome, flat and homogeneous color fields, in bright tones that fill the delimited areas. It constitutes another aspect, in some ways complementary and antithetical to the structural disorder, to be carefully considered. The artist does not intend to abandon themselves indiscriminately to the flow of emotions, but still wants to exercise control over them. While relying on feeling and memory, they focus on each fragment in its specificity and singularity, taking care of every detail, guided by a need for clarity and distinction that contrasts with the deconstruction of the whole.
In the unresolved conflict between the precision of detail and the impossibility of the system, which requires coming to terms with the loss of a plausible and shared order, lies, ultimately, in my opinion, the most authentic testimony that Massimiliana Sonego's painting gives to the cultural situation of contemporaneity.
•As proposed by Rainer Maria Rilke: "Are we, perhaps, here to say: house, / bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit tree, window, - / at most: column, tower... but to say, you understand, / oh to say things so that, in the way, the things themselves / never meant to be. (Perhaps we are here to say: house / bridge, fountain, gate, jug, fruit tree, window, / at most: column, tower... but to say, understand it well / oh, to say things in such a way that, deep down, they themselves / never intended to be.)" (IX Elegy. Duino Elegies. Trans. Enrico and Igea De Portu). It is almost needless to say that pop art, especially of Anglo-Saxon origin, is dedicated precisely to the irrelevance and substitutability of consumer objects.
•An attitude of which Eugenio Montale can be considered a spokesperson: "I don't know how exhausted you resist / in this lake of indifference that is your heart: maybe / you are saved by an amulet that you keep / close to the pencil of your lips, / to the pen, to the file: a white mouse, / made of ivory; and so you exist" (Dora Markus. Occasions).
Private Repertoire in Black and White"
is a critical commentary by Giovanni Bianchi
On the graphic exploration of Massimiliana Sonego's "private repertoire", where we find subjects dear to the artist such as sofas, armchairs, chairs, and vases. These objects punctuate the spatial rhythm of the composition with their shapes.
The relationship of these works to the painterly research is very close, but the fascination they transmit is different, determined by the use of a different expressive technique. Inevitably, these engravings have entailed giving up the colored fields so loved by the artist, who here relies completely on the poetics of the sign and the infinite tonal effects of chiaroscuro.
The prints, framed by the white space of the sheet, are largely made with etching and aquatint, with the addition of drypoint interventions to harmonize the relationships between light and dark. These works reveal the desire to destroy the rigidity of a schematic composition to enhance a sort of imperfection necessary to reproduce life, to evoke the flow of memory.
Poetry emerges from the conflict between order and chaos, a poetry founded on dynamism and transformation; a poetry that relies on the irrationality and unpredictability of memories, which seem to return spontaneously and effortlessly. Sonego discovers reality at every moment, in its being a carrier of present and past meanings, a reality in constant renewal; she discovers it to analyze it and to define her personal visual vocabulary.
In the engravings, the manifest two-dimensionality that characterizes the paintings seems to disappear in favor of a desire to explore the three-dimensional space suggested by shades and transparencies that evoke a sense of depth. In "Il divano" (2022) and "Il paravento" (2022), the objects, reduced to shapes and essential elements, attracted by a mysterious magnetic force, disintegrate and overlap with each other, losing their consistency and their immediate recognizability to indicate new and surprising formal solutions directed towards abstract expressions. "La grande sedia" (2021) gives greater emphasis to the narrative power of the signs that animate the composition, as is also evident in "La seggiolona" (2021).
"La Poltrona" (2022) emphasizes how Sonego is also able to dominate space in large-format works, expressing herself freely through graphic gesture. Here, black and white lines, more pronounced than those visible in other engravings, impose themselves on the surface to define forms that tend towards the abstract but derive their origin from reality. Visually, the work appears more peaceful than others, with soft and flexible lines that express well the control of the creative force.
Some of the engravings presented here were made at the historic Albicocco Art Printing House in Udine, under the careful supervision of Corrado Albicocco.
