SEEN UP CLOSE
Critical commentary by Alessandra Santin

The title of today's exhibition, by Paola Anese and Massimiliana Sonego, SEEN UP CLOSE, invokes two categories that are very "visited" by contemporary culture: SIGHT and SPACE. Among the senses, vision is certainly the most used in the Western world. Immersed in a society where visual multimedia communication constantly accompanies everyday life, both in defined free moments and during work...we think we are skilled readers of visual images. It may be important to remember, instead, that a work of art asks our eyes for a clean gaze, free from false colors and the speed of advertising and bad television.

It is not about sliding quickly but about consciously stopping our gaze, in search of that harmonious, poetic relationship that binds the elements together and that is only noticeable if we approach it. It is not about applying a syntax, recognizing the rules of a grammar of signs, masses, colors (which are present and felt in these works) but about entering the space of art with all of ourselves and the necessary loving attention. The SPACE we encounter is that of UP CLOSE, as the title of the exhibition itself reminds us and as we said at the beginning.

It is important to emphasize that the art world up close, which we encounter in the works, is not emptied of the values and stimuli coming from outside and from afar, it does not refer to closure, conservatism, traditionalism. Instead, it is a matter of knowing two examples of home-art, that form of art that draws inspiration from domestic, family, everyday situations...and which interests the most innovative research of contemporary art.

In these works, we find that personal and direct dialogue with subjects, colors, relationships present in our homes; possible in the experience of each one but which the two artists distinguish according to an original and unique path: one questioning the human presences that surround her today or have done so in the past, always and in any case in a significant way and therefore according to the vital breath of affection; the other focusing on the object and its disposition in space in relation to other presences, the fruit or flowers, a violin, the void and colors. Forms that lead back to life as an expression of harmony, beauty, and poetry to be seen."

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