Two Artists on the Shore
Without knowing exactly why paths sometimes share the same origin. I mean the paths of life or of art. Is it simply chance? Maybe the all-powerful hand of the unexpected models this meeting of destinies although it is not only this that conditions them. For one thing to relate to another they must share a common base, as with the same underlying painting upon which the old masters created...
Anke Blaue and Rosanna Cassano share the same visual culture: the language of constructivism and its chromatic plasticity. I do not only refer to the lesson of Torres García which comes to us through Bruno Fonseca, but also their artistic training which comes from Cezanne. If Cezanne and nature are the keys to understanding modern painting. These two artists have taken note of these references to create their own evolving world, in constant mutation since, with the artist, nothing is definitive. It is the search for their own particular voice, different from that which has come before, at that which has been seen and admired so often and in so many museums. The theme is nothing more than a pretext in order to try to resolve the multiple problems posed by art. Deep down one is always working on the same painting because one is always investigating the same questions: shapes, textures, materials and the time spent on the canvas that the painter sees anxiously unfinished.
Rosana Casano lives in a labyrinth. It is surprising to see the generous formats and dizzy forms she uses in such a reduced space, I would say that more than painting them, she lives them. She follows the meandering alleys of the old city* seen from the sky, she wanders along a fortification with no exit, walls bathed in ochre in the purest Italian nostalgia. Up and down, as did Jacob dreaming of stairs that led him not to the heaven. Her painting is literary, narrative, passionate, full of analogies, kaleidoscopic.
Meanwhile, Anke Blaue carries out subtle constructions covered in silky paper, full of creases, a skin, pieces that transport us to the natural and organic. I would say that Anke Blaue, more than living her creations, looks at herself in them. They are shapes clothed in papers like fallen leaves similar to one another through texture and colour. Here we can see that the playfulness and experience of the artist with fabric has been transported to the territory of paper. Her world is ever more essential (not minimal) and analytic, with a spiritual backdrop tied to far away cultures.
The combined exhibition of these two young artists is a very suggestive exercise. It is the offering of two lines of parallel work, full of duality and contradictions, of similarities and differences, allowing the atent visitor many readings. One in the form of a parabol comes to me:
“One day two painters met on the shore and decided to paint it.
One saw the infinite and she recreated it a thousand times in different ways. She worried about the profundity of this immense liquid and its innumerable colours and textures and with all this she painted. She had with her an easel and all her paints, spatulas and brushes, various large canvasses and some poems...
The other searched out primitive shapes under the waters and started to think about how to unite them, -blue on white -, and meditated on what power could have created them. She thought about which materials could best represent them and she arrived at intertwined papers. Luckily that day she had with her some old papers bathed in blues that seemed like waves and some scissors with which to cut them...”
Artur Ramon. 2002