Valerio Dehò, presentation of the exhibition “Living Paintings” at Palazzo Libera, Villa Lagarina (Trento), in the exhibition catalogue, September (2007)

Living paintings

In the scene of abstraction that is gaining terrain in the crisis of a very static artistic scenario, the names of Jorunn Monrad and Nicola Troilo are certainly the most important, because their respective and absolutely independent research is rooted in the need to give force and space to painting without therefore rendering it dependent on figurative trends that are more or less linked to the Italian scene.
It is naturally a matter of an abstraction that is completely redefined as to canons and perspectives, we may indeed define it a form of “abstract figuration” that does not renounce completely to represent, but has no aims in terms of mirroring or mimesis with respect to the reality or to the mass media, or of communication associated with the present as contemporary happening.
I will seek to summarize some parameters that the two artists have in common.
Obsession: both artists work on the obsessive repetition of elements that are never configured in complete autonomy, but that form compositions in which the multiplication represents the basis of an infinite figural proliferation. The variations conform to the reciprocal distances of the elements, to the general compositive plan, to the formal and chromatic relationship with the background or backgrounds, to a general plan to which the single elements are submitted. The total sense is obsessive like a repeated fixed idea, like a sentence that is articulated on different expressive nuances that determine an overall sense that cannot be distinguished from the initial and primary one.
Pattern painting: the difference with respect to this type of painting, first and foremost American, that gained recognition in the mid-Seventies, consists of the fact of not having any need to demonstrate anything, as opposed to the excessive intellectualization of conceptualism and minimalism. Monrad and Troilo have lived another artistic season, also because the achievements of pattern painting have been quite modest in Italy and in Europe . Furthermore, in their case we are in any case dealing with a search for a significance, not merely a formal elegance and juxtaposition of lines, colors, modules, specularity and other visual formulas. Rather, the term pattern reacquires its ancient significance, once more becoming archetype rather than mere decoration . The pattern is explored in search of its profound links with the psyche, with spatial organization, with the sense of order that disciplines art as constructive activity of the world.
Living matter: In this case the biological elements becomes, and flanks, the concept of a creative obsession. If, in the case of Troilo, the anthropomorphism is the consequence of a modularity centered on a primary element with declared humanoid ascendancies, Monrad has since her early works chosen a biological element characterized by a marked zoomorphism. But it is in any case a matter of elements that feature a clearly outlined and personal formal significance that is validated by an own universe that recounts and justifies them. These paintings pulsate like a living matter, their formal substance transmits cosmic energy. And this takes place with an absolutely contemporary language of light painting, that never flaunts the density of its material structure, the thick layers and agglutinations of ‘arte informale' that have by now been relegated to memory.
Movement: consequence and efficient cause of life, it is precisely movement that is expressed, not by metaphor but as a complex development of an action that commenced long ago in a first, initial and auroral moment. Nicola Troilo seems inclined towards a spiraling form, like a local mathematic catastrophe. In certain cases they take on the appearance of true maelstroms, small depressions in which the figural elements are absorbed to be launched into an infinite galaxy. There is an energy that agitates, accumulates, disrupts the humanoids that, due to their lightness, twist and turn like figures made of air or fire. Troilo's painting, developing a multi-perspective concept, an only terminological memory of Depero in his land, does not allow the eye any solid anchor, and the glance is therefore forced to follow the suggested movement, without succeeding in anticipating it.

Jorunn Monrad generally works on chromatic complementariness, as well as on a gentle impact between background and linguistic and figural recurrence. The profundity is always local and provisional, the artist often works on the limits of perception, only rarely allowing the spectator to linger on the details, also on the biomorphic roots of her sign. The beginning and the end of the work coincide in a beyond, where the single living elements are part of a whole, yet absolutely independent, like Leibnitzian monads. The whole and the part coincide in a logical paradox that can only be achieved by painting and philosophy.
Primitivism: This term is always referred, historically, to the emergence of abstract artists or above all figurative ones, coming from Africa and Oceania in the early years of the Twentieth century, with the Fauves in France or the Expressionists in Germany . In this case the term primitive sands for elementary or in other words a painting developed by a repeated simplicity, and that eventually builds a complexity of significances and composition, that transcends the single components. Moreover, in Troilo and Monrad there is nothing approximate about the sign, it is perfectly accomplished and defined. At the same time primitivism is also an effect of the mystery and magic of an art capable of returning to something extraordinary and simple, to once again speak to human beings, telling them something. But it is also a declination of infantile, of the childhood dream experienced by adults capable of definitively choosing their own point of view, from which to observe the world.
Having pointed out the above aspects for purposes of synthesis, it is necessary to underscore the differences of two personalities that are out of the ordinary in the artistic scene, not only the Italian.
Jorunn Monrad has from the early Nineties until today succeeded in developing an idea of art both as sign and as a world apart, as autonomous and spontaneous genesis. Her symbol, that Tommaso Trini has intelligently likened to Keith Haring's “radiant baby”, is an ubiquitous creature in eternal proliferation. The great intuition of the Norwegian artist probably consists of having succeeded in transforming the symbol into a sign, and thus in uniting a living creature to the language. Writing and painting authentically become one and the same thing, and both represent a possibility of infinite expansion through the potentiality of a visual monadology. Within a tonal and cultured way to paint, Monrad has succeeded in venturing beyond certain aims developed in the Eighties with great character and personality, without renouncing the pursuit of an extreme synthesis that disorients critical judgment, always in pursuit of classifying simplifications. In her art we find a convergence of the desire for a pure painting, painting-painting as they used to say in the Sixties, and at the same time an opening towards a recurrent and abstract figuration, towards a concept of ample sign, also in its linguistic and verbal sense.
In the Nineties Nicola Troilo was exploring a painting that already began to take the form of a conceptual re-appropriation of certain informal and tachiste themes, at the same time searching for figural inspiration that would enable him to avoid the shallows of a by then exhausted non-iconic art. The surfacing of a recurrent figural theme has determined a shift towards a not very explored but extraordinary contemporary zone in which fundamental elements as the composition have become the driving force of an absolutely personal painting. Troilo has succeeded in circumventing the critical points of the module, or in other words the para-scientific repetitiveness so dear to the neo-technological avant-gardes. The vision of the artist is, on the contrary, firmly humanistic and pictorial. The life and movement emanating from his paintings, often of large format, synthesize the energy of great painting and the wonder of great decoration. The chromatic simplicity amplifies the continuous and coherent flow of the form, their enigmatic dance on the pictorial surface, their search for an impossible stabilization or repose.
And in conclusion, to return to the title, these works are not only living due to their biodynamic charge, but also because they exclude immobility, they do not contemplate any rigidity except that of an idea of painting that remains true to its nature and does not want to depend on other extraneous elements.

Platonically, only this idea is fixed and eternal to the extent in which terrestrial things may be so. The forms mutate, change and sometimes evolve, to remain themselves, in order not to betray their essential nature with Time and its miseries.

[ back to index ]