Exhibitions, Italy, Como, 21 February 2013
A journey into the unconscious, a fresco of depth psychology. Four stages of a single exhibition process, which started at the Chiostro del Bramante in Rome and now arrive here in Como; then from here it’ll be in Vicenza and Milan before going abroad.
On display, the artist's most recent works, all created in 2012: over thirty works mainly depicting nudes, full-figure images and faces. The main colours are white, red and black, spotted or as focal points from which to start but, in any case, always exalting the line, which becomes the star as it takes form on cardboard or newspaper, especially of the magazine "Corrente", which appeared for the first time in 1938 and was named for the artistic movement that sought a renewal of Italian art in a European key.
So for Monica Marioni, those magazine pages are not simply substitute materials to work with, but right from the original idea, her new canvases that give greater relief to her timeless subjects, revealing to more attentive viewers an intimate dialogue with the words or phrases that the artist chooses as the backdrop to her pictorial representation. In fact, objective reference point in the background allows placing those faces and figures in a precise historical context: yet everything appears easily recognizable, almost "familiar". Monica Marioni thus succeeds in arousing curiosity and animus, in a strange interior and physical dynamic that responds to the visitor's attraction.
REBUS is all to be deciphered, starting from collectively recognizable visual signs. Monica Marioni does a scrupulous job of collecting images - which can often be recovered in one's own imagination because easy to place - in order to offer them to the public revised through a very personal sign. But the artist, delicately and non-invasively stimulates the fantastic dimension of those who view her paintings: Michelangelo, Dante Alighieri, but also cartoon characters as the super-villain Joker, the women of Manara, the faces of Modigliani and Egon Schiele.
Ivan Quaroni explains: "For the first time, with Rebus, Marioni explicitly takes movements from the collective imagination, sacking that gigantic iconographic reservoir that is the Internet. Inspired by the hundreds of images on the web and internalizing the signs of acknowledged masters and unknown authors, the artist performs a conceptual operation intended to trigger in the viewer a sense of "familiarity" with her works".
All artists know that every phase of their artistic growth means an increasingly intimate and painful confrontation with themselves. All artists seek, scrutinize and investigate, constantly relating to their own art, often creating it only to deface it immediately after; they steal, stuff, sacrifice, take notes, draw, trace, impress and, in their own way, pass endless days creating images that illuminate their inner lives as much as possible, trying to achieve perfection.
REBUS is therefore a journey into the brilliant labyrinth of an artist capable of expressing herself through any expressive medium. Rebus is the mirror of the twisted, broken and reassembled soul of Monica Marioni today, of her individuality and femininity. The artist is redesigning herself once again, this time in primordial form, returning to drawing, the most primitive artistic expression, "the first and most immediate form of the creation of images, the one closest to the source of thoughts and emotions and that, therefore, is better suited to the representation of repressed impulses and removed images," as Ivan Quaroni has written.
On display, the artist's most recent works, all created in 2012: over thirty works mainly depicting nudes, full-figure images and faces. The main colours are white, red and black, spotted or as focal points from which to start but, in any case, always exalting the line, which becomes the star as it takes form on cardboard or newspaper, especially of the magazine "Corrente", which appeared for the first time in 1938 and was named for the artistic movement that sought a renewal of Italian art in a European key.
So for Monica Marioni, those magazine pages are not simply substitute materials to work with, but right from the original idea, her new canvases that give greater relief to her timeless subjects, revealing to more attentive viewers an intimate dialogue with the words or phrases that the artist chooses as the backdrop to her pictorial representation. In fact, objective reference point in the background allows placing those faces and figures in a precise historical context: yet everything appears easily recognizable, almost "familiar". Monica Marioni thus succeeds in arousing curiosity and animus, in a strange interior and physical dynamic that responds to the visitor's attraction.
REBUS is all to be deciphered, starting from collectively recognizable visual signs. Monica Marioni does a scrupulous job of collecting images - which can often be recovered in one's own imagination because easy to place - in order to offer them to the public revised through a very personal sign. But the artist, delicately and non-invasively stimulates the fantastic dimension of those who view her paintings: Michelangelo, Dante Alighieri, but also cartoon characters as the super-villain Joker, the women of Manara, the faces of Modigliani and Egon Schiele.
Ivan Quaroni explains: "For the first time, with Rebus, Marioni explicitly takes movements from the collective imagination, sacking that gigantic iconographic reservoir that is the Internet. Inspired by the hundreds of images on the web and internalizing the signs of acknowledged masters and unknown authors, the artist performs a conceptual operation intended to trigger in the viewer a sense of "familiarity" with her works".
All artists know that every phase of their artistic growth means an increasingly intimate and painful confrontation with themselves. All artists seek, scrutinize and investigate, constantly relating to their own art, often creating it only to deface it immediately after; they steal, stuff, sacrifice, take notes, draw, trace, impress and, in their own way, pass endless days creating images that illuminate their inner lives as much as possible, trying to achieve perfection.
REBUS is therefore a journey into the brilliant labyrinth of an artist capable of expressing herself through any expressive medium. Rebus is the mirror of the twisted, broken and reassembled soul of Monica Marioni today, of her individuality and femininity. The artist is redesigning herself once again, this time in primordial form, returning to drawing, the most primitive artistic expression, "the first and most immediate form of the creation of images, the one closest to the source of thoughts and emotions and that, therefore, is better suited to the representation of repressed impulses and removed images," as Ivan Quaroni has written.
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