TERRE EMERSE
SABRINA CASADEI
OPENING Thursday OCTOBER 26TH 2017
UNTIL FEBRUARY 17TH 2018
Terre emerse
Francesca Antonini Arte Contemporanea is pleased to present Terre emerse, the first solo show at the gallery of Sabrina Casadei (Rome, 1985).
Stemming from the exercise of a free and instinctive, yet thoughtful, pictorial gesture, the artist's research focuses on landscape, not necessarily meant as en plein air painting, but instead as a representation of living, fluid, and ever-changing natural forms. Her art deals with the invisible but powerful forces raising mountains ranges and excavating abysses, which are the protagonists of the works she conceived and produced for the gallery premises. The canvases on display in Terre emerse show the evolution of the pictorial universe of Casadei, supported by a balance between abstraction and sign, as well as an extreme awareness for the use color. Stormy skies and rocky sea bottoms melt in veilings and chromatic accents stretching on the raw canvas, that plays — along with acrylic paint and bitumen — a specific and pivotal role in the composition.
Sometimes watery and broad, sometimes nervous and snappy, Casadei's brushstrokes move like magma beneath a surface on which shapes slide and overlap, in an open field of tectonic forces pulled by contrasting vectors.
Concentrating on the representation of vital energies rather than on the phenomena of reality, in her works outlines are not defined, while forms are sketched and left open, to the very limit of their recognizability.
"The landscape resulting from this type of painting cannot be intended as an object, an inert body or a 'still life', but, on the contrary, as a living body. In this way, painting, even if made of static signs, can be the art closest to life. "Giangiorgio Pasqualotto's words from the preface to Monk Shitao’s “Painting and Modernity in Early Qing China” perfectly suit the work of Sabrina Casadei, that shares with Chinese tradition the aim to capture the immeasurable and hidden range of energies animating the landscape. The task of painting, therefore, can’t be to dominate that energy by locking it into patterns and geometric figures, but to try and portray its power by showing its ability to penetrate everything and spread everywhere.
The works presented in Terre emerse feed on living and flowing images, and show a vital aesthetics of the breath of all forms of animal, vegetal and mineral life.
PRESS REVIEW: