ENTROPIA
M. Sciaccaluga (Edited by) – F. Meli e M. Sciaccaluga (Contributions by)
Image Furini Arte Contemporanea, Arezzo
12 February – 2 April 2005
published by Image Furini Arte Contemporanea, Arezzo, 2005

Souls in search of an author

by Maurizio Sciaccaluga

It is not simply about hyperrealism, as in Luigi Pirandello’s theatre, it is not only a mise en scène. If it would simply be about hyperrealism, if it would only be about highly technical and exceptional reproduction practicing, Vania Comoretti’s faces would smile, cry, would show their sorrow and surprise as within the framework of a clever entertainment performance, but they would not unveil the prominent features and the story of tragic mask-characters. They could not practically stand out from and exceed their inspiration model, they would end up in relating a gallery of characters and passions without ever living, even if only for a moment, a life of their own. The painter could style herself a reporter, perhaps a photographer, but certainly not an author. Since on the contrary it is not about hyperrealism – except as a general definition, which can barely be useful in order to describe this genre – the protagonists represented in papers, water-colour paintings and pastels, become real tragic stage characters and this young artist becomes the fully-fledged author of a profound meditation on the relationship between original and copy, between performer and character. By carefully looking at her works of art, one can easily understand that Comoretti does not end up by solely priding herself on her faithfully photograpic abilities in drawing – notwithstanding her age and a recently achieved degree of the School of Fine Arts in her drawer – but that she on the contrary succeeds in setting up a careful and well-constructed line of reasoning about the meaning and the aim of a performance, and the way in which she is able to estabilish a sometimes almost cruel game of mirrors, splits and interpretations, which is always deeply theatrical and dramatic. In the most part of her works characters are shown two, three, more times, by means of a front, back or side view. It is as if the camera of painting would turn around them in order to film them in full relief, so as to steal any secret and not to neglect even the smallest detail. In almost all her works the characters are looking elsewhere, they do not defy the spectator but they are looking for his/her sympathy and understanding; they appear to be distracted from something they do not dare to immediately unveil. In many of these works personages are created thanks to a sequence of images, where the imperceptible or apparently trifling differences seem to suggest that the story that is about to be told is really very intimate, private and perhaps of no interest to the people who will decide to listen to it. A soul is always and anyway present behind faces and hands and the sense of these paintings is not to show simple appearences. It is not a bird’s-eye shot on the surface of flesh and skin, but a dive into the portrayed protagonists’ depths, bowels and secrets. Even without showing any nakedness, protagonists are in fact naked; they lack any minimum sense of safety, which could be conveyed by the hem of a garment jutting out from the picture, even if by mistake, they become masks. They nevertheless are no goliards, they are not regional, commedia dell’arte or variety masks, they are rather Pirandellian masks, bearers of stories, which are as real and credible as the real ones, and capable of adapting themselves to performers without ever being overwhelmed or without risking their own independent survival. Within the framework of Comoretti’s works the relationship between model and representation never ends with the logics and features of a portrait: it is not, at best, about co-opting the character and the personality of an individual within a picture, but about creating an alternative to the individual, generating his/her duplicate, capable of separating from his /her mother figure and setting himself/herself up as an alternative.This one will be an eternal alternative, as eternal as only the reality of art can be. This young artist from Friuli reconstructs the physiognomy of friends and acquaintances but does not leave any trace of their features, of them and their real life within her works. A blonde, a brunette, a young girl, a precociously aged lady, a young man with bewildered eyes, an androgynous personage, come to be, even if in a diametrically opposed sense, Father, Mother, Step-daughter, and Son of Pirandello’s Six Characters. As one of the protagonists of this drama explains, these characters originated from the “fantasy of an author who was not able to let them or did not want them to live within a work of art”, forcing them to be filled with longing, till someone would decide to act their story. Comoretti acts similarly: she draws an identikit of a theatrical character, whose story remains hidden behind intense and suffering eyes, skin wrinkles, expression creases, silently angry or proudly humble attitudes, and then she suddenly stops and refrains from going on with her narration. All stories are, as a matter of fact, already there, hidden within the characters’ souls, but someone has to give them life and breath. Actors do this in a theatrical play, where a story written on paper finds the necesary faces and images, whereas the question turns up to be upside-down within this painter’s research: faces, marked flesh and hands revealing the torment due to waiting and tension already exist; one is only waiting for the course of events to take shape. One is only waiting for characters and stories to be brought to life. The spectator, manager of this theatrical company for the occasion, will have the honour and the burden to imagine a story, which should perfectly fit those expressions, theatrical faces and masks.
Vania Comoretti was artistically born within the third millennium but she does not paint about her times, she does not describe her society. Even if her models are continually around her, and often or seldom meet her in the rooms of the School of fine Arts and along Venetian alleys, her papers do not show today’s girls and young men. Those veiled, lively or tired eyes, do not reveal nowadays emptiness and meanness, the rules of a world where, as Warhol would say, the only important thing is to appear, even if just for a little bit more than a quarter of an hour. The artist narrates a reality which is bigger than life. She does not pursue hyper reality but on the contrary she would rather go beyond appearances. This is why this research does not strike you because of the extreme resemblance between subject and representation but due to the fact that these two extremes of the matter, even if identical, never touch, and do not have any point of contact, except for some insubstantial and insignificant ones. This work is based on the pivotal fact that, as soon as the portrait is ready, it immediately ends up by abandoning its “owner” and choosing its own new way. Comoretti’s painting has its crucial point in observing the way in which an hair dress or expression can lend themselves from time to time for different dramatic, intense stories, without giving the impression of a lack of their independent prominence. The characters of Vania Comoretti’s pictures are often, always, acting extempore.

Underskin

by Francesca Meli

Vania Comoretti’s works of art could at first sight convey the impression of being photographic, that is exact copies of relity. After a more accurate examination one will on the contrary come to realize that this definition is completely reductive.
Comoretti’s introspective research uses in fact reality as a means to understand one’s inner being. This artist not only refuses to stop at the outward appearance of the represented object, but also at the eyes, which are traditionally considered to be the mirror of one’s soul. She rather likes to explore each wrinkle of one’s skin, every dilated pore, in order to look for any possible secret revelation originated from one’s inner being.
Her works reveal a need to travel to the heart of each matter, to understand what makes every individual exactly as he/she is.
Comoretti does not leave anything to chance, just like with an autopsy report, because every detail is a fundamental one, an absolutely necessary information source. The accuracy and meticulousness through which she proceeds with her obstinate and untiring work proves the frailty and the vulnerability of the matter she deals with.
Every single hair she draws one by one, any skin impurity, disguises the frailty of her characters, acquantainces of the artist, perfectly normal people, who consent to undergo this study without visual research. Thanks to the several perspective and angle views these people undergo by means of the artist’s way of seeing them, one can have the possibility to consider the complexity of each individual.
Also her study of parts of the human body, such as hands, is not so much an anatomy study but rather a research for examination elements, which can unveil signs of physical weaknesses, pressures or unintentional attitudes.
Whereas physignomy studies try to group people into different types of faces according to the somatic features of subjects, to their personality, in order to form categories of type-characters, Vania comoretti is performing the opposite process. She in fact tends to individualize, that is to make each of her subjects unique by underlining and bringing their imperfections out.
This makes any face, any wrinkle, any shadow on one’s skin become a sign of real experience recalling joy or sorrow, by means of a stratified work and which is transferred by the artists knowledgeable ability to pastel, water-colour and Indian ink on paper.