Skin

S. Cosulich Canarutto (Edited by) – G. Pezzoli (Contributions by)

Villa Manin Centre for Contemporary Art, SPACE FVG, Passariano (UD)

Artistic Director: Francesco Bonami – Curator: Sarah Cosulich Canarutto

23 July – 11 September 2005

published by Azienda Speciale Villa Manin, Passariano, 2005, www.villamanincontemporanea.it

Perfect imperfection

edited by Giulia Pezzoli

The imperfect surface of the skin, the consistency of the hair, the light expressions of common faces become in the works of Vania Comoretti real presences, images which are strong, direct and pure. The most minute details are analyzed, captured and reproduced by the artist to become new and unexpected centres of attention, to show a known but ignored reality, to emphasize apparently insignificant details and carry us on a journey towards the intimity of the subjects. Her hyper-realism departs from the confines of classical portraiture in order to become universal representation of human nature, of its flesh and skin, and to show us how time can mark our fragile appearance.

Trough a merciless magnifying lens we are invited to look at the body of others as if were ours, to recognise fault and flaws, to become aware of common experience and destinies. The subjects are mostly women, caught in their weakness and fragility who, without veils or artifices, show themselves to the public in their complete nakedness: that of their skin, that which reveals the first traces of age. A vulnerability underlined by the customary feminine anxiety for a perfect face which in this case makes them appear truthfully for what they are, more exposed than any unclothed body.

The execution of the small works follows an acute observation and patient reproduction, revealing how the time factor becomes a key to read and interpret not just the subject but also its relationship with the artist. Vania Comoretti seems to slowly and inexorably enter a typically inaccessible visual space, seems to observe her models so closely to be able to turn the surface of their bodies into abstract landscapes. It is only through a systematic and methodical work that the artist can capture the imperceptible and thus generate a photo – realist universe which is, at the same time, yielding, tender and unsetting. And it is always a “temporal” sequence, like that of a film, which appears in the diptychs and triptychs of the young artist who describes every face from diverse points of view, while light strikes them from different angles emphasising ruthlessly every smallest defect.

Bare souls, as the very titles suggest, but also interstities, clefts and holes like those represented in the series INTRA, where the sings left by the constant and prolongued pressure of everyday accessories and clothes become distant subjects, recognisable but menacing in the revelation of the natural weakness of the human flesh. As light membranes on which the traces of our lifes deposit themselves, Vania Comoretti’s water-colours (water-colours, Indian ink and pastel on paper) become receptables of daily auras, of existence and of its matter. By turning into filters between us and the sensitive word, they reveal the profound relationship which exist between man and the surrounding reality but, at the same time, they move further away to generate a new universe of microscopic abstract shapes. As small biological landscapes, Vania Comoretti’s works represented familiars images from such a close-up point of view that they become distant, uncanny and intimidating in the moment in which we recognise within them a natural and living pat of our own face.