“Suspensions” – One-man show.
“Delicate Geometricisms of the Soul”
by Fabio Bianchi
Libertà di Piacenza, 12 October 2007
Contemporary art is continually shifting its borders, incessantly in search of interaction among various creative modes, including music and words. This is the case with the solo exhibition, “Suspensions”, on view until the 15th of October at the Jelmoni Studio, where local artist Aniello Cinque is presenting his latest work: oneiric, chimerical mixed-technique panels.
Cinque has for years been pursuing a form of lyrical abstraction, focusing on the concept of art as a tactile object, geometricism not only visual but also emotional, apparently rigorous but actually delicate and poetic. In his compositions and also with the elements of which they are created, he establishes a subtle tension between perception, space and objectivity that is increasingly a central theme in his multimedia work.
His work encompasses Spatialism while turning towards conceptual art. It embodies the vivid representationalism of Pop Art, but does not disdain proximity to the sobriety imposed by Minimal Art. Above all, it searches for unconscious, ultrasensory stimuli. Attention must also be paid to the explicit reference to Visual Poetry by means of text written on strips suspended from the ceiling as a point of departure for “irrevocable representations”, on the one hand applied art, on the other hand free expression, extreme, singular synthesis of spirit and material (Nude self-portrait). Hence, the art saturates the sensory level, is not only two – but also three-dimensional. However, merely regarding it does not provide access to higher levels of knowledge and interpretation if not supported by other elements, especially words and music. It is precisely the latter that bestow Cinque’s art with a symbolic – philosophical unity (waiting): the images create sensations, the phonetic chain evokes them while the music disconnects any relationship to reality. Images, words and music – this triad gives rise to works of art that express a powerful connection between substance, light and color (Mother). Cinque’s aesthetic ideal transcends the separation between theory and practice, aspiring to interdisciplinary fusion while at the same time reflecting on the ritual of the creation of cultural value (The tree of knowledge; Concealed truths), investigating questions such as originality (My father), autonomy (Ulysses) and artistic paternity.
His compositions are postmodern parodies (In the silence of the Sirens), recalling the “critical simulations” of Joseph Albers and the Optical art of Frank Stella, or the mystical aura of Donald Judd (Madeleine). Thus “suspensions”, an examination of the imperfections of the present, the limits of our daily experience, from New Age to Neo, to Neo Geo.
“Suspensions” – One-man show.
“Oneiric Suspension”
by Clizia Orlando
“Life and dreams are leaves of one and the same book. The systematic reading is real life, but when the actual reading hour (the da) has come to an end, and we have the period of recreation, we often continue idly to thumb over the leaves, and turn to a page here and there without method or connection.”
Arthur Schopenhauer
November 2007
Various forms of expressive potential intersect in the art of Aniello Cinque, resulting in a lyrical offer expressed in a symbiotic exchange of thinking, words and music. The effective emotional engagement created by the artist ferries the spectator towards the enjoyment of a fervid narrative in which vital chromatic propensities, formal intuitions and symbolic hints meet. Coordinates that trace the map of the places of the soul.
The artist investigates the recovery of experience as a logo of living, choosing subjects that, in their essential definition, carry meaning and acquire timeless value, becoming the definition of a sensed need to recall the signs of a reality, re-examined through a personal interpretive grid. The artist‘s creative aptitude is given free reign on large surfaces, where the semiotic dialectic is reinforced by the use of various materials, a combination that elicits emotional participation as a function of the dilation of vision.
A suspended situation is thus produced in which the artist’s fictive inclination is manifest in the definition of detail, in the choice of the chromatic timbre, in the ability to capture the moment in which time deposits its dust. This opens up the limits of the imagination, driving thought to the realm of the oneiric. In the structure of the work, the artist evokes the intimate substance of what surrounds him, the atavistic voice of animalistic song, the feeling that melds the mood of the sea with that of the sky, the cadence step of long, slow rhythms.
The expositive journey is unified in the montage of verses, melodies, figurative hints and internalized resonances, releasing suggestions within the painting and amplifying the poetic projection. The communicative verve is revealed as a direct communion of intent between the artifact and the essence of the emotion transmitted. In the work entitled “Waiting”, a melancholic apparition defused in monochromatic nuances emerges, almost as if whispered, revealing a pulsating red heart. Also in monochromatic tones, “Dentro el mar del sueño” a fine rain outlines the form of a face. It is the magic of the instant, of the just perceived, the impalpable, the immediate instant that becomes no more than a fleeting memory.
In the painting “Untitled red”, the evocation is sublimated in the spell cast by the migration between the folds of the self. By means of the material intensity of the color, we are seduced by the echo of palpitations emanating from the viscera of being. The particular nature of Cinque‘s’ artistic process refers to emotional sources decanted in rigorous technique, as seen in “Enigmatic rotations”, in which his vision of life is simple, made up of simple words and actions. Refined decorative elements, marked by incisive spirals, are proposed as labyrinthine extensions that appear to recall the profiles of ancient masks outlined on the proscenium of the unconscious.
With a kind of pictorial minimalism, the artist then presents the works that lend themselves to multiple readings, such as “In the silence of the Sirens”, in which the sea, modulated by undulating folds, is presented in its dense and compact immensity and, on this solid surface, appears an emblematic red feather. The score is completed by a timbred twirling. Emotion and meditation in the recovery of mythical – poetic evocations also meet in “The Concealed truths”, in which the wide rent in the center of the work seems to reveal the crevasse in which cryptic truths gestate.
The musicality of the forms that follow upon one another on the stage of our daily lives has inspired Aniello Cinque to create other compositions such as “The essence”, “My father” and “Nude self-portrait”, subjects that reveal his identity in high relief, affirmations of a sensitive imagination in which the metaphor of living acquires depth, sustained by an intriguing reference to semantic transpositions.
“The Mysterious World of Forms” – One-man show.
“Simple Mutations”
by Eugenio D’Auria
May 2004
The medium of criticism is necessary in order to move beyond the interpretive originality in which artists, very often mistakenly, tend to shroud their works of contemporary art. In the work of Aniello Cinque, the question, in the forms and in the materials of which they are composed, is addressed through essential and yet robust lines. The world he envisages consists of simple mutations. His vision of life is simple, made up of simple actions and words reflective of his place of origin.
The point of view is higher, devoid of useless technical frills or semantic complications. His research concentrates on the simple or elementary mutations that occur, in the lives of men and things, with the passage of time. The pictorial material, in some cases, is developed as part of a relationship of the “becoming” of an image to the light, which, as a function of its effect on the surface, alters the fixity of the material itself and enables it to vibrate in different ways.
The continual search for a synthesis, in the image and in the meanings, purifies the image of any realistic yield, and is carried out with the use of various materials. The objective is the essence of an image with particular reference to the spatial concept of Lucio Fontana.