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DENISE COLAIANNI EDOARDO

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THE ART DEPARTMENT

THE ART DEPARTMENT

My Visual Arts course could be summarised by this quote by Debasish Mridha, an American philosopher who believes in the deepest truths that affect human destiny. Living in a turbulent time such as ours, the theme of war has influenced my thoughts and my Visual Arts journey. A worrying time to live in and echoing in WW2, the era of my grandfather. Losing my grandfather was a great loss as he was a significant figure during my childhood years. He has never spoken to me about the war in detail, I believe, due to the horrible experiences that occurred which had created in him a sense of duty towards me as it was as if he wanted to protect me. From WWII, we can draw parallels to the situations that are occurring nowadays in our world such as Trump, the Italian Republic’s arguments and Isis, wars in Afghanistan and other places. There are still cruel events that continue to occur, and we are always stuck between them. The most important piece that explores these issues is found in my painted observational study, where I have included old objects which I have taken from my grandfather such as the hats, the poppies which he always took with him wherever he went and his calculator that he used for his precise work which he loved. The ‘Soldier Head’ influenced by Adolfo Wildt’s “Ritratto di Ferraris”, has been a recurring theme within my work. The head is symbolic of the confusion that soldiers and people at the time were experiencing during the war and it is reinforced by the screws and the bolts that explode out of the “brain”. This is further explored through explosive abstract works that exist as shards or explosive parts, or non-representable shapes – almost the fallout from such disasters. My work has been influenced by many artists such as Giorgio De Chirico, Wassily Kandinsky, Adolfo Wildt and many others who have highlighted my main themes regarding war, destruction and chaos. However, my main preoccupation has been to create a road which unites these concepts by bringing them towards a happy ending such as hope and peace. Influenced by my comparative essay, I have associated the geometric forms found in my artworks to represent an expressive function transmitting a harmony and peace through structure and composition.

“The mind has exactly the same power as the hands; not merely to grasp the world, but to change it” - Colin Wilson. I would describe myself as conceptual artist. I have always been intrigued by the world that surround’s me, not only looking at the physical environment, but also the ideologies that shape the society that I live in. Within the pieces that I create, my aim is to form an interaction with people, going beyond the superficial and using a conceptual mindset. Throughout my works there is clear repetition of clean and minimalistic design. This is because the main influences of my inspiration come from Achille Castiglioni as well as Nicola Salvatore and Rachel Whiteread. Despite the contradiction of Castiglioni’s design with Salvatore’s work. I found myself in a complete sympathy with these artists using minimalist shapes combined with organic forms. The piece that suggests this the most is the sculpture “Balena”. For the creation of this sculpture used balsa wood, an iron bar and acrylic paint. I was truly inspired by the forms present in nature. Especially focusing on the exterior and the interior of whales, I used the shapes of the bones of the whale to assemble a balanced sculpture. I looked at the symmetry and thickness between each bone and understood how it can be interpreted in a sculptural vision. I was then intrigued by the Japanese characters and how each form creates a balance with another. Moreover the work which influenced me the most is that of Berto Lardera. Once again, the geometric shapes and the use of negative spaces, gave me the essentials to work on a well balanced structural sculpture. Therefore the entire motif of this sculpture is to develop the harmony between natural forms and geometric shapes.

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