indispensable painting

indispensible painting

90

ALICE ABOUT HERSELF (curated by Morena Cecchetti)

Let me begin with the eyes. I paint loneliness in search of a name. My paintings have no titles until they identify with someone, until they find a body. From being characters they become people: the unexpected adjustment of an object to my wish, quoting Roland Barthes. They take shape from oil and acrylic colors, from wallpaper; they are cut, torn, washed and repainted, darkened and dug out again. They are just as complex as the personalities they will inhabit. They would want to check up their double, carefully sizing it up and at last abandon the painting. They ask not to be painted any longer, they want to become flesh: retreat from the portrait, become people. Alice is a name that carries wonders with it. And yet, not always: my first painting when I was at the Academy was called Envy, a painful and screamed-out blackness. Now, exactly as back then, painting is unavoidable/indispensable/needful. With time it has taken almost a circus quality, while maintaining loneliness and fierceness.