Traslazione
Giuliano Guatta
20 March – 30 June 2007
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CITRIC is pleased to present Traslazione (Translation), a solo show by Giuliano Guatta featuring new works.
Traslazione comes from the idea of the movement of a body in space. It is the metaphor of a body in continuous movement and formation: painting becomes body and moves away from the wall till it becomes sculpture.
The new works by Guatta (paintings, drawings, standards, a sculpture and a written text) narrate his evolution as he experiences the detachment from a certain narrative attitude which characherised his previous works. Now he is concentrating more on the representation of the body; the setting is abolished in favour of an almost neutral space where the bodies gravitate or perch on peaks or summits. Anthropomorphic presences, hidden, in formation, from which at times emerge a hand - a foot - a head… . In some cases the same organs are isolated and detached from the rest of the body as if gifted with their own autonomy, and made self-sufficient.
This concentration on the body and its consistence prompts the necessity of taking a further step: to think of painting as a body in movement which gets rid of the wall. The standard as a support has the metaphorical and physical function of carrying this body, showing it. The standard does not intend to substitute the painting but rather intends to be its extension on other levels.
Whereas in the standard the body-subject wants to emerge from the wall, the sculpture represents yet another displacement in space. Its physicality can be felt, its weight, its presence. Guatta always tries evidently to construct a body through assembling and combining various materials, objects, fragments found anywhere. However this body is also in constant struggle with itself because the position of the objects cancels their original function and shows them with a different nature and a new form. Same as in writing where the combination of words and fragmented narration aspire to a new story.
Exhibition catalogue with text by Lupe Nunez-Fernandez has been published for the event.