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A destra:

Paesaggio nudo

2006

cm 105 x 89

olio su tela digitale

Comunicato Stampa

Onda di Diana

Diana, Actaeon and other stories

“Boldness is what I loved most in painters” , Leo Castelli

 A new pictorical cycle for the productive Adriano Nardi , a young painter but of great experience . Consistent with his research , the artist continues to explore the many possible combinations and contaminations between  painting and digital printing . Clearly, it isn’t just a formal operation , but an intellectual journey that starts far away , from the birth of photography in the XIX century , through the new pictorical outcomes stimulated by this system , it covers the avant- garde at  the start of the last  century , abstraction , pop art , conceptual art , the sixties , digital language , and it reaches straight  into the heart of the deep renovation in painting to which- thankfully- we are assisting  in recent times .

 In a 2002 interview Nardi stated :  “printing.. paradoxicaly gives me the chance , to concentrate on the research of colour, on painting in the higher sense” . So , in one way , technological support is a means of knowledge and profound study for the artist .In another way , the fusion of the two languages has the effect of making the images for the spectator both more complex and intriguing at the same time . Infact  many levels of interpretation  are offered comtemporarily : the colours , always vivid , used unexpectedly ,  geometrical forms , that interlink without damaging  the realistic model from which the artist began ; symbols that often emerge from canvas ; printed textures that reunite with brushstrokes , sometimes fusing . Lastly , the female body , Nardi always sets it as a centerpiece in his works . Faces , hands , legs , but also complete figures , are transfigured by shapes and colours that- with no respect for the rules of reality- outline , cut and cross the spaces of the canvas . This painting is a wave , pushed with all the strength of the sea . It know no obstacles , it doesn’t stop until it is acknowledged , setting new rules for space , chromatism and form . It synthetizes decades of  language and artistic research ,proudly announcing that  ,in spite of everything ,painting is still alive , more alive than ever . “I paint searching for the  true revelation of painting” Nardi says again....... . Then the wave passes by , leaving not a trace , not a sign , but the furrow of its passing .

 These women , icons of a universe of knowledge , instruments of ample but high communication , let the spectator watch them , but at the same time they are watching him , winking , questionning , sometimes provoking . Nardi creates no mysteries : these pictures come from fashion magazines , photographic books , voyeur sites . They’re beautiful women , intentionally fascinating , conscious of the fascination they provoke . But they are distant , transfigured till they completely abandon reality to become a symbol of painting itself . Sensual bodies and synthetic colours , thousands of pixels and oil painting , this is how the renewal of representation is coming about , made possible thanks to the great ability of painting to transform , a language evidently more adaptable to change than was imagined .

 In this series of paintings , the artist furthers his study of painting as a means of communication . The work was inspired  by a  reading of  the myth of Diana analized by Pierre Klossowski (“Diana at her Bath” , Silva Editore , Milan 1962 , first italian ed) . Nardi does not want to interpret the story with pictures , but “reflect” , using painting’s “physical” means ,on the emotional implications of the story of Diana and Actaeon . Adopting  the double digital-pictorical method , the painter privileges a dimension very close to abstraction . Certain  works of this series are entitled  “Naked Landscape” , accompanied by progressive numbering . All the works  bare a stamp that marks the position in which they must be hung . We are evidently entering into an ever more lucid , conceptual dimension matured through  years of research .

 But is conceptual art a predetemined goal or is it the natural evolution of the research of some artists?  Is it desire or is it necessity ? Is it a fatal attraction or an  inevitable outcome ? The titles of some of  Nardi ‘s previous exhibitions are thought provoking ,  “Antipop”(1998)  , “Le Naviganti” (2000) , “Vertical Horizons” (2002) , “Microdipinta” (2004) , “Pittura Nuda” (2006) , and this present one , are clear indications of a route  taken towards the most distant extremes of painting , an exploration of the possibities and limits of this language , obviously beyond the limits of reality .

The “paesaggi” created by Nardi are again female figures , more provocative than ever  ,crossed by the forceful wave of painting , distorted by conceptual shapes that ignore the rules of nature , unable to oppose the impact of the  colour .Sometimes it may seem that it was the women themselves who provoked Nardi , who reacted with his weapons , the vivid strokes of an artist who , in the apparent confusion of elements , is lucidly walking along a side road , between the the cold fascination of the conceptual and the warmth of emotion , between geometrical rationality and the involvment with colour , between digital synthetics and organic bodies .

Nardi’s journey  is conscious and mature  opposing all those who shouted “painting is dead” and claimed that the future of art is only to be found  in new ( no longer quite so ) technologies .

Alessandra Maria Sette  

October 2007

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