IMAGES WITHOUT ANY FILTER

Daniele Capra

A Cosmos Within a Studio

Arianna Ellero’s works take shape from an inner necessity to act and from her daily dialogue with the pieces in her studio — a space that serves simultaneously as a site of action, a place of meditation, and a refuge from the intrusions of the outside world. Yet first and foremost, it is an altogether singular place, where only what the artist wishes to happen is allowed to occur: it is her realm and her universe, built by her own hand and one by which she is, in turn, partly shaped. In that context, Ellero is the only subject capable of expressing a will and of imposing her own order absolutely. At the same time, the studio is also a refuge that attracts and protects the artist, a space of self-therapy and dialogue where the works come into being — that is, as all the possible projections of her identity. With them she can establish a free and sincere dialogue, without any limit in time and without fear of changing her mind or contradicting herself. Her studio is a laboratory of the possible, a territory in which the works are born and continue to be transformed until they reach a state of autonomy from the artist, like daughters now mature and independent. Yet there remains a visceral and personal relationship with each of them, a sense of belonging, unity and kinship out of the ordinary. Each work, inevitably, carries a part of the artist; it is a fragment of a personal cosmos which, like the one in which we live, is in continuous and whirling expansion.

On Pure Painting

The post-industrial spaces in which Ellero works are physically dominated by light and by the presence of the Friulian countryside, which enters in fragments through the glazed windows. Yet all this seems not to resonate directly within her work, for it is reasonable to imagine that the artist looks out towards the fields only during the pauses between one working session and the next. Her works, in fact, arise from a daily confrontation with the canvas — a face-to-face challenge in which it is essential to concentrate the gaze on the surface. Ellero’s practice is founded on bringing about ‘pictorial events’ that then leave a trace upon the surface in a stable and complete form, no longer requiring modification or addition. The central element of her work lies in setting the forces at play into interaction, mixing them, layering them and, after continual changes, allowing them to settle definitively, thus creating self-sufficient structures of meaning. Her method is selective and centripetal, as it condenses attention almost exclusively upon colour and gesture, prompting the setting aside of all other aspects. In her studio, in fact, nothing occurs other than ‘pure painting’, while all other phenomena are inevitably transient and destined to pass unnoticed.

Painting as Seismograph

Ellero’s paintings originate in an intense psychic necessity and in a strong impulse towards confrontation with the other and towards action, which the painter channels into the work. Yet nothing she brings about on the canvas is directly traceable to reality as we know it. The artist does not extract or distil large or small portions of the visible familiar to us; rather, through a sincere, honest and craftsmanlike daily process, she transcribes a further reality that she perceives and that can be known only through her. Her works form a kind of emotional narrative, yet there is no description, no direct narration, no characters. Everything unfolds through a transposition into another expressive language, aniconic in nature, in which the image freely corresponds to nothing other than itself; at the same time, it answers only to its own internal logic, explored and then shaped by the artist in her studio. In Ellero’s practice, the painting may indeed be imagined as a seismograph, tracing and recording with precision a particular psychological condition: this occurred in the past during live public performative sessions, when the artist produced painterly transcriptions in response to music; and it continues in her more recent work, in the quiet of the studio, when introspection arises from the open stillness of solitude.

Processes and Nakedness

Ellero’s research can be traced to abstract grammars of a processual and informal matrix, which stem from a profound sensitivity to chromatic matter — a quality also evidenced by the fact that the artist prepares her own colours from pigments in order to realise her paintings. The central component of her practice is the very act of painting itself: the execution of brushstrokes, the creation of chromatic textures and the layering of levels form part of the content with which the artist invites us to engage. Colour is employed instinctively, serving to suggest to the viewer a particular emotional condition. Through the mediation of colour and technique, the expressive content becomes broad and polysemic, all the more so because it is not addressed to the viewer in a direct or declarative manner, but as an open question intended to prompt a personal response. The viewer is invited to confront the painting directly, in the first person and without any filter — without linguistic barriers or limits imposed by figurative imaginaries: painting and observer stand before one another, looking at one another, both candidly naked.