Tania Pistone, STRAHLER E ALTRI PROBLEMI

Room 15
Invited by Bertozzi & Casoni

For almost four years now, I have been living in Switzerland in the Lower Engadine, in the canton of Graubünden. The place is enchanting, perhaps a little isolated, but often inspiring, in fact it is here that I discovered the world of the “Strahlers” (since the 16th century in German-speaking Switzerland, crystal seekers have been nicknamed Strahlers – or rather light seekers).

What at first glance might appear to be “simply” abstract paintings are actually the result of stratifications, accumulations, thoughts coming, perhaps, from other worlds. Like an ancient medieval palimpsest, from which one can still glimpse what was written in the past and then scraped off to be reused. In this particular group of works, Rocca’s crystal plays a dominant role and becomes a symbolic element, together with the need to want to stop a precise moment in life and turn it into a work of art. Pure and simple handwriting cannot ignore the need to link the act of writing to something that one wants at all costs to remember or pass on – as in Tentativo di volo by Gino De Dominicis, in 1970: “Perhaps because I have never been able to swim, I have decided to learn to fly. In fact, I have been repeating this exercise for three years. I will probably never be able to fly. But if I make my children repeat this exercise, and my children’s children repeat it, and they repeat it to their children, maybe one day a descendant of mine will suddenly find himself able to fly” – emerges from beneath the grid of signs, using the painting that is contaminated by it, partly by organising the space, partly by letting the painting organise itself.

Tania Pistone was born in 1969 in Catania. She lives and works in Sent (Switzerland).