Pop Up Art = new socialist realism
For the apocalyptic people, like Byung-Chul Han, the selfie is the expression of the narcissistic bulimia of contemporary society that kills the portrait and makes the pain disappear in an apparent happiness (because it appears), in a continuous game of windows within everyone’s reach. thanks to the transparent technologies that everyone has. For integrated people, like Dan Ariely, the selfie serves to stop the moment, to relive that moment when we want (as in a reproduction of the moment), to share it with whoever we want, even without worrying about our appearance (it is therefore not true that you must always be beautiful, happy and smiling) because it is something that everyone does. More: it seems that in the selfie it is the gesture of the shot, more than its product, that we share with others.
Whether you adopt one or the other gaze, the selfie seems to fulfill a desire that human beings have always had: to seize the fleeting moment. This was, after all, the purpose of photography. And what moment would you like to seize, if not the happy one? In fact, if you think about it, there is nothing so extraordinarily different from how photographic portraiture could have been received in the second half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, the criticism of a medium when this medium, which previously was within the reach of the elite alone, becomes a recourse to history. It is only when it becomes mass that it begins to be a source of doubts. From the portrait executed by the brush of an artist who captures the painted face in its singularity (and the portrait is more “psychological” the more it captures the character of the character in the uniqueness of the moment – here is, again, the desire to grasp the moment), the self-timer that I can do at any time, even when I write these words, and that I can send to whoever I want or publish on one of the social networks to which I am subscribed. The museum itself, born as a place to preserve the masterpieces of the art of the past, is modernized to be within everyone’s reach, that is, the mass: thus, in the context of pop-up, super-popular museums, the selfie museum is born, where visitors’ gaze is no longer lost among different works, but always returns to itself, in the different locations, in an incessant reproduction of self-portraits.
Isn’t this process of standardization of the gaze directed at oneself perhaps the fulfillment of the principle of equality? Isn’t this the exact moment in which we all become equal, and in equality we recognize ourselves as different? To each according to his moments, from each according to his self-portraits: to paraphrase Marx, this is how, in the ocean of a multitude of selfies, the socialism of the human face comes true.
In the cultural cold war, the CIA used unwitting artists, such as Pollock and de Kooning, to promote American abstract expressionist painting in Europe, and thereby the culture of freedom as opposed to art and ideology touted by the Soviet Union. After informal art comes Pop Art which, fully inserted in modern and consumerist culture, is dedicated to the reproduction of phenomena of contemporary reality (comics, stars, goods). Reproducing an apparent reality under the eyes of all, as a version of a modernity fully acquired by all and for all, Pop Art seems to be nothing but the American version of Soviet socialist realism, a sort of democratic realism, if you can call it that. with no more progressive connotations, bearer of a message understandable to all.
The art of the selfie continues along the path of socialist art. We could call it Pop Up Art. In the act of taking a selfie we are all the same, anonymous and famous characters, real and fictional; in this same act each one captures, captures the moment in a singular pose, repeatable in form not in its time station, and sometimes even in space. This is the game of pop art: making everything the same, differing only in time, that is, in the location of the work, and in space, changing colors, as the monochrome background changes. It is in a certain sense the zero-background, the background that makes any background possible and, with the background, any figure that can replicate and imitate the gesture represented. Like Pop Up Art, can this be the way to the new socialist realism?(31, March 2021).
Giorgio Coratelli teacher and semiotician (Venice, IT).
Valentina Gigante
Valentina Gigante’s painting, characterized by decidedly weighted tones, is a synthesis of rational dreaminess and meditated lyricism. The author, with a multifaceted, hyperkinetic temperament and definitely characterized by a propensity to travel in all its meanings, often resorts to the formal essentiality of plastic structures or with colored backgrounds that recreate the suggestion of atmospheric depth, or with definite features in indefinable spaces. In love with the sign, she alternates periods where the prevalence is assigned to symbolism, with others in which the signals of a very unbridled sensitivity predominate, and with others in which the reality of the signifier, starting from non-intentionality, is such as to recall, with its form, an essential content; all enclosed in precious caskets of varied compositional technique. In Valentina Gigante’s pictorial warp, therefore, the emphasis and depth, never tamed of the chromatic expression, reach values of luministic intensity and considerable creative significance, thanks also to the systematic search for answers that our company dedicates to questions that her volcanic inner world has always offered her (October 20, 2020).
Leonardo Vecchiotti, literary critic, lecturer and journalist, for four years Director of UNIPER Courses, hosts various television programs including Cultural Horizons at the Piave News studios (Venice, IT).
Biopictura
Our time tends to celebrate one’s suicide in the triumph of the insignificant highlighted by Biopictura. It is not a simple neologism created to restart an increasingly tired collective attention. But it is a concrete and vital reality like the artist to which it refers: Valentina Gigante. A noun composed to indicate how all her works are an expression of her way of being and understanding life. An interpretation that does not tolerate discounts or shortcuts, but which uses those tensions required to arrive at a significant aesthetic ethical act. Biopictura is not something that refers to the biological but to biographical, the life of the artist, a painting that talks about the salient, creative moments of an artist who lives her time tumultuously – like a terrifying ocean storm necessary for life itself (March 19, 2020).
Giancarlo Da Lio, founder of the Itineraries 80 Movement (1989) and Virtual Museum 3 (1992), critic and theorist of the Manifesto of Hyperspatialism (1993), official critic of the Brain Academy Apartment project of the 50th Venice Art Biennale (2003), artistic director of Galleria Garage N°3 and founder of the Embassy of Venice (2004), since 1978 he has collaborated with magazines and periodicals publishing thousands of articles and organizing hundreds of exhibitions and events of art and poetry in official and alternative spaces internationally.
The Stargate
It is like seeing yourself through a mirror. A door that helps us to know ourselves. A stargate that connects different worlds. Often contradictory realities causing nightmares, fears, uncertainties. But that we must be able to face with a visible interpretation, the reinterpretation of oneself through the condition of others. The realized figures are nothing but the different aspects of oneself. A delicate advertising exegesis of ancient memory, which speaks to us with the harshness of those who use introspection without giving discounts. Discounts that often become justifications for living in a world where everything tends to be static. Not static because it has already reached perfection, but for justifying laziness as the cause of waiting for a Godot who will never come (December 1, 2019).
Giancarlo Da Lio, founder of the Itineraries 80 Movement (1989) and Virtual Museum 3 (1992), critic and theorist of the Manifesto of Hyperspatialism (1993), official critic of the Brain Academy Apartment project of the 50th Venice Art Biennale (2003), artistic director of Galleria Garage N°3 and founder of the Embassy of Venice (2004), since 1978 he has collaborated with magazines and periodicals publishing thousands of articles and organizing hundreds of exhibitions and events of art and poetry in official and alternative spaces internationally.
Female Artist
The problem of being an artist increases with being a woman. A reality that despite the time spent continues to be current. A difficulty sustained by a whole series of stereotypes difficult to overcome. Stereotypes accentuated by the economic crisis that hit the middle class. But the proposal and offer is valid and any collector must have the courage to play his part. All in the name of an irreplaceable value. Here are the various creative moments of Valentina Gigante, which despite their diversity constitute a continuum that makes us understand her research, which is not a series of fragments in their own right. It is certainly a tough road to travel that requires uncommon strength and sacrifices. But it is a way of doing that creates synergies with people equally sensitive to female creativity, which must make us think again about the art crisis. A work of art is an added value which unfortunately is not part of the downward cultural massification we have been used to. So we must have the strength, to (re)discover and know how to differentiate a value from a simple ephemeral cunning (June 16, 2019).
Giancarlo Da Lio, founder of the Itineraries 80 Movement (1989) and Virtual Museum 3 (1992), critic and theorist of the Manifesto of Hyperspatialism (1993), official critic of the Brain Academy Apartment project of the 50th Venice Art Biennale (2003), artistic director of Galleria Garage N°3 and founder of the Embassy of Venice (2004), since 1978 he has collaborated with magazines and periodicals publishing thousands of articles and organizing hundreds of exhibitions and events of art and poetry in official and alternative spaces internationally.
Recalling Diogene
One wonders why almost all artists leave us self-portraits. Someone even starts with the self-portrait while others experience it only in the final part of the production as a return to mother earth. Often an attempt at synthesis where one’s being acquires an essentiality due to a more mature knowledge of himself. In Valentina Gigante it is a continuous seeing herself in others. A desire to affirm a belief that is also rooted as a fundamental religious principle. But wanting to be an artist makes one acquire this idea of sacredness. Art is a sacred activity in itself. And the artist must be aware of this reality. In this case, by wanting to relate to others. Through a gallery of images of women, of different cultures and ethnicities. A diversity related to a single dimension, that of the self. Certainly not a phase of exaggerated egocentrism but a desire to get to know one another. A spontaneous, innate sensitivity. Expressed through the brightness of the eyes, of a smile that makes us only see beauty. A beauty that we are often no longer used to seeing and that the artist leads us to (re) discover (June 1, 2019).
Giancarlo Da Lio, founder of the Itineraries 80 Movement (1989) and Virtual Museum 3 (1992), critic and theorist of the Manifesto of Hyperspatialism (1993), official critic of the Brain Academy Apartment project of the 50th Venice Art Biennale (2003), artistic director of Galleria Garage N°3 and founder of the Embassy of Venice (2004), since 1978 he has collaborated with magazines and periodicals publishing thousands of articles and organizing hundreds of exhibitions and events of art and poetry in official and alternative spaces internationally.
Wisdom significance
The expressiveness of Valentina Gigante manifests itself in all its significance in every creation, but acquires even more relevance when the artist engages in the difficult theme of the portrait, and of the body, not only for the commitment that this requires on the plane of formal precision, but also for the considerable psychological implications it entails, sometimes of arduous aesthetic translation. This consideration is of fundamental importance to evaluate in the right light the breadth of human and technical research that Valentina carries out, making use of the intuition, balance and constructive wisdom, assiduously exercised in her work of analysis and transfiguration. She excellently renders the features of the bodies and faces, giving the expressions overshadowed by the looks and coloring of the details; and above all it gives the subjects that naturalness, which allows us to read in his soul the distinctive notes of personality. The orderly formal scan acquires a lyrical tension in the works of Valentina Gigante, and in the intimate charm of the atmosphere, creating an oasis of true poetry, with emotional and sentimental ferments, which are grafted into the pictorial texture with balance. The hues it draws from its palette are very beautiful and effective, especially the yellows, reds, blues, inebriated with bright light, which reflect feelings and memories of our world, which we sometimes believe we have lost (2006).
Giovanni Tonetto, President of the Serenissima Artistic Cultural Center of Venice. He was an artist and poet in Venice (IT).
Indestructible beauty
Thought and language are for the artist the tools of his art” says Oscar Wilde, we can add unique and incontrovertibly his, as singular and captivating, sweet and brightly caressing are the first albeit already numerous paintings by Valentina Gigante.
A young artist with a biting spirit, generous and gentle at the same time who knows how to infuse, with great talent, strength and power, beauty and luminosity to the figures or can generate on the canvas, with great gestural and coloristic ease, the figural projection of her illnesses, disturbances, inner angers, with all the expressionistic impetus of the colors, which open up before us a screaming mouth, deformed and disturbing faces, the immobilizing and visionary fear of a child clinging to his dog or a self-portrait immersed in the sad atmosphere of melancholy, autograph poetic words. Skilfully passing from an almost cubist style to hieratic and impenetrable male figures (the young boy with a ponytail seems to be thrown on the canvas from a timeless world), Valentina reaches the apotheosis of beauty in sensual and disturbing female portraits, generated by swirling coils of color that seem to capture and envelop the viewer, with a warm and maternal embrace, but with a veil of sadness. A beauty and vigor that seem to expand irrepressibly on the canvas, in an infinite cosmic space, for rays of color.
From the whole corpus of portraits it seems therefore to be able to grasp on the one hand the exorcism of fears and inner anxieties through an extremely charged figuration, on the other through a form that becomes impetus, an indefinite but powerful desire for freedom, an ascending force that becomes indestructible beauty (2001).
Barbara Sportelli, University Ca’ Foscari of Venice (IT).
The visionary
It is a light that rips through the darkness. They are faces without eyes and a corporeal physicalness reduced to a chromatic perception. Yet they are not only colors and shadows. The pictures of Gigante Valentina nourish themselves through a “physical” dimension and the protagonists of her pictures tell of a gallery of “personae” that, according to the sense of latin etymon, are “masks”, are actors, are personalities without a specific individuality (they have no eyes, the faces only faintly depicted), but they stretch to identify and to resolve themselves slightly defined by the movement of their actions. It’s an infinite refusal of that which is represented, that which marks the invisible difference between the producing of a gesture, of a minimal movement of action, of one physical “thing” and the dimension of darkness that always absorbs everything and in one way or another, contains everything as well. Individuals are “things” that make other “things”: actions made by bodies that try to attain a face and to produce a symbolic dimension in their gestures. Yet they always remain under this minimal threshold of definition. Or constantly above that. The danger of being absorbed by the darkness that has been produced and surpasses them is present in every moment. It is a picture of this extraordinary physical tension “the absolutely artistic element” of Gigante Valentina’s inspiration (2000).
Antonio M. Nunziante, Prof. Theoretic Philosophy at University of Padua (IT).