Sublime, Interference, Fragment these are the three concepts that identify the main strands in which Giulia Dall’Olio’s works are articulated in the exhibition at Galerie Isabelle Leismeister.
SUBLIME, according to the definition proposed by Edmund Burke, is that feeling of amazement mixed with dismay and terror that arises from the perception of the infinite and boundless greatness of creation with respect to man; it is the reaction to the emotional awareness of the irresistible power of nature before its representation. And it is this feeling that one feels when faced with Giulia Dall’Olio’s charcoal and pastel drawings on paper or oils on canvas or panel, with particular reference to those dating from the first period of her production.
As time goes by, this romantic conception of Nature also linked to its sacred and inner aspect, to the impulse toward the absolute and the infinite gives way to the INTERFERENCE of color applied on the vegetal carpet outlined in levare – by means of different erasures – on the charcoal base. Such a term, interference, in both technical-scientific and linguistic circles indicates the overlapping of two phenomena that can be constructive, when it determines a mutual reinforcement or, on the contrary, destructive, when it causes the elision of the overwhelmed element. In Giulia Dall’Olio’s works, the systems in contact are the natural and the anthropic: a coexistence of variable balance as variable is the preponderance of one, acrylic or pastel, or of the other, charcoal, depending on the works.
A continually evolving research, then, that of the artist who has more recently landed on FRAGMENT as an expression of modernity. The modern world, and even more so the contemporary one, is indeed characterized by dispersion, by the deflagration of meaning, by the multiplication of perspectives. The image, as asserted by philosopher and essayist Walter Benjamin, becomes dialectical, that is, it takes on meaning only in relation to that which is other than itself. It ceases, in this sense, the linear dimension of time, space and even narrative. The audience’s eye is therefore induced to seek its own direction in reading in Giulia Dall’Olio’s works pertaining to that section, a personal progression among the parts.
Text by Maria Chiara Wang
