Thresholds
Wednesday, 19 March 2014 17:37
Written by Erik Castillo
Manuela Generali produces paintings in her studio surrounded, visited and gripped by two almost obsolete forces if one looks at the modus operandi and styles of many of today’s artists: that of the uncertainty of choice for someone who does not paint within a given system or specific discourse, and that of the spring that the painter allows to flow from episodes in her personal history, which she then conceals in her pictures. Over a creative period of nearly thirty years, Manuela has produced many different pictorial series, sometimes consecutive and sometimes discontinuous; visual cycles that give the viewer a sense of being a witness to events that are always elusive, an explorer of scenes that take place within an inner dimension or the inhabitant of laconic environments, sites for viewing where, due to the lightness of the indeterminate, the painter has left the stigma of a majestic simplicity.
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Manuela Guillermo Samperio
Without tracking the edge of the universe, it is possible to trace the line from which to view its infinity: each fragment of the visible is a sign of infinity. Manuela Generali's work has gone through different frames of our reality: the body, architecture, landscape; her pictorial treatment places us within the infinite nature of the visible.
Manuela’s paintings take the path of abstraction although, being more faithful to the process followed by the artist, one could say that abstraction is used to invoke figuring. Be that as it may, the result is a hybrid full of rich fragments of infinity. In an attempt to reach the limit, she explores the possibilities of figuration with the stylistic contributions of abstraction. She notes, with the same gesture as the romantics, the indecipherable fog and blinding flashes.
She points to the unachievable task of redefining the landscape, wildlife and cities, by giving up and declaring it impossible to record our reality in detail with reasonably defined silhouettes. Her thoughts turn to the infinite, what we felt was overwhelming because of its strength: the chaos of the universe as a supreme hidden order. This reflection is signed by the disorderly impulse of the paintbrush, and gains meaning from being part of the whole painting. Strictly speaking, the sublime cannot be painted, only suggested, surrounded and alluded to. And before our astonished eyes, this impossibility, inflamed by Manuela Generali, becomes a silence that is heard.
Manuela Generali produces paintings in her studio surrounded, visited and gripped by two almost obsolete forces if one looks at the modus operandi and styles of many of today’s artists: that of the uncertainty of choice for someone who does not paint within a given system or specific discourse, and that of the spring that the painter allows to flow from episodes in her personal history, which she then conceals in her pictures. Over a creative period of nearly thirty years, Manuela has produced many different pictorial series, sometimes consecutive and sometimes discontinuous; visual cycles that give the viewer a sense of being a witness to events that are always elusive, an explorer of scenes that take place within an inner dimension or the inhabitant of laconic environments, sites for viewing where, due to the lightness of the indeterminate, the painter has left the stigma of a majestic simplicity.
**
Manuela Guillermo Samperio
Without tracking the edge of the universe, it is possible to trace the line from which to view its infinity: each fragment of the visible is a sign of infinity. Manuela Generali's work has gone through different frames of our reality: the body, architecture, landscape; her pictorial treatment places us within the infinite nature of the visible.
Manuela’s paintings take the path of abstraction although, being more faithful to the process followed by the artist, one could say that abstraction is used to invoke figuring. Be that as it may, the result is a hybrid full of rich fragments of infinity. In an attempt to reach the limit, she explores the possibilities of figuration with the stylistic contributions of abstraction. She notes, with the same gesture as the romantics, the indecipherable fog and blinding flashes.
She points to the unachievable task of redefining the landscape, wildlife and cities, by giving up and declaring it impossible to record our reality in detail with reasonably defined silhouettes. Her thoughts turn to the infinite, what we felt was overwhelming because of its strength: the chaos of the universe as a supreme hidden order. This reflection is signed by the disorderly impulse of the paintbrush, and gains meaning from being part of the whole painting. Strictly speaking, the sublime cannot be painted, only suggested, surrounded and alluded to. And before our astonished eyes, this impossibility, inflamed by Manuela Generali, becomes a silence that is heard.