Diary/Paper Trace 1998-2010

The paper that proctedted my table for 12 years, while I was working on my pastel papers. My “Imprint” is what lies behind the work: that which we cannot see, that which remains, the leftover, the accumulation of the substance around making the painting. It is the stratification of time, of the experience; it is the trace, the imprint, the sedimentation of twelve years of “doing”. The place of proceeding and reasoning through colour has been transformed into a palette-shroud. The contact has generated the trace, “the contact of an absence”, according to Didi-Huberman’s definition (La somiglianza per contatto Bollati Boringhieri, Turin 2009)

"In the “sinopia” room, the one devoted to fresco underpainting, Maria is exhibiting her Impronta or Imprint piece. This was the sheet of paper she had put over the table where, for twelve years, she worked on her drawings (some of which are on show). The thicker part is the edge of the paper where the paint built up, and here we find the force of her gestures and the energy of physically making art: we can see the shadows of the works on paper that she left out to dry. The memories conserved by these imprints emerge from the interweaving of the diverse histories and techniques that went to create these works. Like all imprints, these too resonate with the echo of something that is no longer there. By keeping in mind her experiences, the artist has “seen” the burgeoning of accumulated life on this sheet of paper as well as its creation: by doing so she confirmed its status as art. Just as so often in the history of art and in life the “simulacrum” becomes a symbolic record of overt or latent creativity. Piero Manzoni comes to mind. And we well know just how important imprints have been for contemporary art-language experiments, as has been confirmed by the supremacy of Mar- cel Duchamp. In art an imprint has become something more than a simple cast giving form to a trace. Didi-Huberman has analyzed its symbolic import and metaphorical potential by honing in on the impor- tance of contact (a foot that sinks into the sand), by highlighting loss (the person who walked is not present) and the relationship between memory and the present..."
Chiara Bertola, in «L’unità di misura è il colore» (Silvana Editoriale, 2010)

Traces
During the trajectory, imprints form and substance accumulates.Moving, acting, crossing through the space, leaving colour, tracing signs: all of this activity leaves parts of itself behind. What remains along the way constitutes something parallel and marks the passage of the experience. I turn back, I see the wake that I have left and I recognise something.

Paper
Opere pittoriche su carta realizzate con acquerelli, carboncino, grafite, diverse tipologie di pastelli e pittura a olio e acrilica