Reviews

 

From the “Il Tirreno”, Pistoia newspaper	25/06/08
Conference In the Sala Maggiore speeches on Art and Architecture. Pistoia. Today at 6 p.m. in the Sala Maggiore of the Palazzo Comunale a conference will take place. During this conference, entitled “Art and Architecture”, Alessandro Andreini, Claudio Rosati and Siliano Simoncini will be making speeches, and the volume “Radici(Roots)” published by the Settegiorni Publishing House will be presented. Roots grow below ground and collect water and nourishment for the plant. For the artists Campriani, Dami, Girolami and Hjort this is the subject of their works of art which are exhibited at the “Giovanni Michelucci” Document Centre, as they are convinced that “it is necessary to take nourishment from memories and history” and at the same time to focus people’s attention on environmental problems, which affect all of us and on which we are dependent. Michelucci’s vision took in the trees, their branches and their apparent tangled web. In other words columns and geometrical structures become bearing walls for house and church roofs, as the designs displayed at the Document Centre reveal. This architect does not forget the natural environment in his plans, thus Man and Nature are united in a unique destiny. These four artists have not only exhibited their works of art but they have also organized a meeting in the Sala Maggiore of the Palazzo Comunale in Pistoia, which takes place today at 6 p.m.. This meeting with the architect Alessandro Andreini, the Reader Siliano Simoncini and the journalist and historian Claudio Rosati has as subject matter “Art and Architecture”, considering contemporary art together with the philosophy of Michelucci, his dreams, his utopias, and eventually the relationship between the works of art and their preservation in the museums of the cities or of the regions, beginning with today’s experience filtered by the history of the subjects to be discussed, as Andrea Dami says, quoting Walter Benjamin: “The revolution is the pounce of a tiger into the past, not his escape forward”. Today the book “Radici(Roots), Artists for Michelucci” will be also presented, published in three languages and edited and published by the Settegiorni Publishing House from Pistoia. Today the book “Radici(Roots), Artists for Michelucci” will be also presented, published in three languages and edited and published by the Settegiorni Publishing House from Pistoia. Lorenzo Maffucci

From the “La Nazione”, Pistoia newspaper	25/06/2008
Art and Architecture in the Shadow of Michelucci A new appointment with ‘RootsRadiciRacines – Artists for Michelucci’, a project for an exhibition which is based on the opinion that green areas are necessary within cities, in accordance with the philosophy of this famous architect from Pistoia (1891 – 1990). Together with the exhibition of the works of art by Gloria Campriani, Andrea Dami (in the photo), Astrid Hjort and Mario Girolami which have been displayed in the exhibition halls of the “Giovanni Michelucci” Document Centre in the Palazzo del Comune, today (6 p.m.) in the Sala Maggiore a conference, entitled “Art and Architecture” will take place with speeches by Alessandro Andreini, Claudio Rosati and Siliano Simoncini. After this, the book and catalogue - dedicated to the exhibition and conference, and published by Settegiorni, a Publishing House from Pistoia (pp.64, s.i.p.) – will be presented. This project has been sponsored by: Municipality of Pistoia, the Foundations “Conservatorio S. Giovanni Battista” and “Luigi Tronci”, and the Associations “Pistoia a Club For Europe” and “Amici di Groppoli”. Paolo Gestri

“La Nazione” newspaper in the “Agenda di Pistoia”	June 14, 2008
Architecture on a Human Scale “Roots”, an Exhibition Dedicated to Michelucci, Opens its Doors Pistoia. In the name of Michelucci. Two artists from Pistoia, Andrea Dami and Mario Girolami, an artist from Certaldo (Florence), Gloria Campriani, and the Swedish, Astrid Hjort, will present a number of their works of art in the Palazzo Comunale, amid many designs by the famous architect Giovanni Michelucci, at the exhibition hall of the “Document Centre”. The exhibition, entitled “Roots” opens on June 14 at 6 p.m. and is open to the public, entrance free, on Tuesday. Thursday, Friday and Saturday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Wednesday from 4 to 7 p.m. and Sunday and feast days from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. The works of art of the famous architect from Pistoia become inspiration for new plans for cities, districts and squares, respecting the natural environment On June 14 at 6 p.m., in the Sala Maggiore of the Palazzo Comunale, a conference, “Art and Architecture” with speeches by Alessandro Andreini, Claudio Rosati and Siliano Simoncini will take place. On this occasion a book will be presented, this book with the same title as the exhibition “Roots” has been published by Settegiorni Pistoia, and includes also brief texts by Siliano Simoncini and by Roberto Agnoletti, as an introduction and general comment, a synthesis of the works of art of the four protagonists of the exhibition. A volume in three different languages: Italian, French and English. Returning to the exhibition, Andrea Dami presents three works of art based on the city, the district and the square; Mario Girolami presents only one work entitled “A Home for Man (founded on two roots) [Casa per l’Uomo]”, Gloria Campriani displays two works of art, one of which represents an enwrapped tree, ambiguously protected or imprisoned in wool twine, and Astrid Hjort a series of water colours with the theme nature and woodland. “As the projects by Michelucci are deeply rooted in the soil – explains Simoncini – in nature and in Tuscany, the works of art of these artists link to this message, but only as a possibility to discuss ecology and man’s carelessness towards history written by nature”. OttobrEuropa, a group which for many years has kept Pistoia in contact with other cities in Europe, participates in this initiative. “We take part – explains the president Andrea Ottanelli – because Michelucci has always been strongly linked to Pistoia, also because he is an artist well-known all over Europe and because this exhibition will also take place in France, England and Sweden”. Paolo Gestri .

from the “Tirreno” newspaper - Pistoia	June 14, 2008
Exhibition and Convention “Four Friends of the Architect Michelucci” by Lorenzo Maffucci (translated by Lola Teale) Giovanni Michelucci and friends with the rallying call of “Roots – Radici – Racines”, a trilingual title presenting an exhibition and meeting based on the problems relative to the natural environment within cities, starting from the lessons of the famous architect from Pistoia. Today at 6 p.m. at the exhibition hall of the “Document Centre” dedicated to Michelucci in the Palazzo Comunale in Pistoia, the exhibition opens its doors. Four artists, not only from Pistoia, compete with Michelucci’s designs which are preserved in the “Document Centre”, and which are a very important trace for study and reflection. There are two names famous in Pistoia: Andrea Dami and Mario Girolami (his work shown in the photograph). On this occasion they will be joined by the Swedish designer Astrid Hjort (for two years now in Pistoia), and by Gloria Campriani, who is an artist from Certaldo (Florence) and who is particularly interested in integrating fabrics into her paintings. “The cities – said Andrea Dami – are becoming ever more similar, with commercial space but without true meeting-places. As Pistoia, an unusual capital of green spaces…”. “Roots” continues on June 25 with a conference (Art and Architecture) in the Sala Maggiore of the Palazzo Comunale. In the afternoon the program foresees speeches by Alessandro Andreini, Siliano Simoncini and Claudio Rosati together with the presentation of the catalogue (published by “Settegiorni”), which is an outline on the idea of “the natural environment as a method to work with” with texts by Siliano Simoncini and Claudio Rosati. The exhibition will be open for all of the summer, until becoming part of OttobrEuropa 2008, as Andrea Ottanelli, the President of “Pistoia a Club for Europe”, confirms: “We could not miss this event. Even though having strong roots in Pistoia, the philosophy of Michelucci (remembering his book “Pistoia. Leggere una Città” of 1988) has a national and European dimension, in spite of coming from Pistoia, we can consider a worldwide view. It is not by chance that, between 2008 and 2009, the exhibition will also be shown in France, in the UK and in Sweden”. The initiative has been organized by the Muncipality, the Foundation “Conservatorio di San Giovanni Battista”, the Association “Pistoia a Club for Europe”, the Association “Amici di Groppoli” and the Foundation “Luigi Tronci”. The exhibition can be visited, entry free, on Tuesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Wednesday from 4 to 7 p.m., Sunday and feast days from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. (Monday closed). Lorenzo Maffucci.

“Roots” Catalogue for the exhibition	June 2008
“Roots” From the architecture of Giovanni Michelucci to the work of artists: Gloria Campriani. The work displays a rudimental interlace of threads where natural branches emerge from the warp. Visible archetypes, like masks in the forest world. One suspects events prefiguring the chaos in the origin, a primitive germination. Does the work suggest the rebirth of earth after having been destroyed by man? Or does it show what remains after the scorn? Or is it a raw laceration of nature still alive? Gloria Campriani leaves the question open. When observing the work one is impressed by its violent expression, the cruel visual message that produces a sense of distress. A new sort of expressionism specified by its authentic language and getting its strength from the artist’s determination. Siliano Simoncini, art critic.

La Nazione Agenda di Firenze	June 5th 2008
Painting Exhibition (p. 31) In the salon of good taste “threads woven by pencils!” “IN A SOCIETY made up by threads, the thread perfectly interprets the weaving of social relationships. Linked, wrapped, intertwined and knotted threads weave and destroy today’s social structure. And fibre becomes the instrument for linguistic expression”. This is the leitmotiv behind “A thread for pencil”, cultural journey of artist Gloria Campriani (in the photo) which resulted in the mini-exhibition held at the “Cioccolateria” in Vicolo Soldanieri, the same where the association “Il Chiasso Ritrovato” chaired by Maria Teresa Bruno holds interesting cultural ventures, with free entry and opened to the whole city. The vernissage will be held today at 18.30 in Chiasso de’ Soldanieri, 7/r (a small evocative side street of Via Portarossa that, thanks to the efforts of Mrs. Bruno, is slowly becoming a true salon devoted to good taste, culture and contemporary art). The exhibition will be opened daily from 16.30 to 20.00 until next Thursday. Caterina Ceccuti.

La Nazione Agenda Siena	13th April 2008
“A thread for pencil”, Magazzini del Sale “A thread for pencil” is the title of the new exhibition by Gloria Campriani now on show at the Magazzini del Sale in the Palazzo Pubblico (Town Hall), Siena. Even a swallow’s nest is interwoven with fibres and mixed with clay, is the exhibition’s message. The show will close on April 30th; opening times: daily, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (0577 292226) (www.gloriacampriani.com)

“A debut novel Love of novelty for threads”. Sandra Landi.	Catalogue april 2008
An artist is born when he decides to be one, says Albert Camus. And Gloria Campriani has decided to be one. And to be one by skipping over that subtle line of shadow that separates art from craft. Thus her debut novel has all the freshness and the strength of intuition that pushes towards a search for depth, the will to innovate, and the studium of art. Her work presents a succession of two-dimensional mediums that do not overlap, but become combinations of vertical and horizontal columns generating the miracle of simultaneity. It provokes a glance with a form, a global idea typical of the world of gestaltic arts in which it is the whole that determines the parts. The vague is not arbitrary, but is born from semantically leaving the details uncertain. The accent does not beat on the structure or the geometry of the form, but on the search for the calibrated dosage of the winding curves and points of hearts. Gloria Campriani traces her path in the fog of a contemporary artist, begins with her materials to go beyond; from a material whereabouts towards a tendency to go beyond the infinite, beyond the form, beyond color, beyond reality. It's the heart that speaks, and every beat is a syllabic thread that renounces phonation and gives to pulsation, those echoes of spirit and body that arise with her own metaphorical intensity like dreams at the first rays of dawn. An innate emotional strength emerges through the elegant air of a culture that aspires to grow, fed from an exterior curiosity ready to let rise what is already intimately interior. The pieces are realities snatched and reduced to crumbs of meditation, small and large woven oblongs caressed by a calming light that does not reveal but erodes, captivated as in the nudity of colors or the stripped elegance of white. A collection of threads, fed on the yeast of a syllabic interiority, are worked and shaped in their spaces of gathering. Connecting threads of stories to narrate, the end of threads to untangle the world, sewn to mend, cotton puffs to heal. Weaves create intrigue, swathes that envelope and fascinate. [Filoneismo del filo:  Thread theories.(?)] Fairy-tale forms appear, turgid and dry, alternating between full and empty, sound and silence, ghosts of a restricted reality capable of opening the senses toward undefined spaces, evoking mythical voices – the Sphinx and the Mermaid, Morgana and Melusina – keeping and expanding the core of what is feminine. An interior mumbling reverberates, a spiritual voice is heard that no sound can accompany in the search for a new harmony of silence. The work is a challenge towards the material and its finiteness, towards the goal of an imaginary ghost ship that, no longer at sea and tired of infinite freedom, searches for a landing in the comfortable embrace of art. The symbol of thread traces the passions quae sunt in anima, capable of transmitting energy and pathos. One can say it is the artistic language that casts a net towards form and color. So we are drawn not only to see, but also to touch, pushed by the latent eroticism of a glance. The style is linear and seductive, somber and synthetic, in love with the material that molds but reactive to materials and the allurements of color. Labyrinthic microcosm, beyond time and space.  Gloria's art is a spiritual voice that no sound can accompany, but reproduces musical notes inscribed in midair, waiting to find its symphony in the completion of a musical score. Sandra Landi writer

A long thread… Mauro Civai.	Catalogue april 2008
A long thread traverses Gloria Campriani’s work, and not only materially: her reliance on textile materials, which have accompanied her throughout her development and guided her life experiences, is clearly evident, although it is also true that her work unravels itself through a continuity that recalls the weft of a canvas, in which many separate lines are composed to form objects and shapes, sometimes in complex and intricate ways. The thread in Gloria Campriani’s work is stretched and knotted up until it takes on the characteristics of a rather innovative language, even though it speaks of ancestral themes known to everybody (albeit in the unconscious), and nonetheless manages to stimulate our curiosity and will to seek inside ourselves, at a time in which every piece of information is hyper-structured and aims to appease all thirst for knowledge; a time in which to be astonished we need ever more complicated and perilous special effects. Gloria Campriani’s Sienese exhibition will therefore help document how much twentieth century art did not seek the deconstruction of the figure from a solid shape to one merely traced and hinted at in vain. The artist manages to accomplish this by unwinding a skein of yarn, by unravelling a tangle - by understanding how to untie the famous Gordian Knot with light and inspired hands rather than cutting it with the sharp sword of Alexander the Great. Mauro Civai

Gloria Campriani: Art hung by a thread. Maurizio Vanni.	Catalogue april 2008
I am often asked during conferences and debates what it means to be an artist in the third millennium, where contemporary art is heading and how an artist can become recognized as a witness of his or her times. In theory it’s impossible to answer such questions with certainty, because they can be considered as a kind of equation with several unknowns. In practice we could give a plausible answer if we consider a militant artist as somebody who places his or her own means of expression – whichever it may be – at everybody’s disposal to project thoughts, moods and emotions from the abstractness of inner life to the concreteness of the artistic product. True art depends on the essence of truth, transparency and purity of soul. Gloria Campriani does not ask herself whether what she does is contemporary or not, but tries to follow her own constant curiosity towards the various aspects of being, more with instinct and intuition than with rationality. To observe one of Campriani’s works can mean losing oneself in colour effects that would be impossible to achieve with traditional pictorial techniques, or being fascinated by an artful light generated by a combination of coloured threads, by a chromatic flow produced by fibres that are perfectly integrated in a composition seemingly in eternal evolution. The symbolism of the thread is essentially that of the means that connects the various states of existence with each other and their origin. Once placed on the main structure of her work, each of Campriani’s threads seems to transform itself into a conductor of positive energy, into a carrier of essences of truth, into the boundary line of a dimensional aperture capable of relating the finite to the infinite. The symbolism of the thread can also often be found in the Upanishad – treatises of the eighth to seventh century B.C. in prose or verse, dedicated to showing the path to transcendental truth – in which it is transformed into a mystical conduit between this world, the other world and human beings. In some of her works, Gloria Campriani hints at the existence of this passage and alludes to the possibility of another dimension. In others, her will to push the spectator beyond the superficial by means of the red thread that unites all worldly things is clearly evident. Speaking of threads, it is impossible not to think of Ariadne’s thread: the connection with the centre of that famous labyrinth leading from the world of darkness to the world of light. Chromatic spells, protruding parts and fissures that evade all attempts at investigation: from the greyness of a background, from the less ostentatious part of something which escapes us, suddenly we see an unexpected and improbable light, a magic gleam that reminds us how our lives are hung by a thread, but also how it is possible to recreate the true existence of being, unmasked, from a simple thread.Maurizio Vanni, art critic.