Deflagración. Un dialogo con Picasso e Gaudì

Elisa Leonini e Ketty Tagliatti

a cura di Maria Livia Brunelli

Intoduction

Inauguration in conjunction with the exhibition "La rosa di fuoco. The Barcelona of Picasso and Gaudì "at Palazzo dei Diamanti, the double staff at the MLB home gallery entitled" Deflagración ". To expose Ketty Tagliatti, known for her roses with real rose thorns sewn on canvas, and for her three-meter camellia made with thousands of intertwined pins, and Elisa Leonini, refined artist specialized in anamorphosis that will make us listen " the sound of the rose ".
The two artists have interpreted through their sensitivity some themes present in the exhibition of the Palazzo dei Diamanti: from the spectacular installation of a deflagrating red rose that invades the two rooms of the gallery, to the poetry of the everyday object evoking Art Nouveau.
An exhibition with elegant and strong scent, which is an explosion of sounds and visions of the vital forces of nature, from roses sewn on the velvet of Ketty Tagliatti to the vibrant work of Elisa Leonini, in dialogue the lively and restless atmosphere that animated Barcelona early twentieth century, nicknamed "the rose of fire" for its effervescent social environment. But where a search for intimacy and silence also emerges, as a reaction to the "deflagration" of the external world.
"Anamorphosis of a rose of my garden" is a large anamorphic installation that has as its protagonist a flaming rose that invades the two rooms of the gallery, a work born from the collaboration between the two artists. The work consists of dozens of objects patiently covered with a single red silk thread, which, combined, make up the petals of the rose. Observing carefully, one discovers how each object belongs to the sphere of female intimacy: lipsticks, tubes, containers of anti-aging cosmetics become a sharp metaphor of women's fear of "fading", like the rose in fact. The choice to present the work through an illusion, the anamorphic deformation, thanks to which there is only one point of view to unequivocally recognize the shape of the rose, guides the viewer in a movement poised between the formation and the dissolution of the image . .
The happy interweaving of the poetics of the two artists, but above all the overlapping of two different perspectives of life, has brought them closer so as to make them join each other's work.
"The rose of my garden" by Ketty Tagliatti is a work created by a rose that is continually re-blooming in the garden of the artist's house, giving roses that look like red velvet. La Tagliatti has therefore chosen this material to realize his work, which bears the trace of the hands that have traveled on it while the artist has sewn it over the shape of the rose. A track that is like a memory, a photograph of what led to the creation of the design.
"I love to overlap several drawings of the same flower - says the artist - to capture different moments of his life and I prefer the sfioritura, the last moment before the petals begin to fall, before the definitive death".
After the rose, "fil rouge" that has accompanied the artist's production for over a decade, now Ketty Tagliatti is starting a new cycle of works, whose subject matter is abandoned, rich in memory. "Still Life memory 1914 - 2014" is the symbol of this new cycle, where household objects with an ancient and slightly retro flavor, such as pitchers and teapots, have been upholstered in a sort of straitjacket sewn on, with the aim of concealing them and isolating them in an almost theatrical space-dwelling place. An operation that brings out the "divine nerve" of these objects, their "spiritual charge", as J. Ortega Y Gasset would say, a Spanish philosopher who has always been an important reference point for Tagliatti, so much so that it became the a common thread of all his most recent work.
An act that decrees the entrance into an "other" dimension, in a space where time changes direction and, turning attention to the past, creates the illusion of being still, suspended, while all around you are witnessing the "deflagración "Of his own world.

Once again, we find the concept of traces in the work "Rhodon rheo" (from the Greek "flowing rose") by Elisa Leonini, an investigation into the sound of the rose made from the bronze casting of the stem of the rose that, rotating , triggers the vibration of harmonic steel of carillon sculptures. The rose becomes sound, an image of the flowing time. Subsequently, the inked rose stems leave evocative traces of their passage on drawn staves, suggesting a musical writing.
The union between graphics and sound also characterizes the artist's new installation. In "Horizon of life" the rotation frequencies of earth and sun are based on the graphic structure of the vital forces of the earth, the rediscovery of land and territories that nourish and identify us. The sculpture "Silenzio" is born from the suggestion of the harmonious organic forms of Gaudì, in which Elisa Leonini gives form to the invisible. Starting from the graphic representation of the sound wave of the word 'silence', pronounced by the artist herself, Leonini has created a sculpture of synthetic glass and iron three-dimensional transforming the sound waves. Silence thus screams its presence and fragility, as a response to the whirlwind of modern life.