July 5 - September 7, 1980 at Municipality of Ferrara Center, Visive Palace of Diamonds
by Gregory Battcock
From the beginning, from Siena and Florence in 1200, the art of painting has included the use of different thicknesses to underline, provoke, exaggerate and subvert or threaten the nature and meaning of realism.
The thickness element has been reached and used in many ways, such as the accumulation of paint layer by layer, or with thickening techniques, the use of the relief, often even with the addition of different materials such as pieces of glass , imitation of jewels, metallic substances, golden leaf or hammered silver.
These elements serve as a contribution to the reality of illustration both in a positive and negative sense. The golden leaf, for example, enriches the blaze of the halo as the hammered silver increases the illusion of the crown.
In a painting, pieces of glass can enrich the illustration of the dress and also replace the representations of the jewels.
In the twentieth century the idea of mixing painting with other material was pushed until the invention of the “papier collè” of Braque and Picasso in 1913. The result was too avant-garde at the limit of the “trompe-l’oeil” for realism aesthetic of painting.
The necessity of the invention facilitated the cubist transformation of the idea / nature relationship and the relationship between form and color. The importance of this invention is essential in modern art: all modern artists have adopted the manipulation of the thickness to expand and enrich the concept in the exploration of the relationship color / form.
This seems to be the norm, but nevertheless another artist Angiola Churchill seems deeply involved in the technique of “papier collé”. Yet something is exceptional in his work, something that gives shape to an authentically new element, a new intuition: the role of color in relation to the mechanism of thickness in the two-dimensional art of its almost white constructions, which Churchill tries to balance . He does it with such delicacy that he reveals and underlines an alarming frustration. Therefore the fragility of equilibrium is such that the eye in passing from work to work, expects to see the whole work fall apart.
The technique adopted by Churchill is relatively simple. These are different layers of semi-gloss paper, cut or torn in regular and irregular shapes. The layers of creped paper, glued on top of each other, show surfaces curled by a completely unexpected element in the context: fire.
Some works have scorched edges and the great sensitivity of the material, creped in burns, brings out the whole collage scheme.
The presence-absence of fire is a condition deeply felt by man, animals and plants; though this is not always expressed, the fire or the possibility that this situation occurs, causes discomfort.
Even if the threat exists only in the unconscious we feel the need to go out or at least, we feel a sense of nervousness and agitation. Vague signs or suspicions of a possible fire in strange places like a hotel room or the cabin of a ship, make urgent the need to escape; even the smell of smoke or the finding of a burned object creates a state of anxiety.
The edge of those curled papers that look like lace, attract the attention of the beholder and certainly can not escape the consideration of the treatment they show suffered: the fragile material is inevitably burned and acts as a latent warning that instills a sense of fear . Yet this feeling is almost denied by the equilibrium with which the artist treats the material and shows it in its decorative aspect, in its soft folds obtained, by incising and cutting elements that seem to indicate or refer to security and stability. Anxiety seems to recede: it exists and then vanishes, but never completely. This is a technical fact, yet the material is scorched: the fragile balance between the sense of security and the anxiety of the disaster presents an alarming aspect in the situation instability. The pessimism at the bottom, seems to dominate the work and the balance is disturbed by the sense of a fearful authority, the terror of fire and holocaust.
Angiola Churchill as an artist, remains in a position of objectivity in front of the implications suggested by his veiled horrors of kindness. Its regular and clean composition seems neutral. The color is exquisitely non-colored and in his work every tone is worth exactly what it represents. The various shades of white are the color of the various types of paper, sometimes faded and brought back to life.
The black-brown edges are exactly what they should be: the color obtained from the burn and the color, in this case, is only the effect of the technique used. On the contrary, it is very elegant; defensible on the metaphysical level; it is a harsh response to the contemporary theorists of this expression. It is an intelligent problem that would excite the Cubists; it would impress the Existentialists and it would be alarming for the Colorists. Yet there is a predictable threat hidden behind this intelligent sensitivity.
You can read a lot in this simple and disarming series of works, even if it is ultimately the work that speaks for itself and for the artist. I described the impression that comes from the extraordinary sensual manipulation that the artist proposes, her polemics on the sense of disaster expressed through the aesthetic and visual vocabulary.