You enter, you make room for yourself.
And along with the people – so many – the monsters and the memories. The graphite sign on cardboard is the protagonist of the exhibition space.
On 21 January, Spazio Sei launched its 2023 programme with the exhibition Spremuta d’incubo (Nightmare Juice), curated by Marcella Russo, which presents the works created by Giorgia Mascitti for the Pescara gallery, on display until 26 February.
What strikes you is the sign. Drawing as an act from the time of our ancestors, an ancient need, fixing a moment on paper as was done on rock, a reading of reality. A reality, Mascitti’s, devoid of colour, identifying things based on lines. This line, geometric or sinuous, is multiplied in scribbles, backgrounds, reinforced contours and chiaroscuro. The mastery of the strokes, in particular, invites appreciation, together with multifarious outlines and the skilful juxtaposition of diverse backgrounds.
John Berger writes that “For the artist drawing is discovery. […] It is the actual act of drawing that forces the artist to dredge his own mind, to discover the content of his own store of past observations.” And the work of the young artist from the Marche is, indeed, introspective, a search for images and memories, which surface almost subconsciously to make marks on the blank sheet of paper. An accumulation of fantastic characters, superheroes, video games, natural and artificial worlds. An accumulation of both linear strokes and themes.
In the gallery, on the walls and in the central space, large-format vertical paper, which the onlookers move between, is populated with unreal beings and worlds. Crowded paper.
On the walls, the most minute drawings, almost like small-sized intimate notes – studies for larger works. And they are especially striking, perhaps more than those in large format, because they restore the delicacy of dreams and the unpredictability of memory. Like the image of the neighbour with the hat made from a bird’s nest, a memory ‘that never lost its magic‘.
The sign, the dreamlike delicacy and also the titles illuminate the work: Nightmare Juice is the tale of the Doomsday Machine for gesticulating next to the Cat’s Nude (assistant) and the Superhero who is not forever.
A heterogeneous ensemble, fantastic and visionary, which gives access to a dreamlike reading of reality. This reading produces collage-like ways of constructing the image, a surrealist descent, distant heirs of André Breton’s psychic automatism, updated on account of a contemporary imagery derived from video games and comic strips.
Giorgia Mascitti. Spremuta d’incubo, curated by Marcella Russo, text by Maria Letizia Paiato, Spazio 6, Pescara, Italia, until February 26, 2023
images (cover): Giorgia Mascitti. Spremuta d’incubo, Spazio 6, Pescara, Italia, installation view, opening (2) Giorgia Mascitti. Spremuta d’incubo, Spazio 6, Pescara, Italy, installation view (3) Giorgia Mascitti, Non importa quanto siete simili ma quanto non lo siete, graphite on paper, Courtesy the Artist (4) Giorgia Mascitti. Spremuta d’incubo, Spazio 6, Pescara, Italy, installation view (5) Giorgia Mascitti, «Un supereroe non è per sempre», graphite on paper, Courtesy the Artist.
