Galleria Umberto Di Marino is pleased to present the first solo show in Italy by Ana Manso entitled Transition and duration, on Friday 26th October 2012.

Ana Manso’s artistic practice is based on a wide-ranging reflection on painting, in the sense of exceeding what is material in a broader dimension, going beyond its support and merging with other allusions in an absolute time. The ritualised and almost exhausting repetition of the daily movements of her body, both in the physical space in which she paints and in the space created by her works, ensures that the final result encapsulates the sum of the moments in a new, single dimension.

The process takes place through transition, due to the gradual transformation of the material from one form to another through imperceptible changes and the slow overlapping of layers of dust and paint day after day, as in the series The architect of the labyrinth. The intentional nature of the compositional design, obtained from personal images and cultural references, is therefore concealed by the random accumulation of signs and shadows, reaching a level of abstraction laden with subjectivity.

From time to time, the plan is modified by psychic and emotional changes, the events that converge in the workspace and the theoretical reflection carried out on the fringe of the technical reflection. In the closed frame of the paintings, gashes are opened in a more distant horizon, an accumulation of individual moments which, taken together, aim to give a sense of duration. Ana Manso does not view painting as a static dimension of art, but as a constantly evolving process, substantiated by a performative approach.

Her gesture leaves traces of herself and can be included in the abstract tradition, inverting it. The way the physical and mental presence looms over the work is not perceived through violent wrenches in the compositional rhythm, but through the play of forces and directions. Slight changes are highlighted by a seriality which develops differently at each variant, as in the wall drawing developed by the artist unfolding in the gallery space as reminders of the strange logic behind labyrinths and domino games.

In her critique of interpretation, Susan Sontag underlined the cognitive quality of transparency: “Transparence means experiencing the luminousness of the thing in itself, of things being what they are”. Drawing on this observation, the artist therefore applies an explicit resistance to decodifying language until it merges with thought and gestures, laying bare the essence of what it reveals, placing herself as the filter between the world and its representation.

Painting restarts from zero and from an almost archaic dimension. This interpretative approach helps explain the reference to Etruscan frescoes in the wall drawing, in an allusion to the origins of painting and the very history of civilisation.

Umberto Di Marino Gallery
Via Alabardieri, 1
Naples 80121 Italy
Tel. +39 081 0609318
Fax +39 081 2142623
info@galleriaumbertodimarino.com
www.galleriaumbertodimarino.com

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