CREATURA: In Limbo
About prints in “Creature Botaniche: Human and Plant Forms Conjoined"
My gaze settles on different features as the foregrounds and
backgrounds seem to go in and out of focus. It’s a perceptual experience that’s
ambivalent - tentative, shifting between revealing and concealing something
about the human and botanical forms. I have an urge to fuse them - humans and
plants –to mend, heal something in these …like printed prayers. I imagine the
ink, images and paper pressing a warp and weft, making a tapestry celebrating
and cautioning our conjoined fates. I'm trying to achieve imagery that is
beautiful enough to dwell on... prompt the viewer to linger and consider a
question.
I’ve been prompted recently to think about these prints in the context of archetypes. At the crossroads of aesthetic experience and archetype I find myself at “beauty”.
About Process - “Creatura” Series
Each of these is a monoprint. Within this series – Creatura
Botanica, each print is different. They vary both in color and imagery. There
are six botanical plates from which the plant prints are pulled: Hydrangea,
Nasturtium, Wisteria, Quince and Beech (two plates). With each printing and
inking they may change a good deal - the color palette as well as subtle or
salient aspects of the composition. The botanical plates are matched with the
body imagery and so the couplets are formed. For example: Hiding Quince or
Peering Beech. These pairings too have changed over time and new ‘matches’
present themselves.
Creatura was intended as a 6-month exhibit but only hung for 4 weeks until it was closed abruptly by the earthquakes that shook the Emilia-Romagna region north of Bologna in April 2012. Some of the prints that you see here are a selection of those salvaged from the earthquakes. The prints on stretched canvas were cut off the stretchers for transport to the US and then were trimmed for display on metal strapping with magnets. This particular hanging has been designed so that the canvas can be re-stretched on stretchers or may continue as they are. The ones with bees wax can also be displayed as they are, or can be framed.
Sadly ‘castello’ an 800 year-old castle has been closed indefinitely. but a number of pieces from the Crevalcore show remain in Italy, in the collection of Corte Eremo in Mantova, the new home of the show‘s curator Clark Lawrence and Reading Retreats in Rural Italy. These were exhibited at Casa del Mantegna, in “Clark’s Collection” in Mantova – May and June with works by German photographer Sven Fennema, and Greek and Ukrainian painters Pavlos Habidis and Juri Zurkan. Website: www.dinapetrillo.com. http://www.galeazza.com/en/art_petrillo.php.