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GIUSEPPE SICCARDI is a fighter plane, but also a bird
of prey, a disturbing synthesis, of strong symbolic quotient.
The technological machine and the animal carcass weave together
in the sign of death, like something which is intimately connected
to the confusion of the subconscious. This picture is one of
many of Giuseppe Siccardi, a piemontese painter who years ago
chose to become a citizen of Padua. We are astonished. A profound
silence nails down the painting, turning it towards strange absence,
blanks of memory, icy stares. Here are monstrous birds, archaeological
remains of far off eras, curious meteorites, magical architecture
of crystal cities, ruins, ambiguous remains some mineral, some
organic, gigantic insects, simple every-day objects covered with
a bewitched air. What is happening? The sidereal spaces seem
torn; something piercing penetrates them. But at the same time
everything is immobile. The air seems glowing.
Siccardi's language has far off historic roots. It comes from
a categorical truth, clear and dry, almost- vitreous.
How can we not return to the Arnolfinis of the magical Van
Eyck, so clear and almost staring in their immanence? How could
we forget Caravaggio's basket of fruit, so perfect in its realistic
spite, yet so sacral and mystic? That is the school, above all
the school of the Dutch 16th century, up to the supreme heights
of Vermeer.
At the same time the typical taste of the twenties emerges,
under the fine anguish of Dali and the astonished atmosphere
of Magritte. Surrealism is there, but in the background there
is also a metaphysical lesson. And so in time we arrive at the
recourses of the present day: hyper-realism which imitates the
imitation of truth, photographs cold and hybrid......Siccardi's
beginnings, at least from the point of view of style, start from
this mode of painting. Cool painting, the Americans would say:
something which tends to abandon the aesthetic emotion to enter
the precise dominion of science, or should we say science-fiction.
The image is torn from nature, fixed as if on a microscope slide,
analysed almost vivisected. Between life and death it appears
like something which is imprisoned, a mental ghost, projection
of dreams in cold sweat perhaps nightmares. But what does Siccardi
mean? The instruments of psychoanalysis might help us in these
maieutics. Undoubtedly the artist wants to render the subject
in a state of suspension; a phase of cosmic silence. The experiences
of astronauts floating in space are very near; the mind vacillates,
the body is weightless. Not by chance do we see floating objects
in many pictures, contradicting the laws of physics. And at the
same time not by chance do we find ourselves confronted by hybrid
anthropomorphic forms or just passing (the said bird-plane).
The same light comes from darkness: it is completely anti-naturalistic,
as in certain phantomatic pictures between the 6th and 7th centuries
(Brill, Magnasco).
The artist is evidently searching for another existential
dimension, forcing himself to escape from the confines of a physicalness
which (perhaps) seems limiting to him.
He even intends to overturn the concept of time, turning that
of yesterday (archaeological and paleontological remains) into
the future: in an imaginary future. However it is something which
"might happen".
Siccardi prefigures it in a sort of lucid hypnosis. It is
clear that on the basis of this, the language wages everything
on symbols: so much so that certain pictures assume the aspect
of an apologue. It is necessary for us to adapt to seeing "beyond"
to overcome the physicalness of daily experiences. Perhaps the
ultimate aim is a sidereal silence, an inebriating space, perhaps
it is the search for something which gives a meaning to the world:
I don't know. Probably not even Siccardi knows.
His hand moves almost automatically in the search for a sense
of things.
A psychic force springs from below. Are we prey to a collective
illusion?
Is something bewitching us ? Maybe . The quality of Siccardi's
painting is also here. The painting stays, substantially a magic,
alchemical, bewitched game.
PAOLO RIZZI |
