The Umberto Mastroianni Museum in Marino reopens on 11 June 2020 at 18.00 with the exhibition: Only Sheets on the Wall – created by 4Hands by Monica Pirone and Sergio Angeli, with the participation of Elina Chauvet. Critical texts by Fabio Benincasa, Claudia Quintieri and Giorgio de Finis edited by the critic Michela Becchis until 11 July 2020.
4 hands work then 6 hands is a great exhibit with distinguishable signs, deconstructing and creating a new personal language that artists from this difficult common work.A new pictorial meaning that is expressed formally, chromatically and in the composition.
The artists Monica and Sergio work simultaneously and file their interventions by amalgamating into the final pictorial work. Looking at their paintings, you can experience the stylistic differences that eventually compensate and balance each other. Monica Pirone works the chaotic line, expressive dynamics looking for balance. Sergio Angeli creates clean, stable, meditated and studied backgrounds looking for disorder.The work that the two artists do is in intertwining, in traveling, in balancing thus creating a work unique of great elegance and dialogue. Elina Chauvet donates the plot to be performed to Monica and Sergio, an artist known all over the world for her installation Zapatos Rojos against femicide. The 6-handed work they created is a triptych of about 9 meters on recycled fabric that represents a dreamy garden with a graphic technics, a trait that distinguishes all three artists.
Michela Becchis writes in her critical text: “The time inside the works that make up the exhibition is a large, widespread time that transforms the short time of looking into a long time in the memory that is filled with variations in color, with dense streets of lines , of a narrative that transforms the original trace into a real plot, into necessary facts, that is, to understand the inextricable intertwining of existence “.
4Hands, a collaboration of various exhibition projects in Italy and outside, which combines two artistic expressions in total symbiosis. Like the “Arte a Scuola” project just completed and visible at the Liceo Statale Francesco D’Assisi school in Centocelle in Rome, where the 7×4 meter wall painting entitled “The Power of Nature” is represented, to reclaim Nature in following the lockdown due to Covid19.
Interview with the two artists before their exhibition in Marino:
Monica Pirone: MP
Sergio Angeli: SA.
1) How is your personal work born? do we want to remember the essential stages of your artistic life?
SA/ MP was born about two years ago, by chance we found ourselves making a four-handed work, entering strongly into symbiosis, with the approval of the critics Michela Becchis we decided to make other works and then structure an exhibition. Over time the project has become our third pictorial language, a unique entity beyond our individual paths. De Finis liked this language very much and proposed to us to do an artist’s studio at the Macro in April 2019. Now more than ever the language acquired over time is part of our artistic path. Soon, the appointment with the exhibition at the Museum where you can see some of the latest large-format works and the works made by six hands with Elina Chauvet, all taking into account the stringent health measures, related to the Covid problem that we all know.
2) Can you describe your philosophy in three words?
SA Oneiric passionate sincere
MP Performative, deep, hypnotic
3) What relationship do you have with other artists present and past? Do you have mutual influences with anyone in particular?
SA Estimation and respect, as well as admiration for some masters of the past, we both admire artists like Rothko, Pollock, Munch, Bacon, Kline. I also believe that working together, in symbiosis, is structuring our individual work in a more oneiric form.
MP My youthful reference artists are Schiele, Munch, Ensor, Bacon, they accompanied me for years, later Kline, Rothko are absolute references for me. An inspiration in Rothko’s case of rigor, synthesis, color, this artist still represents for me a great source of inspiration, a guide for his design approach to the construction of the painting.
4) Let’s talk about your method of working together, how does it work? How important are the chromatic elements?
SA Our method doesn’t have a particular planning, rather it has a gestural, visionary process. When we work we never talk to each other, we don’t decide anything before we make sketches, we start painting together and we finish together, I think it is this factor that distinguishes our four-handed work with four-handed work in general. It can be defined as a pictorial language, because there is only one method of work and not our two distinct methods. Chromaticity is always important, even if it is the final result of a vision and therefore not the result of a pre-established research.
MP I agree with Sergio, the way of working is really particular, at the beginning it was necessary to understand how the other one moved on the canvas and for my part, at least in the first canvases I needed to understand the movement as it could get stuck without limiting the gestures of the other, from a certain moment on there was no more need to study geographically the canvas, everything is very fluid, for the most part the movements are spontaneous. I would say that more than painting it is a performative action of two, we always finish when we both believe that the work is finished, without asking too many questions, the work is complete and we both put a point.
5) This gesture or “graphic of the soul” as a plot composes a work in common with 4 hands and also with 6 hands is of a great complexity, above all to get involved and share is a merit of a few that you were able to do with a common purpose, how did you find yourself?
SA An understanding like ours is built on trust, relying on each other without any fear, putting aside one’s stylistic certainties acquired over the years and in a certain sense starting from scratch with a new language. Starting an unknown path by relying on the other and not on the certainties reached. Monica and I esteem Elina very much, as an artist and as a woman, the six-handed work done with her has something that goes beyond collaboration, it is a spiritual understanding, Elina sent us about nine meters of fabric painted by her in Mexico, we continued her trace … Graphics of the soul precisely. I think it was an exchange of hearts, of pulsations, of the sensitivity of three souls who have entrusted themselves to the Art for a mission in life that goes beyond the common feeling and perception.
MP I believe the same, painting is a medium, what is important is to have the same ideas, about art, life, the role of the artist, with Elina for me it is a relationship of sisterhood, I esteem the artist and I love the person, his courage, his integrity, his honesty, the relationship with the creative gesture resembles me his sincerity, bringing his life in art, the sublimation of his experience that becomes collective. With Sergio is different, I appreciate his work and I know his discipline in making art, his passionate dedication, his skills, an infinite palette of colors that for me were a discovery. Working with 4 hands is natural for me and when the experience extended to Elina everything seemed easy, spontaneous, it was enough to let go.
6) Why the sheets, such an intimate, familiar object? What symbolism does it have for you?
SA Sheets because the work of 4hands is the result of dreams, of our night visions. We always start with an abstract method and then always end up representing gardens, woods, dreamy visions of trees and flowers. Dreamy landscapes are the result of our work, I think, because it is not a reasoned choice, but rather an unconscious, spontaneous result.
MP Sheets are our private part, they envelop us when we are most helpless, when we don’t have to appear to others, but to be who we are or better still they are the keepers of our secrets, of our dreams that we ourselves cannot grasp. The bed, the house, the domestic walls are the treasure chest of what we really have in our hearts, a place where we can be what we are without superstructures in total freedom, returning a little bit to draw from that innocence we had as children.
7) You find great pleasure in admiring your works, how does painting influence the viewer? and what kind of feeling do you want to leave to your viewer?
SA Painting in some way must leave a mark on the viewer, whoever benefits from the vision of a work of art must be able to “travel” within it. To see personal worlds, to perceive images that go beyond the obvious vision of reality, to be able to store a memory of the work of art in the mind and soul. To be able to reflect for days on what has been seen and perceived. Even finding oneself wondering “why” about the meaning of a painting, I believe, is a noble and not trivial question. To portray what we feel with our inner sensitivity, to give the world our dreams, I think is a beautiful goal.
MP Clearly in agreement with Sergio’s vision, I find that enjoying a work is an experience for the viewer, an almost intimate individual. A work must tell a little piece of your life, it must rest on your soul and adhere to and resemble what you are or what you aspire to. Our painting reminds us of what we may have been or all of us are and that we perhaps too often forget. A world that brings us back to our childhood, when we experienced our mark, retracing the paper, over and over again, almost as if to say: I am there.MP
8) Putting oneself at stake is a little bit the invisible common thread of different artists… What do you think?
SA Ask yourself why continuously, what you can achieve with what you have available at any time. Consider yourself as a means and not as the focus of your work, I hope to be able to identify myself as a tool of my work and not as the end. I hope that every effort I make will define what I feel over time, renouncing part of me, giving shape to what you cannot grasp inside.
MP I believe that every artist must expose himself to the risk of becoming vulnerable, open to the creative gesture, not be afraid to reveal his true feelings at the cost of hurting himself, I believe that suffering is a moment of truth that helps us to really be who we are, the contact with those who benefit from your work, happens right there, you play on the ground of empathy with who we are. All my work is moved by something that I know, something that is familiar to me does not mean to be self-referential, but to be crossed by the circumstances that are outlined on my path. The game is to be able, at a certain moment, to bring out the idea without becoming the idea itself.
9) Next projects?
SA/MP Next 4hands projects are: in September 2020 an exhibition in Brussels at the Fondazione Piemonte, with a date to be defined, due to the emergency Covid 19. exhibition that we should have done in May then postponed. An exhibition at the Casa della Cultura at Villa de Sanctis in Rome by December and in November in Cagliari at the Liceo Statale Fois, with an exhibition that will remain three months and workshop meetings with students.
10) And to finish … what would you like to change in the world of contemporary art and what would you like to leave … and why?
SA Personally I can try to improve myself, to create with sincerity. I hope I can give the world what I feel with as much honesty as possible.
MP I think we must try as much as possible to continue this path with devotion, dedication, commitment, seriousness and do not pay attention to those who for years in our country has tried to make art, a supermarket full of low quality products, sometimes animated by characters who play the role of the artist, where the border between being or not being is just a matter of figures, staying in the comfort zone for life and trying to capture only the mundane and fashionable side of the artistic environment. All things from which a true artist knows he has to escape. In short, the eternal dilemma between being and appearing.
Only Sheets on the Wall – 4Hands by Monica Pirone, Sergio Angeli and Elina Chauvet
From 11 June to 11 July 2020
by Michela Becchis
Texts by Fabio Benincasa, Giorgio De Finis, Claudia Quintieri
Free entrance – info : 4hands.pironeangeli@gmail.com –
museocivico@comune.marino.rm.it
She is an independent curator, art advisor and international marketing management consultant. For more than 20 years, he has been a cultural designer of events related to contemporary art with particular attention to unusual spaces and interactions with other arts.