52

GIOVANNI MARIA ACCAME, 1993

Signs, slight and silent

         I remember very well the first time I saw Gubinelli's papers. It was in his studio at least fifteen years ago when I was still teaching in Florence. I must say that the impression of the past is confirmed today, as I write about them with even greater conviction. A conviction comforted by many and constantly coherent works created in these years.

         The works of Gubinelli are not "works on paper" in the common sense of this expression; indeed, no pictorial study is applied to a paper support. In his case, paper is the very substance of the experience. Its principle and nutriment, the space of every thought and of every action. Paper constitutes the inexorable link between the artist and his work.

         Fontana, Castellani, Manzoni and, for several aspects, even Dorazio — all names already mentioned by critics who have dealt with Gubinelli — are not previous, but rather references. With this, I mean to say that these papers are, in reality, very distant from the intentions of the artists mentioned and from their works. We do find references which never become, however, real consonance or derivation. And the unique choice of paper is not a secondary element for this distance from experiences which Gubinelli doubtlessly feels close to him. The breath in his sheets though, is more intimate and, overturning an affirmation of Jung, we can glimpse the strength which is implicit in every weakness.

         The fragility of paper — but perhaps it would be better to say the papers used in the course of years — is the physical, but also poetical structure of this work. Purity, lightness, transparency do not weaken language, but are part of its identity, better revealing and supporting its presence and slightest traces.

         The folds and cuts of the Seventies certainly represent the most programmatically analytical aspect. The surface is confronted with regular markings, the characteristics of which, on one hand, tend to define a certain space, while on the other, they tend to provoke a series of perceptive phenomena with incidence and effects of light which shirk full determination.

         Argan has written of how Gubinelli searches for "spatiality without volume and a light without rays."

         With these papers, in fact, we witness a depth and luminosity of the surface obtained with minimal interventions. This minimalism of markings is another important aspect to understand the authenticity of spirit with which this work is created. Gubinelli never forces the material on which he works. Folds, cuts, scratches are all commensurate to the thickness and resistance of the paper. There are no lacerations, but instead slight grazes whereby we recognise the control of reason which distinguishes these works.

         Gradually, with the Eighties, the presence of colour is intensified which, especially as of 1988 with the use of water-colours, has attained a freedom and importance that have in part modified the role of cuts or folds. No longer absolute protagonists of the sheet, they play their role in harmony with the application of colour.

         In various works of 1993, the renewed use of transparent paper affirms, if ever there were need, the centrality of the material. And it is probably paper with its continuity that best encloses and preserves the deepest sense of what Gubinelli has done in twenty years of work.

         These sheets, for their very nature, have always shirked peremptory affirmations, preferring instead signs, slight and silent. Also an indication to help emerge what has difficulty to appear. A stance on the side of presence and not of representation.

Giovanni Maria Accame

April, 1993

Ed. A.I.C.S.

Church of Saint Francis, City of Gualdo Tadino, 1993

Palazzo dei Consoli, City of Gubbio, 1993

Sala 90 of Museo Palazzo Ducale, City of Mantua,

Soprintendenza per i beni Artistici Storici, Mantua, 1993

Paolo.Gubinelli@inso.it

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