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MIRELLA BANDINI, 1993

         As his optimum working medium, Gubinelli has chosen paper, be it opaque and receptive in its thickness, or opaline, transparent and susceptible to bending. Of this material, Gubinelli knows every property, intrinsic and not: its capacities to absorb colour, its reactivity, possibility to fold and define its own shape.

         Departing from this analytic premise, the artist's work must be interpreted in a dimension of great concentration, very sensitive to the slightest variation, completely oriented towards unfolding the energy of signs, their combinations and compositions. An energy he unfolds in almost obsessive white, or in water-colours or wax colours on transparent paper which takes on the preciosity of the sky or an aquarium, or in the paper's radial folds which transform the support's function.

         At the same time, the dimensions range from small to large, from medium to environmental as in the long sheets on the wall that reach down to the floor. His search is conducted in isolation, far from official clamour and for this reason even more appreciable.

         His works in white, made solely of little incisions or folds of the paper, have a a Zen-like depth of analytic concentration. A type of search that recalls several beautiful phrases by Paul Klee published in his "Diaries" (1905): "Painting with white corresponds to the way nature herself paints. If I leave the specific and rigorous graphic field of black energy, I realise I have entered a vast area in which, initially, I shall have trouble in orienting myself. This unknown terrain certainly arouses fear."

         White like the dimension of the absolute, of the unknown, which Gubinelli contrasts with colour, lighting up surfaces with water-coloured spots of pure, light colour, aerial and luminous.

         A study on light which once again recalls other biographical annotations Klee makes in his "Diaries" (1910): "Light seen by the drawer. Rendering light with light shades is well known, rendering it with movements of colour is newer. It is now my wish to render light simply as an expression of energy... Applications of spots of colour, freely combined by fantasy and principally elusive and essential."

         Departing from Gestalt structural problematics, Gubinelli has surpassed their rigidity and limitations, opening his work onto freer dimensions, such as the use of colour in expanding spots, portrayed in the moment they absorb or refract on the support and then progress chaotically; as in the folds on paper which do not respond to an established design but, instead, obey the laws of chance and of the unexpected.

         The work that ensues is dense with humours and promises still more possibilities of exploration as it is committed to transformation, metamorphosis and complexity which take post-modern aesthetics in little consideration.

May, 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 the Museo Palazzo Ducale, City of Mantua

Soprintendenza per i beni Artistici e Storici, Mantua, 1993

Paolo.Gubinelli@inso.it

giosue@giosuemarongiu.it

www.giosuemarongiu.it

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