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LARA VINCA MASINI, 1971

         An operation like the one Paolo Gubinelli has conducted for several years now, in which it has gained precision and character, is clearly posed as the acquisition of contemporary culture in the area of an increasingly more "reductive" exploration, on light, space and structure.

         I refer to the line of exploration, defined as "analytical" which, starting out from the proposals of space-light-colour in the luminous dynamics of the atmosphere, already expressed in Balla's "iridescent permeations," was conducted bypassing — without ignoring it — the entire European abstract-geometric moment. Retrieved after World War II, it divided into two major veins — that of Europe and that of America — perhaps on the basis of the European-American work of Albers. It gave rise, on one hand, to neo-concretism (with all its dilations and processes), arriving to the recent studies of "reflection on painting" and of "analysis on means" (from Fontana to Castellani to Dorazio, from Gaul to Griffa to Support Surface...), while on the other hand, it gave rise to what has been defined as the "cold line," "opaque painting," or American "analytics" which recalls Stella, Newman, Reinhardt and arrives, with constant reciprocal filtering, to Agnes Martin, Dorothea Rockburne...

         It is as though the work of Gubinelli started out from this substratum to undertake, in an autonomous fashion — very "private" and "silent" — a further analysis on means, on the way of operating, on the "concept" of space-structure.

         I would say that the sign of his work could be that of his enucleating on the idea of "structure-space-light" (which does not mean, mind you, that he works on the level of "conceptual" research but rather, in the area of "design").

         Let us attempt to analyse it:

— singling out the means used, a specific type of support — light cardboard — with certain characteristics and "qualities:" compact, soft, particularly receptive to the incidence of light, with a fragility and preciosity, and even intangibility, which also recalls, poetically and literarily, Mallarmé's "vide papier que la blancheur défend."

— the means of intervention, which does not consist in adding another means but instead translates the means of "intervention" itself (in this distinguishing itself from the "monochrome" of Fontana or Castellani, prepared with pictorial "means"), carried out in the structural folding of the support, in manually cutting, with extreme precision but not mechanically, sections of a circle in a rhythmic-dynamic progression, almost a reference to echoes and very light repeated notes, in an allusive retrieval of certain experiments by Balla, but also by Boccioni, on the velocity of the object in space.

         In Gubinelli's work, the graphic-architectural component is continuous and essential and gives his work, which does not lack in references to Oriental abstract philosophy (references which I feel constitute an irreplaceable component in the work of American artists of "New Abstraction") a connotation of a European character, rational, without detracting from the poetic concentration of which his papers are increasingly more imbued; even more so in the present dilation of size of the work itself which, on the wall, becomes a sort of optical "fire," which involves the surrounding space, making it vibrate and dilating it — contrary, for example, to the "papers" ("Drawings which make themselves") by Dorothea Rockburne which "measure" the surrounding space, becoming extraordinary poetic-rational "modules."

         The work of Gubinelli is in the phase of auto-definition: the possible routes of assuming a definition are many; his search is anything but finished. Already very clear, however, is that he has singled out a method and an autonomous language of great incisiveness and purity.

         A method and language that already draw from a world of expressiveness and poetry which implicates a difficult and rigorous choice of behaviour and relation.

Ed. OS, Arezzo, 1977

Ed. Galleria Il Punto, Calice Ligure, Savona, 1977.

LARA VINCA MASINI, 1985

Between light-colour and space-light

         The sensitivity and capability of artists (in their "infinite awareness," as McLuhan wrote) to grasp hold of the mobility, even the most subtle and almost imperceptible, of "temperature" of the cultural moment in which they live, always succeed in overcoming any doubt or uncertainty we may have had about the natural and conscious growth of an artistic operation that has started off in a particular direction, in the moment of a "change of course."

         Indeed, in 1977 when I wrote about the work of Paolo Gubinelli whom I declared to be "in a phase of auto-definition," I added that "the possible routes of assuming a definition (were) many; his search (was) anything but finished." In order to provide a key of interpretation to the work (which remains, I feel, at least one of the functions of critics — or isn't it?), I attempted to place Gubinelli's work in the "analytical" line by definition, of modern art (or of "reflection on painting," of "analysis of means," which goes from the iridescent permeations of Balla, Fontana, Castellani, Dorazio to Support-Surface, to Newman, Reinhardt, to Agnes Martin and Dorothea Rockburne); a line which, in that moment, seemed to be on the point of exhausting its direct incisiveness on artistic culture.

         And Gubinelli, whose sensitivity is, without a doubt, extremely acute — demonstrated by the subtle and almost impalpable depth of his work — has succeeded in opening up his argument without, however, betraying its basic approach and instead evidencing unpredictable probes.

         Paper remains the unique medium by means of which he elaborates his exploration into light-colour and space-light. Initially, it was a light cardboard, white, compact and soft on which rather deep cuts and manual folding along the marks provoked, with the skimming incidence of light, thicker shadows and very distinct lines, evidencing the geometric nucleus, the "optical game" which tended to dilate in the visible space formed by the distance between the viewer and the work (one recalls reading the Manifesto of Futuristic painting of 1910, "Then all will realise that beneath our epidermis brown does not prevail, but instead yellow shines, red blazes and green, azure and violet dance voluptuous and caressing!" Gubinelli has then moved on to use an almost reflecting material, a transparent paper, almost opalescent ("tracing paper," to be exact — and this alludes to his professional activity of technical-industrial designer) on which signs are delineated with greater incisiveness and sharpness, and by means of which the sign visually passes "beyond," like Fontana's cut (the sign traced by the blade which never pierces the paper here virtually "cuts" it to "uncover messages beyond," opening "the ancestral wound, necessary passage to life," to quote verses by Gubinelli himself).

         And not only has the material used changed, but from white which, from the beginning, virtually contained all colours, from that white which then became fluid, transparent, brimming with secret colour, mysteriously latent, finally colour emerges free, vital, permeated by that light which contains it all and dilates it. On the surface, beside the light, free mark of colour, the cut which generates geometric fulcra occupies another section, offering itself to the grazing incidence of light.

         In the meantime, the support has taken on different shapes and dimensions, becoming a long roll which occupies wall and floor (a clear allusion to the Japanese Emakimono as well as to the spatial occupation of the environments) or defining itself in rhythmic composite forms in which the module is almost always the triangle.

         "The triangle," writes Gubinelli in his notes, "either as drawn figure or as a shape given to sheets of paper, or as module of sculpture in paper, always with the prevalence of height over base; it sends the eye rushing upward."

         The use of the sign, coloured, free and gestual, made with pastels and joined to sections again treated with cuts and folds, marking the limits of geometric images as though rising, is extended by Gubinelli to light cardboard, creating an effect of profound and subtle lyrical suggestion.

         The work of Gubinelli was thus born under the sign of design which, however, does not only mean "geometry."

         Who ever said that free expressiveness does not also respond to a "different" and perhaps more subtle and secret model of design?

Ed. Le Arti news, April 1-2, 1985.

Antologica, Ed. Palazzo dei Diamanti, City of Ferrara, 1987.

an other: put here..   1    2   3

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