A mezz'aria: La Linea Arte Contemporanea, Rome

Nature, vision, and memory are closely intertwined in the work of Corina Surdu, a young and talented artist who lyrically and with great expressive and formal awareness translates a poetics that, while rooted in the representation of the wonder of nature, constructs other worlds—an affective analogy of distant perceptions, already lived and processed, changed in meaning and intensity in the solitude of consciousness, where they are imbued with symbolic resonances and prominent references to the art of the past.

The natural element, the emotional and poetic starting point, is transfigured into abstract images of great imaginative breadth, through the filter of a temporal sedimentation: reality—whether seen or imagined, but always stubbornly regarded as an indispensable point of departure—assumes new forms, expanded and transformed in memory: they are complex, multi-dimensional constructions that take on different meanings and configurations depending on the point of view, at a distance or up close, from which we observe them.

The woodcuts, often large in size, are permeated and sustained by powerful and continuous chiaroscuro vibrations, achieved through the use of small etched marks that outline a visionary world, dynamic and restless, at times dark and gloomy, or explicitly nocturnal, animated by invisible and subterranean forces. These are visions of skies, or perhaps galaxies, clouds or, rather, oceans and abysses, leaves and forests observed under a microscope; they are interior, mental landscapes, with uncertain spatial coordinates, sometimes inverted, that become vibrating matter in continuous movement. We are thus projected into pulsating, boiling worlds, but with frayed borders, pulling us into vortices without certain directions.

We find ourselves “A mezz’aria - In mid-air,” as the title of the exhibition suggests, in an in-between space, suspended between sky and earth, which envelops us, disorients us, but makes us feel part of a cosmic universe, both actors and spectators, in a panicked and all-encompassing vision of nature.

 Text by Beatrice Peria

 

 

I have known Corina Surdu since 2016 when, distinguished by her sensitivity and remarkable technical ability, she attended the woodcut course I taught at the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome. Although she also practised painting, the young artist had the courage and tenacity to plumb the woodcut medium, finding a highly effective personal language over time. I speak of courage because in the last 15 years, engraving has seen its appeal to galleries and collectors throughout Europe and even more so in Italy, where, Eroica period aside, woodcuts have never put down deep roots. In pursuing this path, Surdu was guided by the example of great contemporary artists who established themselves mainly through the language of graphics and particularly woodcuts, from Chuck Close, Vija Celmins and Franz Gertsch to the younger Christiane Baumgartner. They all start from a photographic image of real elements, while Corina's conceptual core stems from an emotional perception of nature and proceeds on the thin ridge between reality and abstraction, finding different balances each time. His are images of an interiorised landscape, which transcend the mimetic translation of reality, leaving room for a psychic dimension as well and offering multiple keys to interpretation. The elements of nature mingle and overlap: the almost magmatic mass of engraved signs can be read at different distances as a wave of water, a breath of air, a tongue of fire or flowering earth. When engraving, Corina keeps her index finger very close to the gouge blade, exploiting the possibility of easily rotating and tilting the tool with the movement of her wrist: the result is a wide range of marks, different in shape and size, engraved in the pvc matrix, a compact and at the same time ductile material. The signs engraved by the artist attract and repel each other as in a magnetic field and determine, with their rhythms, the structure of light. Light that is the true protagonist of the woodcut work, enhanced in these sheets by Prussian blue, which here loses its referentiality to acquire a spiritual value.

 Text by Marina Bindella