22 November, 2009 – 3:00 p.m. – Certosa Island, Venice
Exhibition/Performance curated by Lucrezia De Domizio Durini
GUALTI : ROOTS RISING UP FROM DEEP WITHIN…
Photos by Gino Di Paolo ( Archivio storico De Domizio Durini )
GUALTI
“ ROOTS RISING UP FROM DEEP WITHIN… “
Sculptures to be worn
An artistic object must not reproduce the visible, but rather reveal the invisible. (LDD).
Venice…with her gentility, with her architecture, with her light, with her beguiling charm, with her art…everything has already been said…and yet…amidst the hustle and bustle of the quarter of Dorsoduro, near Campo Santa Margherita, near the Ponte Dei Pugni, a small secluded cellar seems to beckon to us – the captivating and sophisticated shop window of Gualti.
Unusual creations are displayed in contrasting equilibrium. An art installation that, in an exquisite harmony of colour and form, represents the artistic quest of a young talent.
The atelier is entirely white, a sort of limbo, a cosy “wunderkammer” where the air emanates poetry and creativity.
In this mystical alcove enveloped in a rarefied atmosphere, almost suspended in time, emerge the surreal and spectacular sculptures of Gualti. They are sculptures that envelop the body. Sculptures to be worn A sort of fascinating universe of enchanting splendour, difficult to describe with words because art is a language in and of itself, an intense sensation, cosmic desire, sentiment of the soul.
Gualti, a youthful thirty seven-year-old originally from Padua, moved to Venice in September of 1998 to inaugurate his atelier-galleria following a long, tortuous, and sensitive evolution. He is self-taught, a “material experimenter”, an inventor of decorative forms for the body, who abandoned himself to the creativity that passionately consumes his entire existence. Since childhood, his extreme sensitivity has left him in awe when faced with the grandeur of Nature. The places of his adolescence strongly influenced the young Gualti: he would admire small rivulets of water tripping along in myriad kaleidoscopic reflections…he would observe the sinuous dance of silvery algae gracefully suspended in that mysterious crystalline surface while their harmonious movement would work an almost hypnotic spell…he would absorbingly examine the delicate buds of plants…scrutinize every detail of tiny teeming creatures and their interaction with the physical environment around them…the world behind the superficiality of reality enchants him…He is particularly attracted to everything that is beneath the surface: small fossils, twigs, stones, and above all roots…tangled, woody, branched, fibrous, tubers, sometimes aerial or creeping…He is fascinated by small anthropomorphic apparatus and their organic forms…
This crossroads of interests and visions gave rise to the creative odyssey of the man-artist Gualti.
And it is precisely from the secrets of the atmospheric and botanical environment throbbing with life that Gualti gives birth to abstract forms. Nothing is by chance.
Through creativity and awareness he creates atypical ornaments that second the body.
His creations are born from within his own soul like roots rising up from deep within. The atypical creative forms – Sculptures to be worn – are his very emotions lived with intensity, knowledge, and awareness, with love and with regal creativity. They are mysterious, guarded in a sort of precious treasure chest and, when materialised, bring his experience back through time to life.
When Gualti speaks of his creations, he basks in his own memories: …this is a cathartic need for me, in addition to being a sort of mission, manifesting my past sensations to be able to share them by granting my personal interpretation of those “luminescent reflections of burgeoning images” through the realisation of my “ethereal creatures”…they are part of my entire existence, of my way of being… of living and working in serenity…the contemplation of beauty enraptures me…
Each of his works stands testimony to his reverence of the Ego, for the Unconscious, for that which is the sublimation of being…Gualti…I abandon myself to emotions and urges… it is a joy for me to render those moments of particular emotional intensity tangible…make the invisible visible…it’s like seeking to solidify the evanescent esoteric filigree of Nature…melding the organic and inorganic…transforming the dream into reality…
A demanding perfectionist, he is always seeking new stimuli and forms that second his creative evolution. Gualti’s ornaments never betray aesthetics, but always and in any case evoke grand formal elegance. They are born of the equilibrium of free creativity. They are spontaneous, radiant, harmonious atypical expressions that emerge from a sweet spiritual serenity. In each of his jewels he seeks “the sense of lightness”, using particularly unusual materials, assembled and fused with an extraordinary vision, always experimenting in a new, magical, and unique idiom…
Gualti is a visual poet who illuminates the ontological nature of his perceptive explorations.
Jewels and ornaments in a rainbow spectrum, apparently fragile or difficult to wear…but in reality as supple and lightweight as feathers. They are extensions of life…to be savoured every instant of every day, and can be touched and worn casually, but certainly without going unobserved…Glassy hearts pulsating with light like watery mirrors, from which transparent filaments and iridescent tips reach out – offshoots of light – as Gualti defines them. The pins rest on shoulders like fanciful flowers just blossomed….the pendants caress necklines like shimmering drops of water…the swirls of vibrant filaments encircle necks like sparkling rings of pearly dew…rigid chokers shoot forth long and sinuous pistils like exotic tropical blooms blowing in a sea breeze…Bracelets…rings…earrings…collars
…headpieces…the entire body is willingly captured, dressed, and transformed by these organic sculpture-jewels that Gualti defines as extensions of the body. They are indefinable architectures, timeless in alternating lights, shadows, colours, volumes, asymmetries, and movement…The universe of Gualti continues with the creation of his stoles… : Silks…organza… taffetas,…and anything else that can be wrapped around the body like a cocoon…Original plissé of iridescent fabrics crumples surprisingly, enhanced by voluminous sinuous hems that form spirals evoking diaphanous creatures of unexplored abysses….His jewellery can be minute and ethereal like the mottled wings of a scarab or sumptuous like Egyptian jewels…liquid like the stuff of dreams…they can move, dance, caress, jingle…each living its own life.
Every creation is unique – absolutely original.
A work of art. Sculptures to be worn
Gualti transforms his deepest emotions, his dreams, his fantasies, and desires into ornaments for the body and soul…a sort of perpetual voyage in time and space, where there is no beginning and no end, but rather a continual evolution that seeks and affirms its “sensations”.
He explores paths of refined stylistic perfection that transcend the object and project it towards the symbolic value of a gift with no return, towards the discovery of new poetics that then enriches, once again, the secret treasure chest of dreams.
The oneiric experience of the artist Gualti: Sculptures to be worn
by Lucrezia De Domizio Durini
