The constructive energy in the artistic world of Emilio CIANFONI
Flows of forces that hold matter together and streams of energy rolling from body to body support the physical reality around us. If we could distinguish the waves that continually cross our surrounding space, we would perceive fluid energy that moves in all directions, rippled by electromagnetic rivulets on a static layer of radio and heat waves. Well, this world that our eyes cannot see can be captured by the creative eye of the mind. This is what Emilio Cianfoni does for us. His undulating brushstrokes render the dynamic essence of the world as it is transported by streams of energy that are neither violent nor destructive; they have nothing of nuclear energy. Cianfoni’s disciplined waves run one after the other, moving layers of positive energy: a healthy chemistry that we need to face life and to fill it with concrete things and hopes.
In one of his latest works, Cianfoni juxtaposes physical reality and the reality of painting: they are two worlds—one touchable, rough, concrete, the other imaginable, colorful, and impalpable— each in the service of the other. In a baroque perspective, he puts a used, military boot, in front of one of his painted canvas, amidst a crescendo of multicolored layers from which numerous waves reverberate one over the other. What is the significance of this combination? Its dialectical meaning is to be found in its glaring contrast. The canvas is the world to be built, made of positive energy to be consumed for good, a mass of “orderly”, overlapping, and wavy layers of energy. The boot, instead—painted with the same palette used for the canvas—helps us walk toward that world, which must be our ultimate goal. Hence, the physical world leads us to an imagined domain. Alas, prudence requires that the boot is used in the right way, because it may become instrument of war and destruction when in the hands of ambitious and authoritarian people. And this is the artist’s admonition: anything used in the wrong way can bring sadness and loss. If the boot is intended to help man to overcome difficulties and to reach betterment for all, then it has the same colors of the waves that man aims to achieve since the beginning. In this way, even a military boot becomes a malleable object that conforms to the will of the one who uses it, and can perform other actions. The title of this work, “Towards the goal”, hints to the subtle conceptual creation entrusted to both painting and object; it invites us to look in the right direction since the beginning, in order to help build a better world for our children.
Artist Emilio Cianfoni has been experiencing the potential consonance between matter and painting for years. Through his artwork and an engaging palette, Cianfoni delivers messages that are easy to comprehend and that at the same time help us observe and discern what is unseen in our world. Perhaps the very things that escape our sight conceal the secret of our being.
Roma, Febbraio 2015 Aldo Carrozza