Free Play

Rossella Ramanzini labors diligently over each of her paintings. There are layers upon layers of pattern and silhouettes, each shape needing to be left to dry before the next adjacent mark may be placed on the panel. Her technique has developed through years of experimentation with unusual tools and countless processes. Although it could be a frustrating exercise of endurance, it has been a labor of patience and love.

The title “Free Play” is an apt description of the artist´s working experience. She explains that her method is like a game or a puzzle of shapes, colors, and humor, mixing elements over and over again until the perfect outcome is achieved. Looking at the compositions closely we can discover the subtle, intellectual games that Ramanzini is indeed “playing”.

The artist´s imagery and concept bring to the surface a luscious engagement of patterns, colors, and profiles. Ramanzini´s work exhibits her skill in art, craft, design, and decoration, much as in the Italian post-war design renaissance when architects collaborated freely with artists and designers, and when arts and crafts reveled in conspiring together to produce wondrous products, structures, and installations. One finds a perfect reference in the words of the Milanese painter, sculptor and designer Piero Fornasetti when interviewed by art historian and curator Shara Wasserman, “Design is what the Italians do naturally. Spontaneously. It is restraint, harmony, and balance.” These words apply perfectly to the work created by artist Rossella Ramanzini. In addition, Fornasetti´s work has been described as belonging to a magical world, saturated in image and color, and filled with whimsy and wit. The influence here is wonderfully evident. And while Ramanzini leads us down a similar rabbit hole in this body of work, it is decidedly her own surreal world of fashion, sport, games, and a touch of humor. All this is composed through delicate, stylized silhouettes, and ironic juxtapositions.

In this particular world, although we do find references of a lighthearted place where games are celebrated, some forms, either those that are standing fixed or those that float across the surface, are in contrast and appear to have a double significance. They cause us to look beyond the façade to deeper social meanings. When we look at some of these subtle image choices, we see that we too are perhaps asked to play the game, to solve the riddle, or find the missing puzzle piece. The artist´s work reminds us of the work of M.C. Escher, artist and master draftsman. In viewing his work or that of Ramanzini´s, we can choose to simply enjoy the fanciful placement of patterns and geometrics, or we can look deeper to discover the meaning of questions posed: rain drops falling through a bleak gray sky, men staring face to face before a backdrop of pawns, an upside down crown floats over a female silhouette, and divers hang in mid air as if time had stopped.

Rossella Ramanzini was born in Brescia, Italy, where today she continues to live and work. She graduated in technical studies and began experimenting with painting on her own, discovering a personal vocabulary that allowed for explorations through out a range of Neo-Pop and Optical Art. Many of the Pop artists, notably Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein and Jim Dine used a striking graphic style reminiscent of commercial art, and often employed printmaking, especially lithography and silkscreen to achieve a cool and detached approach. Ramanzini achieves a similar sensibility but through the use of hand cut stencils and tapes creating hard edges between the adjoining painted colors that renders a crisp and contemporary look to her works.

We cannot complete a discussion on the artist without going back further to reveal or ponder influences of a distant past. Vittorio Trainini, a celebrated artist from Brescia, was Ramanzini´s great uncle. He is renowned for his painting, sculpture, architecture, and frescoes in more than 100 churches. The artist mentions as well the direct influence of yet another artist, also an older family relative. Maybe for some it is purely coincidence, or perhaps it is the destiny of all Italian artists to be influenced, in some form or other, by their rich cultural heritage. In the works of Rossella Ramanzini, one has only to look at the exquisite use of colored geometric patterns bordering many Italian frescoes, or the balanced symmetry of beautifully designed rose windows, and this historic source of inspiration becomes evident. It is fortunate that these elements have found their way to surface again and they are applied in the artist´s own perfect balance of contemporary expression.

Whether the artist´s work reflects styles long past, or an artistic movement closer to our contemporary experience, what matters more is the end result. It is her particular poetic use of concentrated surface design and the subtle allusions to humanity that interest us. It is her depiction of the games we play, sometimes winning and sometimes losing that fascinate the observer.

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Alette Simmons-Jimenez
Simmons-Jimenez is an artist, curator, and writer based in Miami.

 

 

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