Vera Portatadino

Entitled Eyes (Imbrunire), the painting made for the Cairo Prize by Vera Portatadino is an unreleased specimen of the artist's most recent strand: the Garden series, in which the plants of an imaginary and personal herbarium are rendered with stylized signs arranged as in a sampler of symbols or as in a diagram. Each of the botanical species symbolizes a different time of life and a particular mood, from the most placid to the darkest and most tormented - among the various species are also the unmistakable carnivorous plants. “This is a painting with a shadier and darker tone,” the artist points out, comparing it with the other examples of this cycle made earlier. “A kind of labyrinthine garden whose themes are discovery and bewilderment, but also transformation. The beam of light that passes through the painting and rests on a rose then represents, in particular, the act of seeing and, symbolically, desire.” The rhythm of the composition is sustained by the hypnotic blanket of dots and crosses spread over the surface, elements that accentuate even more the “flat” reading of the painting. Associated with this vision, however, while renouncing the commonly understood idea of perspective and representation, is a feeling of depth conferred by the slow and long overlapping of veils. Overall, the work brings into dialogue opposing elements such as “natural and digital, concrete and virtual, real and abstract: reality and thought.”

Stefano Castelli