OPUS COLLECTION – IN NERO ASSOLUTO ZIMBABWE, CARBON AND POTRLAND GREY STONE. PHOTOS BY DIGITALMOVIE, 2023

Opus is a series of limited-edition pieces commissioned by Bagnara to Draw Studio. Stone becomes a medium and a matter to shape. Design borders on art, experimenting with cutting-edge techniques and hybridizing forms and languages of expression. In Lucio Fontana work’s footsteps – a fundamental focus for European spatialism, according to whom the canvas was the known dimension beyond which one should venture to find unexplored spaces – in this series of works too the painting skin represents a spatial limit. However, the line here is ductile, flexible, it bends to inexorably push back any attempt of laceration, as if it were a soft, deformable yet impenetrable prison. Or as with Zilia Sànchez – who exploits the surface of her paintings like the mirror of a lived space – here too the matter symbolizes an introspective dimension, the turmoil of hidden emotions incessantly throbbing toward the outside, toward the tangible surface, emerging slightly without completely revealing themselves.

In the Opus collection, geometric shapes take centre stage. Symbols of perfection, harmony and balance, almost creating a complete geometric code, these figures emerge from a distant horizon, to impress themselves on the surface of the painting, which becomes deformed like a canvas, and crystallizes their memory forever. Not just physical tension, but also symbolic, intimate, profound, a repressed impulse rising to the surface. The stillness of sensible reality, upheaved by an evanescent idea of perfection and control. An interpretation should also be social. Now more than ever, our society needs to deal with the past. The quality and weight of the choices we’ve made are coming back to haunt us. Abuse and [social, environmental] interventions have increasingly tangible consequences on our present. Role models falter, and an inner restlessness plagues our souls from within, and resurfaces in our lives.