Work sheet
Technical data
| year | 2023 |
| purchase date | acquired in the portfolio |
| estimated current value in € | consult the updated Price Table |
| identification of the subject | abstract painting/reconstructivist work |
| materials and techniques | oil on canvas/mixed media/material work |
| measurements in centimeters cm | 100 x 80 x 1,8 |
| inscriptions | signature |
| inscription technique | oil |
| inscription position | on the back/bottom/right |
| transcription | Valvo |
| authenticity certificate | issued at the same time as the sale |
| art multiples | no print issued |
| state of conservation | intact work |
| location of the work | Rome · Italy |
| copyright | © all rights reserved · global · S.I.A.E. |
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Description of work
Wild Ride
What stands out about this work at first glance is evidently its labyrinthine and frenetic nature, expressed with absolute immediacy by the serpentine and linear ensemble that characterizes its general development.
In support of this narrative there is only white, black and a plethora of intermediate greyish tones, which agitate frantically emerging vehemently from this bichromatic and decidedly elusive mixture.
It should also be noted that the author’s characteristic pictorial elements, such as quadratures, circles, lines and symbolic writings, assume here, for the first time, the same nature: they are homogenised, so to speak. That is, they have the same semantic function, which does not happen at all in other works by Valvo.
The interpenetrations, fusions, splits, linear overlaps and, more generally, the dynamics of the trajectories, support one of the two key points in reading the work, namely the profound three-dimensionality. This is not a two-dimensional work in the strict sense, far from it. It lives and thrives on the intricate dynamism that is its own, sanctioning its proceeding in a poly-dimensional way, on multiple levels. In this regard and as is typical of this author, the boundary between the different dimensions is anything but explicit: it is an almost indecipherable although perceptible limit. It is, we could say, a veiled limit. And, in the points of contact between these multiple dimensional planes, lies the second key element of interpretation: the extended viscosity of the pictorial areas. These are massless areas. The work, in fact, deprives itself in this case of any “ballast”. It literally strips itself of any relationship between weights and counterweights, triggering a furious hyper-dynamic and generalized flow. This peculiar diegetic development sees the areas of light, which fade towards pure white, as a contextualising factor of this action. On the other hand, areas of chromatic stagnation, real “grey zones” or “median zones”, in which the light factor is considerably attenuated, evoke a sensation of drastic slowing down of the dynamics at play.
In this alternation between light and shadow, between hyper-speed and drastic slowdowns, a specific mysterious connotation is hidden which irrefutably seals the unique flavor of this composition.
In the visual approach to the work we are fully subject, by will of the artist, to a true “free will”: that is, we possess an almost “infinite” series of options, a set of possible directional choices. We must therefore decide subjectively where to direct our eye and which paths to follow, favoring them over others. Therefore, the randomness of the choice.
This aspect means that each individual approaches the pictorial canvas in a different way: in a subjective way. What we have in front of us is objectively present. The way we want to enjoy it instead branches out into more and more individual choices. This makes the relationship with the work of art in question something intimate and personal.
In this work there is, however, a sort of underlying restlessness. A widespread frenzy.
Here one is running away from something or running towards something else. Probably both things simultaneously. The tautological reiteration in the tangle of lines produces conceptual stress, an interpretative nervousness.
Furthermore, there is a clear parallel between the external “aerial” vision and the expression of an internal state of mind. That is, there is a substantial duplicity in the pictorial meaning itself.
This picture is, in reality, a “race towards nowhere” and, at the same time, the stubborn return towards oneself. This makes this work a key work for every subsequent step in the author’s stylistic evolution. A fundamental stage of reconstructivist research.
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