Exhibition “Rites of Passage”

Sala della Gran Guardia Padua 2014

The exhibition “Rites of passage” presents the new pictorial cycle of the artist Cristina Cocco, “Levitations”.

Through six canvases, the exhibition presents the expansion of the artistic experimentation of Cocco based on the obsessive and careful observation of evolution that sees the inevitable parallelism between the life cycle of nature and that of man, in which life and death are the protagonists. they correspond in an endless continuum.

“I still see Cristina, sitting on the bench by the pond of the ancient botanical garden, observing the water lilies motionless in the water for hours and hours. He does not take his eyes off: he wants to take possession of the moment of metamorphosis, of the decay that gurgles softly, promising new life and new form. Painting for her, as in the old masters, tries to grasp what the eye does not see, at most it glimpses in an instant of grace; tries to restore the mystery of that metamorphosis, the nostalgia for the former form and the amazement for the beginning of what is to come.
Painting that wants to understand, by identifying itself, the experience of rotting and regenerating in that timeless time between life-death-life. Cristina goes confidently and quickly, she runs on the tightrope between the states of living materials, giving them a voice through the gallop of colors that parade rapidly pursued by light. The hour that belongs to the world makes no stops. Then, what seemed eternal running forward, stops and falls into the pond, disintegrating the colors in a generative dust. Now rhizomes, remains of nature and bubbles are swarming in the whirlpool of still water; the pond becomes a scenery, a background of lowered light deeper than the shadow, for incorporeal simulacra that rise and fly.
Some call them gases emanating from decomposing matter; someone else, will-o’-the-wisps that remain in the air; for others, for lovers of life that penetrates the earth, they are spirits of matter, figures of the light that it awakens, passengers of infinity in the womb of natura naturans. Cristina, who has stopped to observe for a long time, now climbs decisively and concentrated, sure of her own intuitions.”

Virginia Baradel