Exhibitions / Ai confini dell’abbandono (Pontassieve [Florence] 2018)

“In “Porta del vetro e della paglia”, Debora Piccinini makes a synthesis between signifier and signified, building a symbolic repertoire and an ideographic language, which sums up history and micro-history emerged from events and memoirs collected among people who worked glass and thatch, essential handicrafts for the local economy and ingenious result of the recycling of waste materials on the territory, at the boundary between self-consumption, industrial and handmade production. The creation of a decorated portal which documents the whole flasks production chain is the expression of the conversion process of the everyday object into a sacred image. Symbolic figures which take on the archaic values of the community they belong to, of its identity which has consolidated itself in work, finding its strength in social cohesion, but also symbols of the creative power of the human being, of his touch and his vital breath still imprinted in the blown glass bubbles.
The site-specific installation located at the entrance of the monumental complex of the “Muratine” in Pontassieve, in the central square of the town, chooses to confront the authenticity and simplicity of rustic art in the use of materials, techniques and the choice of subjects, with panels inspired by the Baptistery and and the Bell Tower of Florence and by the decorative motifs of the marble inlays, typical of Tuscan art since ancient times.
Every single panel is the result of long hours of work spent at the Giusti furnace in Paterno, where the artist had the opportunity to reflect on the comparison between the human dimension made of exchanges, waitings, meditation and second thoughts, which are typical of handicrafts, and the frenzy of rhythms of production and consumption imposed in industry.”
Valentina Filice