Paola Paganelli

Born in 1946

Italy

https://www.paolapaganelli.it/

date of insertion in W.A.D. 06/2024

Biography

lt is here in the dark and humid depths of this Padana soil that my works have their roots. I create them and keep them in an old home-studio in the countryside of Ferrara, not far from the Po, where peace and silence, indispensable to my art, reign.

There is never real detachment between home and work, because my whole life takes piace within these walls and in the fields apposite, where nature speaks and inspires me. Every day I climb the stairs that lead me to the two upper floors where I have my studio and slowly begin to weave my plots, writing my words of straw or iron wire, free from any debt or duty with the client. Freedom and silence necessary for that forgotten language of the origins to emerge again and become materiai expression.

I surround myself with objects from the past, memories of myself or of the territory, the necessary humus of a work that needs a long time to ferment and spread. Especially in the lighter and more aerial works I almost have the impression of telling the silence concentrated in the intimacy of my daily life.

My artistic research has been long, driven by a vibration that seems tome to have started directly from the movement of the hands occupied with sewing, shredding, ironing, marking, modelling … The ancient gestures of women that give time to thought and let it decant. Like a wayfarer I follow uncertain and vague paths, in a progressive and continuous adaptation and interaction with the poor materials I use: iron, wood, fabric, plaster, cement, paper … In some of these I find strength, resistance, permanence; in ones, lightness, flexibility, transparency, fragility. I was particularly attracted by iron, which proved to be the most suitable materiai for the expression of my inner world.

I built iron small and large, abstract, scriptural, or figurative forms to be placed with rigor in closed spaces or in the environment, even in the form of installations. My challenge with this materiai, so cold and resistant, was to work it as if I had a silk thread in my hands. lt was therefore necessary to have a strong and determined touch, but at the same time respectful, non-violent, open to the intrinsic suggestions that carne from it, in creating aerial sculptures, in transparency, where full counts as much as empty and stable as precarious.

Continuous sources of inspiration were both nature and words, poetry in particular. Writing, words that in some works emerge with their full and explicit communicative force, while in other ones they break, fragmented into letters scattered like residues or pickled in symbols that contain them…

AII my work, in the end, can be traced back to the thread that binds the individuai to the others and that in the hands of artists becomes a lace that – like the thread of speech, dialogue, writing – weaves its existence to that of the world. That thread, perhaps sought or perhaps found by chance, has remained, over time, harnessed to my hand that writes, that acts. I still follow it. Sometimes I stumble into it and when I fear that I have broken it, I patiently tie it again. So metaphorically, I weave my life.

Curriculum

Diploma: Business Expert and Correspondent in foreign languages.
Employee at the Contracts Office of the Municipality of Bondeno from 1969 to 1992.
I approached the world of art as a self-taught artist in the seventies, with a purely pictorial language, out of curiosity, passion, the need to do and experiment. Sources of inspiration, then as now: literature, poetry and nature.

In the nineties, matter takes over and I create the first sculptures and installations in which I investigate the different expressive and linguistic possibilities of different materials such as cement, wood, plaster, iron and textiles.

Attracted in particular by the potential of fabric and the slow but vigorous gesture with which to sew, manipulate and stuff the cloth, I began to create soft sculptures, almost fetishes: fantastic animals, dolls, puppets, inhuman beings, little monsters … fruit of fantasies, dreams, memories, disturbances.

In the early 2000s, parallel to that of fabric, and for a need for lightness, I began a new artistic path, using simple iron wire in transparent wefts and meshes that filter the air: a complex network, a tangle of thoughts, a writing of the soul.

My most recent installations constitute, both for the materials used and for the frequent destination in natural spaces, a sort of reflection on the relationship between history / myth and culture / nature, on the antithesis between exploitation and respect.

Over the years I have exhibited in various solo and group exhibitions. I will mention a few:
Group exhibition at Sale Finarte in Milan in 1988
Group exhibition at Sale Finarte in Rome in 1988
Group exhibition at Flash Art Museum in Trevi in 1995
Group exhibition at Flash Art Museum in Trevi in 1997
Personal exhibition at Casa dell’Ariosto in Stellata (FE) in 1999
Personal exhibition at BEZARTE in Ferrara in 2000
Personal exhibition “NO WAR”- Rocca Possente in Stellata (FE) in 2003
Group exhibition at Chiostro S. Paolo in Ferrara in 2004
Group exhibition “Rintracciarti” – Mantua in 2006
Permanent installation at Hotel Palladio in Vicenza in 2007
Personal exhibition “Mia Cara”- Rocca di Cento (FE) in 2008
Permanent installation – A.P.I. of Vicenza in 2010
Personal exhibition “The Tears of Eros” – Galleria del Carbone in Ferrara in 2012
Group exhibition “Lights on the Walls” – Porta degli Angeli in Ferrara in 2012
National Sculpture Exhibition “ST. GEORGE, the DRAGON and the PRINCESS” – Ferrara in 2014
Asolo Art Biennial in 2014
Personal exhibition “The Emptiness and the Fullness” – Galleria “Il Vicolo” in Bondeno (FE) in 2014
Personal exhibition “The Mystery of the Goddesses” – Galleria Rrose Sèlavy – Ferrara in 2015
Installation of a participatory art project – Pinacoteca Comunale in Bondeno (FE) in 2015
Group exhibition “Niccolini” Award in Ferrara in 2016
Installation at the Galleria “Il Vicolo”, Bondeno (FE) in 2017
Group exhibition “TUTTE” – “Magi” Museum in Pieve di Cento (BO) in 2018
Installations at the “Il Vicolo” Gallery in Bondeno (FE9 in 2018
Installations at the “Il Vicolo” Gallery in Bondeno (FE) in 2019
Personal exhibition “Condemned to madness” – “Magi” Museum in Pieve di Cento (BO) in 2019
Various environmental works in the Ferrara countryside 2019- 2020- 2021-2022-2023
Collective exhibition “The Soft Revolution” Textile Museum in Busto Arsizio – 2022
Collective exhibition “Spirit: gold and light” –Palazzo Mariani Cicogna in Busto Arsizio -2022
Collective exhibition “Visible/Invisible” – Textile Museum in Busto Arsizio – 2024
Personal exhibition at the “Il Vicolo di Bondeno”:”Landscape with figures” -2024
Group exhibition “Riding a broomstick” – Ex Asilo nido L’Aquila – 2024