Uneasiness Unveiled
Ten years have already passed since the meeting with Sandro Carloni’s artistic activity; today I notice different and deep results. At that time Carloni appeared to me in his role, seemingly humble and naïve, of the illustrator, usually and erroneously considered a service role, almost an extension in images of someone else’s text. Even then, though, he stood out for an “increasing centrality of light” that produced, by emerging from an invincible shadow of the background, an indefinite atmosphere of disquieting refinement. Up until now, Carloni showed to manage without any hesitation the most varied techniques (Indian ink, charcoal, tempera, watercolour, mixed media, etc.), but the present insisted use of oil paintings made with different materials, seems the choice that most corresponds an inner need perceived as unavoidable: almost a mental and instrumental need to succeed in expressing the most secret things still hiding deep inside himself. In conclusion, the uncertain and absorbed atmosphere, the never shouted presences despite the assiduous use of colour, the landscapes’ widespread brightness, the central emergence of an element which resists the vertigo of the impending cosmos, manage, all together, to unveil a condition of painful loneliness which isn’t individual anymore but it involves the common destiny of our contemporaneity. Especially his sea proposes itself with the ability to overcome the deserts of the soul, on which it still clusters with hopeless strength the last shrub of life. His sea, an impending mass even when it’s distant, is capable of conveying the imminence of the unrivalled mystery that reveals itself to men when they become aware of their inability to dominate it. As if we’re looking in a mirror, we can see the reflection of uncertainties and trepidation, condemnations and existential hope by whom we’re often unconsciously tormented. Carloni’s art helps us to reveal them.
Fabio Ciceroni