Daimon Painting

Paola Brusa graduated in Architecture with a qualification in design, worked then as a designer and interior designer. Her engagement with painting has been periodically renewed in recent years, showing a “borderline” meeting, an escape from conventions into unknown territories that embrace a dreamlike dimension. Her investigation emphasizes the body and the inadequacy of “being”: the body becomes a theatre of emotions, where the δαίμων (daimon) is shaken, and polarity between Eros and Thanatos underlines intertwined emotions and their opposition. They are deforming faces. Liquefied, they melt, break up, multiply, are overwhelmed by the “odyssey of being”, showing a variety of emotional diagrams. Drawing becomes a tool to cross streams of consciousness, the direct link between conscious and unconscious, a bridge between two worlds conveying fragments of the “self” on canvas. Uncomfortable and irreverent shapes stand out, screeching, writhing and meandering in search of authenticity, in an effort to listen to their own horror vacui and manage their own internal space. The only constant element is transformation itself, “the change”. When the path seems tracked, when the scream and the emotion seem trapped by the matter that has shaped them, there is a new unexpected metamorphosis that reshapes itself on the “emotional magma”, reclining on fears, nostalgia, anger, shame, desire and joy. Silences hide unexploded screams, visions, and deep fractures that suddenly, and without warning, scratch and explode in some obscure area. With the same intensity, they draw plastic diagrams in the faces’ folds, sculpting maps narrating the story of each of us. Sometimes they are “off-key chords” struggling to resist the schizophrenia of outer contaminations, and struggle to find harmony and balance. The urgency sets off the need to find new eyes, to free them from known behaviour, as a purifying ritual leaving the old bag, the “chrysalis”, and ready for endless transformations. As when the dancing star generated from chaos explodes, and the uncreated takes/WELCOMES it (back) again into its chaos. (Nietzsche)