UN.limited 2017 Painting

Ilaria Franza is inspired by the romanticism, getting lost in the storm of William Turner’s work, in Caspar David Friedrich views. Observing nature and the landscape with the heart and the eyes of a romantic. She realises, too, in that deep turmoil, that mixture of physical and emotional, the unseen can emerge, brought out from things you can only feel. These landscapes thus allow us to look beyond the horizon and over the landscape itself. They become places of the soul, dream-like views that are mixed together and melt into each other; soul and dream, like watercolour and water. Therefore, the real landscapes become abstract, and by emerging from the water, in turn make the invisible visible. Water is at the heart of this work, it is pivotal. It is by no coincidence that the artist’s works are watercolours, and the language of water is its initial gesture. It is for this reason that this medium of Ilaria Franza’s works. A work of patience that emerges from the water, to blend with colour. The water and the colour is shifted, moved, channelled. With technical gestures, focused and precise, Ilaria moves the canvas in a slow dance, thoughtful and meticulous. As the artist, she leads and moves. The water can, however, control, direct, manage, but will always be independent, with its own energy. Ilaria is not afraid of this water flowing: drifting, running with her. Moreover, this is why in addition to watercolours, her work sometimes goes as far as using acrylic or ink. Observing the boundary between heaven and earth, connecting with its subconscious dimension, made up of forgotten thoughts, of silence. In addition, the colour drips, sometimes with aggressive gestures, sometimes with calm and thoughtful gestures. Then colour is shaken, moved, shifted. It makes her prone to using any instrument: rags, brushes, spatulas, droppers. It acts as an acrobat, in a constant struggle with the force of gravity, in a precarious balance between the power of the elements and the need to control them. The work of Ilaria Franza is a becoming, like water passing and turning. Like water that has the power to quench our thirst or drown us, to destroy or quench the earth. Drying with the air, her paintings reveal new forms, previously hidden. She does not lose sight of them, but renews them, optimises them, corrects them, delimits the levees. In addition, by shuffling the colour and then moving it, it gets wet. She adds water on water.