Sylvan Reliquary

It is important to emphasize how the tension between sacred and profane has found a privileged place within this current series. If with “Loto Nero” the sacred is mixed with the profane through the spiritual ascent of the phallic forms of nature towards the heights of the heavens; in “Sylvan Reliquary” it is the feminine and the fertile roundness that takes over the visual ambiguity by inviting us to reconnect with our impulses. Indeed, it is in the forest’s maze that we let ourselves become transported and where we are at peace with “the intimate immensity”. It is there, in the undergrowth – where we lose the horizon and where human laws seem suspended – that we find our primary passions: we are prey and predator, we experience the caresses of the wind and greenery. One hears astonishing sounds and one breathes pungent odours. We are far from urban constraints: the desiring part of our entire being stands out.

From a technical point of view, although these are obviously photographs, the primary contact with composition is voluntarily modified in relation with conventional photography. This is achieved by adding other photographic effects borrowed from engraving and painting to the snapshot of reality.

This “aesthetic relationship” is not specific to the current series. It constitutes a line of strength in the overall visual production of the artist. This combination of different tools of expression helps to create an ideal that is not limited by the strict reproduction of reality, but a quest to restore the complexity of perception. Gastaldi chases this manifestation: it seems she does not distinguish between the emotion she has of life and the way she translates it.

In order to reinforce her conceptual remarks, always on the lookout for the best printing methods, the artist introduces us to piezography, which currently embodies the best digital technique to sublimate a black and white photograph. This process, developed by Jon Cone, mixes warm, neutral and cold inks, giving life to deep black colours that absorb light as much as possible and are insensitive to UV. The photographs are thus very stable over time. This system is composed of eight monochromatic inks and a clear varnish. This allows one to obtain an extremely precise rendering in all the light ranges: from high to low through the intermediate.

Additional technical feat: the large format of these works approaches the monumental. As a matter of fact, the vast dimensions produce a saturation of the visual horizon and implicates a proximity of the spectator with the direct material of the artwork.

The resulting effect is that of capturing the gaze, which induces the contemplative pause that characterizes the relationship to pictorial works in the West (at least until the middle of the 20th century). According to the artist, stillness is the only way to bring a fixed image to life. For a very long time, by working exclusively with the photographic medium, Gastaldi has only very rarely suggested movement, leaving things to portray themselves. As we observe the images from the “Sylvan Reliquary” series, everything is frozen, enveloped in silence. Yet, all the elements suggest movement.

It is as if these “tree-bodies” were stuck in a dense liquid. By elaborating slow images, Gastaldi shows her rejection of the usual fractions of seconds found in contemporary photography. She invites us to discover her own way of gradually filling space with a dull melancholia, like an eye slowly filling up with tears.

The visual artist makes slowness her signature and draws us skilfully into a space out of time, where we can consider the bucolic landscape not as a “decorative nature”, populated by unanimated resources, but instead, as a “living tissue of the river” in all its richness and creativity.

Her work not only pushes us into self-reflection but also opens vast trails of exploration around broad subjects on aesthetics, politics and metaphysics linked to the relationship that man has with nature.