I wandered lonely as a cloud

The bliss of solitude. The state of being alone is often times associated with anguish, isolation, exile. What if we shift our contemporary perspectives and try to imagine a rather positive image of loneliness, in a post-romantic vision of the world?

It is, of course, difficult to have an escapist view on nature, when our world is threatened every day by ecological disasters; yet there are other means available. And the present exhibition explores this possibility – the one of internalizing “nature”, as an epitome for all things, not man-made. Inner and outer nature sublimely collide in the artworks exhibited and wandering, lightly, between these two instances offers a particular pleasure to be experienced. This comes no to reinforce the myth of the artist – as a secluded, close to madness individual – but rather to contradict it. The artists operate through direct observation and participation and layer both visual and conceptual knowledge, by being able to recreate experiences through memory and perception.

The exhibition’s title hints at this equanimity, rejecting the stigma normally associated with being alone and in a state of burden. In solitude, there is also the opportunity to think, recollect and dream.The viewer is confronted not with a self-imposed solitude, but to a temporal and special inner density of emotional intimacy, gathered in different dispositions and aesthetic laminations. Inspired by a poem written by the romantic poet William Wordsworth, “I wandered lonely as a cloud” is an open invitation to contemplation and introspection on our relation to both our inner and outer world(s). 

As the German painter Caspar David Friedrich said: “The artist should not only paint what he sees before him, but also what he sees within him. If, however, he sees nothing within him, then he should also omit to paint that which he sees before him.” It is not that art denies the existence of an independent, objective reality: rather, it is that such reality can only be described through the subjective experience of the individual: the world is only known to us through our imaginative responses to it, and artists, with their heightened receptiveness to feelings, are best placed to reveal it.

The intimate scale of the different mediums – from painting, to drawing, video and 3 D printed objects – determines the concentrated intensity of the compositions, with a controlled energy of spirit. Content to be in secret seclusion, the reposed figures and instances in the works appear at peace and mark the transition into a resolutely optimistic future – one in which to flourish and grow. 

No matter how hard we try to eliminate forms of suffering from our existence, it has become essential to the progress of the human species and, moreover, in the forms of artistic expression. Visual art presents itself as an extension and at the same time as a reflection on the ontological and social changes of humanity, developing provocative approaches to humanity, about human nature, about the world they constantly build and destroy, in order to reconfigure it. (𝑀𝑖𝑟𝑒𝑙𝑎 𝑆𝑡𝑜𝑒𝑎𝑐-𝑉𝑙𝑎̆𝑑𝑢𝑡̦𝑖, 𝐴𝑑𝑎 𝑀𝑢𝑛𝑡𝑒𝑎𝑛)