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Et il y a
de la musique
1978-1980
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
76 x 61 x 7,5 cm |
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Multivision
1989
Huile sur toile
Oil on panel
30 x 40,5 cm |
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Composition
1970-1971
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
51 x 41 x 7 cm |
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Montage no
1
1979-1980
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
91,5 x 71 x 8 cm |
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Moreover, the painter
arranges enclosed chambers, similar to chambers in the
heart (Sans titre, 1999), boxes, cases (Composition
no 4, 1975; Et il y a de la musique, 1978-1980),
he carves out niches covered with landscapes of the soul,
the monad. A reorganization of spent forces thus occurs
in the intimate feeling of reordering, psychic repair,
wound cauterization. In these pierced boxes and slit bellies,
opened up by the painter to better evoke closure, prohibition,
the outlined places are inscribed within the visible,
despite their inaccessibility. If they are rendered perceptible,
it is as hiding places where the painter made his depositions
(La lettre, 1976). Here reigns the immeasurable
silence of the object, the thing set down, perhaps buried
. . . unless it is the void, a void that possesses no
absence, but on the contrary forces the feeling of a secret
but tangible meta-presence.
Here and there, checkerboards, lattices, indecipherable
signs, impenetrable trails proliferate where space tightens,
air condenses between lines, stains, molecular membranes,
raised pools of colourful material. The placed and displaced
enigma privately symbolizes the enigmatic nature of any
work of art, even when it imposes itself as the objectified
enjoyment of the self, autonomous body, yet imbued with
mystery. Though a somewhat labyrinthine structure introduces
the Daedalus, the threads get lost, tangled, initiating
a dead-end search of jumbled pathways, circuits that turn
out to be closed (Multivision, 1989). Visually
executed indices of loss, aberration, or else the pure
pleasure savoured while lingering within the confines
of the work, in no hurry to leave. Time then-suspended
is inlaid in the meandering lines, pathways, outbursts,
events of colourful material.
When simplifying these effects prevails, when reducing
the means holds sway, then the reinforcement of plastic
articulations is imposed through superimposed planes,
opaque screens, inscribing the gaze as the stand-in for
gesture and vice versa.
Then, large sections built as monolithic surfaces are
stripped down, minimized (Composition, 1970-1971;
Composition en noir et gris, 1981). They stand,
in the shape of more-or-less-irregular crosses, triangles,
squares, held and tied by the glued ropes that bind them.
Thus they are erected, in implacable silence, mono- or
bichromatic sobriety, matching the simplicity, the mute
monumentality of temples and tombs. A meditation space
then opens up, inert surfaces, awaiting the Event.
Other works appear as large totems, rising hieratically
and restrained. An almost-dormant surface (Composition
façade, 1983-1984), or rather, one stilled
within its cold shell, a figure frozen in a frontal position,
where minuscule signs, tremours, fissures, crack the sedimented
layer of white/blue/grey. As though the surface were no
more than a sensitive plate where appear, proliferate,
minute palpitations of frosted flowers, the apposition
of a few fingers with phalanges placed symmetrically in
the secret geometry of a body buried, flat on funeral
pallet, palpable surface, palpitating in certain tiny
places. In this flattening of vibrant shapes, one might
read undulating, subterranean lines, the effect of multiple
folding “in a coextensivity of the unveiling and
veiling of the Being, the presence and withdrawal of being.” ( 4)This
would be equivalent to what Mallarmé calls “the
fold of the world”, where the fold folds over itself
in inclusion, “packed down in thickness, offering
the minuscule tomb, certainly soul.” (5) A matter of monad in this differential in-folding of being
and world, outside and inside, façade and chamber.
If materials give way to modes (folded forms), a kind
of indiscernibility is generated here which Deleuze reads
in another painter of materiological textures (Dubuffet),
through questioning: “Is this a texture, or a fold
of the soul, of thought?” (6)
The painting is sometimes modelled like a stringed instrument
(Montage no 1, 1979-1980). In its artisanal fattura,
its glossy mahogany surface spreads out like a stringed
instrument. The painter may have fashioned, at his discretion,
viola or violin, tables, easel, soul, f-holes, distributing
rhythmic metre, measures, and thus opening a space both
musical and plastic. On this flaked, sectioned surface,
the shifting of planes, hollowed and protruding, appeals
to the sense of touch, tactile connection, haptic space,
and one could well exercise the desire to touch, caress
its parts, and stroke the bow there. Then, Riegl would
whisper to us his thinking on the primacy of the tendency
towards abstracting the art object, which would “give
the spectator the soothing conscience to enjoy the object
in the immutable necessity of its closed material individuality.” (7)
This serious and silent aspect of Giunta’s work would
alternatively be rewarded by the appeal of opposites.
Playful fantasy, lightness, forms of soaring, floating,
being torn from the earth, with the capacity to re-establish
a euphoric element in the work (Muro Dell’infanzia,
1990). Isn’t this unavoidable recompense, this oscillating
movement, essentially faithful to the source of life?
For if Giunta the painter enjoys providential resources
to fuel his work, isn’t every work also a replenishment
for the painter, who exchanges his life with that of the
work, dual shared fuel, that simultaneously nourishes
both, painter and painting, by the light of a daily wait
at the communion table.
Françoise Le Gris
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Sans titre
1999
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
76 x 61 cm
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La lettre
1976
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
41 x 30,5 x 3 cm
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Composition en noir
et gris
1981
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
25,5 x 20 x 5 cm
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Composition façade
1983-1984
Matériaux et médiums mixtes
Mixed media
122 x 91,5 x 8,5 cm
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Muro Dell'infazia
1990
Médiums mixtes
Mixed media
76 x 61 cm
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