Appunti al telefono – Notes at the Phone (Valeria Vaccari, 2005)
Monika Wolf’s painting stems from a strong and evident dualism: on the one hand, the desire to define form, to rationally contain the magmatic matter of her art through rigorous geometry. Through the construction of a fantastic architecture suspended in the void, Monika presents us with the stratification of memories and recollections still alive in her mind.
These are images produced by free association of ideas, set in a dreamlike, surreal atmosphere. The layered memories compose a figure and each recognisable and recurring figure becomes an archetype, such as the house, the castle, the tree, the person. This process brings Monika Wolf’s work closer to the cave painting of primitive times, to the painting of the American Indians.
Colour and material are the tools the artist uses to modulate the emotional intensity of memories, their weight in personal history. They are not a compositional device, they are the irrational and unconscious component that takes over the drawing. The American Indians, whom Monika draws inspiration from, believe that everything animate or inanimate is inhabited by a spirit. Human beings are expected to maintain good relations with their spirit and honour it through rituals.
Western religion has called the spirit the ‘soul’, psychoanalysis has called it the ‘unconscious’. This propulsive force drives the artist to escape the boundaries of drawing, to erase it, cover it, scratch it. Colour becomes emotional and vibrant form. The image is composed of the accumulation of overlayed and manipulated materials. Often a story is told beneath the surface or fragments of figures are hidden. We witness the incorporation of natural elements into the painting, which become an integral part of the picture. This element also stems from the observation of primitive art; the inclusion of a fragment creates a subtle symbolic link with the earth.
Writing is an equally recurring element in Monika’s work, automatic writing derived from the surrealist tradition that tells stories known only to the artist. The compositional experimentalism with which she mixes collage, lithography, fragments of matter and newspaper clippings finds its origin in the Berlin Dadaism of the 1910s. Unlike the works of that period, which are closely linked to the historical era, Monika’s creations have no permanent temporal location. The use of discarded materials makes the works modifiable by time, which becomes their ultimate creator. The continuous overlaying of materials creates different perspective planes, the figures seem to move from one plane to another.
In the recent production, large colour fields conceal small symbols, shadows of forms and three-dimensional fragments: the narrative that originally lay on the surface is buried by chaos, rationality in struggle with the unconscious creates an internal emotional tension within the painting that makes it move beyond form and beyond constituted symbols.
Valeria Vaccari, written on the occasion of the exhibition ‘Appunti al telefono’ (‘Notes at the Phone’), Galleria Del Barcon, Milan, 2005