By Giulia Graziano
On the 13th of October the Red Gate Gallery in Coldharbour Lane opened its doors to visitors to the exhibition of the young woman artist Crystal Fischetti. Crystal, of Italian father and Colombian mother, is here to introduce us to her first production of abstract works. The medium through which Crystal expresses herself is painting, paint and canvas as she puts it. However, when asked what art is to her, Crystal has no doubts:
“Art is not really about canvases or painting, art is life. Art is creating a baby, art is birth. Art is beauty, art is love. But for me in this medium, art is a canvas, art is colours, and also art is expression. And questioning a lot of debates in history that have to be addressed about masculine canons in art, and just changing it. To me it is like conversations to critics, to artists, to the public, to men, to women, to children, to everyone. Art does imitate life. But I do not think that it does just that. Art is life.”
Painting for Crystal is parallel to poetry: they are both mediums of expressing “emotions and sentiments”: it is possible to say that as words “paint” an image “colours” write a story. Crystal’s abstract painting can be thus described as “visual poetry”, also because she often paints poetry she has herself written, or that of others like Carol-Anne Duffy, a contemporary feminist writer. Painting for Crystal is also performance; it is also performing the feeling of the moment, whether it is anger, rebellion, defiance, love, gratitude, or reconciliation. For Crystal painting is performing her own story, the one about knowing herself, raising her awareness about her own nature, as a human being, as an artist, as a woman; as she says “as an artist-woman-being”.
Why do you feel that you want mainly to express yourself as a woman rather than as a human being?
Because I feel the constant need as a woman, and as a woman artist – not just as an artist or a being – to be another canon of art. There are so many male canons in the history of art that I have learnt and studied, and I just want to re-shape the history of art. So as a woman it is very important for me to make a statement about womanhood as a collective. As a woman-beinghood.
So do you think that there is a universal nature of womanhood?
Yes, definitely, and I really do stress it is not about feminism at all, it is not about hating men. No, not at all. I love men, the connection of fatherhood and brotherhood. But there is also this thing of motherhood, of Mother Nature, which gave birth to the human kind. And it starts with women. Why is it Mother Nature and not Father Nature?
Do you think that Nature, then, is a female being?
I believe so, it gives birth to things, to nature, it gives birth to human beings, and ultimately it gives birth to art which is an imitation of life.
Do you think that understanding yourself as a woman is the ultimate stage of understanding yourself?
Yes, it is. It is also about understanding the extreme power of being a woman. And also about opening ideas to people on how powerful women are and how true this is across the world and a number of different contexts both in modern and traditional societies. But I want to stress that mine is not a feminist discourse.
So there is no conflict in your art, it is your thing, your expression.
Yes, absolutely.
Each of Crystal’s paintings stands out on their own, as visually striking. The young painter uses “rebellious” or “defiant” painting techniques in response to centuries of male dominated art canons. In particular she is inspired by Helen Franken Thaylor a female abstraction artist from the 1970s and her soaked and stained paintings. This technique involves painting directly on the canvas rather than priming it and it suggests a more organic, free, instinctive type of artistic expression void of any type of constriction brought about by “art canons”, “standards” and “established ways to paint”. In line with this tendency, Crystal makes her own frames and canvas, she then mixes oil and water based colours, and she will not hesitate at throwing what is left in her cup of coffee or tea onto the canvas, as well as bleach and all sort of sticky and colourful liquids she finds around. Her art is strong and instinctive, but Crystal often goes back to her paintings, sometimes over long periods of time that she describes as frustrating; a mixture of birth and psychological struggle. When asked to describe her paintings, Crystal cannot but give detailed introspective accounts of the moment that each work represents, and sometimes this involves saying about her day, her personal experiences and thus her feelings.
Arrabiata No More, for example, was painted in a moment of anger (“rabbia” in Italian), but the result of the work, instead of being reconciling, was rather frustrating and even more angering. After few months, Crystal noticed the pattern left by the paint on the back of the canvas and decided to turn it inside out and paint the pattern at the back of the canvas. After that, she was no longer “angered”, but more conscious and aware, liberated. A similar story revolves around Invading Presence which refers to the painting itself, which lied in Crystal studio for months, always reminding her of her unfinished, incomplete and unsatisfactory work for few months. Crystal went back to it over and over again, covering past frustrations with new ones, slowly taking pressure off her soul and finally concluding her journey with striking a red sign of the female sex. A powerful symbol of the recognition that being a woman, a woman artist can be painful but it is part of life. And only full acceptance of our present condition can drive us forward.
In Connection Crystal has, instead, performed a satirical and defiant work against the masculine of straight lines and dark colours art of Robert Motherwell, an American abstract artist from the 1970s.
“I love this work. I played around the idea of just being masculine for the day… I’ll wear the jeans, I’ll do straight lines: if Robert Motherwell can do it, why can’t I do it? But the painting has also another meaning, which is strictly personal and has no defiance in it. It is about connecting me to the light, the yellow part that you see on the right, which is me in the future; it is what I want to do and be, the potential I see in me. It is about gaining awareness about the struggles of growing up and knowing myself, and realising that by being in this struggle we are already inherently connected to our enlightenment, our true perfect nature”.
Other beautiful works displayed at the Red Gate Gallery such as Euphoric Explosion, Anon and Be Mine reflect the fact that Crystal is not just an angry and rebellious woman-artist. These are just aspect of her human nature, but are deeply intertwined with feelings of contemplation, euphoric gratitude and love for people and especially men. Men are our counterparts, the balancing element in nature to womanhood. And Crystal strongly makes this point. We cannot but appreciate the clarity and the determination with which Crystal, as a young artist, takes out her own feelings and transforms them into art. Art is life she says, and for her this is because they are both a personal learning process towards evolution.
Copyright 2006 GIORGIOSTUDIO – All rights reserved |
