Valeria Vaccaro

Blog

7 September 2022 In Blog

Second prize winner IX PREMIO Fondazione VAF

10 October 2019 In Blog

Io, l’opera e tu

Valeria Vaccaro

The red thread of Valeria Vaccaro’s work is the depiction of the combustion process rather than the accurate reproduction of the wooden material, vein after circle.

Every sculpture is a snapshot of this process where the instant is captured and its movement becomes eternal. A fleeting instant that is frozen in time using marble, a material that has always stood for eternity.

Mediocre objects lacking aesthetic value burn but the transformation they undergo is not only limited to a mutation of the matter: it is on another level attributing them another value, as they have two key become works of art.

Fire and combustion are known to bear symbolic meanings that can be traced back to two key aspects: fire that turns from an element of destruction and judgement to a metaphor for renewal.

Disused scorched pallets and crates, contemporary familiar wreckages belong to an everyday life we are used to, synonyms of desolation, waste and abandonment, rather than being in warehouses and deposits, unduly take up space at the exhibition centre.

These objects are decontextualized, gone from being inherently utilitarian, dumb waiters of industry then and art now, offered as a work of art to visitors, as the container unexpectedly becomes the contents.

Interestingly the language Valeria Vaccaro uses to express herself is marked by a succession repeatedly multi-tier tangible visual oxymora piling up.

Opposing and opposed concepts are referred to a single object, thus generating unexpected forms of a paradox: wood becomes cold, marble burns and is charred, crates do not hold anything but in fact are the work of art itself.

Every sculpture, every practical representation of the oxymoron as a rhetorical figure of the contradicting a term with is its opposite, goes against the rules and common sense, short-circuiting meaning, surprise and dèplacement.