Ilaria Franza was born in the 1980s in Cantù, province of Como, Italy. She qualified at the Brera Academy of FIne Arts in Milan, in experimental arts. She works in interior and product design in conjunction with her work as an artist and painter, where she is known for her research and execution in the use of colour.
To understand and really feel the works of Ilaria Franza, we need to undertake an exercise of contemplation, to find a new dimension of observation, and thought. The works of Ilaria Franza seem to open us up to look at submerged paths, unexplored places. They ask us to be looked at with care and attention.
Upon observation there is something that draws us to scrutinise, that forces us to look beyond what we first see. The artist’s main objective, in reality, is to place us in front of the most eternal of objects: the landscape.
UN.limited is the title of this collection of works. UN.limited, like the infinity that surpasses the view, that becomes horizontal, internal landscapes, nature in its purest form, infinite like something that has changed itself without doing so in a continuous cycle, made up of repeating gestures, they transform.
Ilaria Franza is inspired by the romanticism, getting lost in the storm of William Turner’s work, in Caspar David Friedrich views. Observing nature and the landscape with the heart and the eyes of a romantic. She realises, too, in that deep turmoil, that mixture of physical and emotional, the unseen can emerge, brought out from things you can only feel. These landscapes thus allow us to look beyond the horizon and over the landscape itself. They become places of the soul, dream-like views that are mixed together and melt into each other; soul and dream, like ink and water.
Therefore, the real landscapes become abstract, and by emerging from the water, in turn make the invisible visible. Water is at the heart of this work, it is pivotal. It is by no coincidence that the artist’s works are water based colors, and the language of water is its initial gesture. It is for this reason that this medium of Ilaria Franza’s works. A work of patience that emerges from the water, to blend with colour. The water and the colour is shifted, moved, channelled. With technical gestures, focused and precise, Ilaria moves the canvas in a slow dance, thoughtful and meticulous. As the artist, she leads and moves. The water can, however, control, direct, manage, but will always be independent, with its own energy. Ilaria is not afraid of this water flowing: drifting, running with her.
Observing the boundary between heaven and earth, connecting with its subconscious dimension, made up of forgotten thoughts, of silence. In addition, the colour drips, sometimes with aggressive gestures, sometimes with calm and thoughtful gestures. Then colour is shaken, moved, shifted. It makes her prone to using any instrument: rags, brushes, spatulas, droppers. It acts as an acrobat, in a constant struggle with the force of gravity, in a precarious balance between the power of the elements and the need to control them.
The work of Ilaria Franza is a becoming, like water passing and turning. like water that has the power to quench our thirst or drown us, to destroy or quench the earth. Drying with the air, her paintings reveal new forms, previously hidden. She does not lose sight of them, but renews them, optimises them, corrects them, delimits the levees. In addition, by shuffling the colour and then moving it, it gets wet. She adds water on water.
Then we ask: can you really build on water? So look for stability, a base. The artist resists all this movement and for this reason in all her work, the colour black is predominanat. Black as the colour of the original chaos, from which all things are yet to be born, from which everything is built.
Of this black, we find, at times, a strong, strong presence. I often see at the bottom of the canvas, as if to hold the rest, to seek a beginning. in other cases, however, we find only a faint memory, an impression that water has washed away, but still, somehow, recalls. even the colours undergo a change, wanting to point out that everything is in transformation: the water, the landscape, colour, us. The transformation continues even when we look at the finished works, because after each individual observation, they are presented to us with new elements.
Change is present throughout the artistic career of Ilaria Franza, from the early works on paper, up until “UN.limited”. Today it is as if she has found her ideal size, its path. She feels a being in constant evolution, that has changed, has learned and why it grows, taking care of her work, becoming her own physical part. She tries to express the medium of nature with delicate prowess. No coincidence that the artist works best in the open air, on lake Orta. The lake, the mountains, the mild climate are perfect inspiration for a painter like Ilaria Franza.
