I TELL LIFE STORIES THROUGH SYMBOLS AND MENTAL MAPS
We all think in images: the image comes before the word, the structure comes before the thought, our unconscious mind elaborates visual sequences and connection schemes before formulating any sentence. In my paintings I give shape and color to these images, I express through symbols the hidden pattern of our mental activity.
My artistic language was born from a personal experience: when I want to give a serious speech I need "paper and pencil", not to take notes, but to "trace signs" that follow the concatenation of my thoughts, I don't even look at the sheet of paper while I speak: I automatically draw symbols, connection lines, schemes and schemes, every now and then I write a word... My brain needs to be connected with my hand to function more lucidly: through gesture I can visualize the flow of the discourse as a network of concepts, a cascade of associations, similarities, causes and effects, possible developments... For many years I worked as a clinical psychologist and during the hours of therapy I drew thousands of mental maps: at the end of the sessions my patients were asking to keep those working sheets to "remember what we said".
Nowadays I believe that these signs are not a personal draft of mine, nor a strictly individual form of expression, but rather a very ancient language, a form of pre-verbal communication, used by mankind since ever, since the geometric engravings of the Paleolithic caves.
Before the words was the gesture ...
When I started studying at Brera Academy of Fine Arts, I decided to re-elaborate those psychoanalytic worksheets, to see if I could draw from them inspiration for my paintings. It has been a long journey and has taken years, but it continues to inspire and excite me. My artistic language has evolved over time: in my first paintings I was drawing in the background neurons that intertwined their dendrites creating synapses: the brain cells, the neuronal net, the physical basis of our reasoning, and I layered over it symbols and writings, building the complete mental map of connections between the unconscious and consciousness. Lately I left behind the too explicit neurons, to give more space to symbols and to the expressiveness of colours, which has taken an increasingly importance in defining the emotional context.
My artistic path in creating these "mental maps" has included many intermediate stages which are all part of the same research. But one element has remained unchanged from start to finish: with my paintings I want to convey a feeling of joy, vitality, openness to the infinite possibilities of existence, and I charge my brush strokes of this kind of energy so my paintings are not only coloured canvases but small spaceships for a message that can reach the observer.
GROUP EXHIBITIONS :
2021 L’imperfetta bellezza, Venice, Italy
2021 Festival De-Sidera, Trento, Italy
2021 Cellular Structures, Milan, Italy
2021 Apollo Dionisiaco, Rome, Italy
2021 Camelback Gallery, Arizona, U.S
2021 Artbox Project, Barcelona, Spain
2020, Exhibizone Summer 2020, Biafarin, Canada
2020, Rosso Passione, Marchionni Prize, Su, Italy
2020, Women's works, Woodstock, IL, U.S.A.
2020, Pordenone Arte 2020, Pordenone, Italy
2019, Nel Buio, Lecce, Italy
2019, Biennale of Contemporary Art, Cosenza, Italy
2019, The shapes of the water, Grosseto, Italy
2019, Anatomy of beauty, Milan, Italy
2019, Evolution of art, Rome, Italy
2019, Warm summer atmospheres, Rome, Italy
2019, The colours of the spices, Rome, Italy
2019 Pop Art, Rome, Italy
2019, Rospigliosi Art Prize II, Rome, Italy
2019, At the roots of the human being, Matera, Italy
2019, Chromatic Rhapsodies, Rome, Italy
2019, Animus et Anima, Naples, Italy
WORKS IN CATALOG :
2021 L’imperfetta bellezza, Gina Affinito
2021 Cellular Structures, Independent Artists
2021 Apollo Dionisiaco, Accademia Internazionale Significazione Poesia Arte Contemporanea
2019, Metropolis Biennale contemporary art, M.Crupi
2019, In the dark, Gina Affinito
2019, Fiorart, Alessandra Barberini
2019, Rospigliosi Art Prize II, Tiziano Todi
2019, Anatomy of beauty, Gina Affinito
2019, At the roots of the human, Matera Casa Cava
2019, Psychic Abstraction, Andrea Guerrer
2019, Animus et Anima, Gina Affinito
PUBLICATIONS:
2021 "See better without glasses" Giunti Editore
2013 "Healing with a fairy tale" Ed.
Feltrinelli
2011 "Growing a self-confident child"
Red Editions
2008 "Children's questions" Red
Editions
2006 “Color at home. The psychophysical effects
of colours "Ed. Urra Apogeo Feltrinelli
2005 "To invent a fairy tale ... With
DVD" Ed. Memory Technology
2005 "What is psychosomatic medicine"
Ed. Urra Apogeo Feltrinelli
2004 "How to tell a fairy tale" Red
Editions
2004 "Healing with fairy tales" Ed. Urra
Apogeo Feltrinelli
