Gabriella Porpora is a visual artist whose work, over the years, has evolved in different pictorial plastic-arts and sculptural cycles.
In the mid-eighties, during her stay in Paris, she could not avoid noticing the omnipresence of Art Nouveau. Her artistic activities
thus began with her investigating how works of art impose on one’s memory; the relationship between art and human beings and their relationship with the world.
Gabriella’s initial themes were figurative. Looking for a way to
evidence the extent of art development in the twentieth century,
while herself living in a different time, she discovered the charm of vintage mannequins in the antiques markets and even “dumped” on the street. She took these bodies and wrapped in a metaphysical atmosphere so as to offer a new way of observing them.
Her first personal exhibition, "Hors le Regard", alluding to De
Chirico’s metaphysical works, was held at Galerie de l’Arbaléte in 1984, on the theme Belle Epoque and the Italian Novecento: giving a new glance on them, painting different history, wraps these mannequins reinvente a new life, giving them a new interpretation and a different atmosphere.
Being much fascinated with metaphors, which also allow observers to extrapolate different meanings from artworks, on return to Rome in 1985, she drew from the classic greco-roman myths, and completed a series of wood and metal sculptures: Il Minotauro, Il Giogo di Pasifae, Dioniso, Apollo e Daphne, Prometeo.
The themes become more abstract, so Gabriella expand her canvas as prelude of a new art cycle within metal frames dilating this canvas in a search for transparency, so these frames become more and more ethereal. The idea of Transparency had been on her mind always, so during her stay in Bucharest from 1972 to 1976, she had seen Romanian reverse-glass, icon-painting from these artists, who, in imitation of the more traditional wooden icons, covered glass with religious themes in an attempt to obtain the same gold and colour effects.
Instead of “divine” gilding, a medieval symbolic evocation of
Paradise, Gabriella focused, on the importance of the translucent weave of the glass.
Moving beyond her metal frame chapter, she decided to work on a new transparent support, Poly Methyl Methacrylate (PMMA), or
plexiglass. Being less fragile and more flexible than glass, she
shaped it, painted on it with a variety of colours, used special
textures and different densities of matter to let the light through,
while also adding symbolic materials.
She called her technique Picto-Sculpture, and the results were
amazing. The light across the plexiglass shimmered and reflected on other surfaces. Even the colours reflected and expanded their influence in the surface forming a constantly moving perspective. "Città Piramide" alludes to a theatrical and metaphysical space. This work was displayed in Vienna at the WUK-Offner projectarum and at the Italian Cultural Institute. "Codice Miniato" is an Art Book, consisting of plexiglass pages
covering different periods of art history, from the Middle Ages
through to Futurism (1910-20). This book was displayed at the
Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale in Rome and the last page is an
interpretation of the Depero landscape of New York!
In Enluminures, Gabriella’s purpose was to underline the
preciousness of signs such as calligraphy. These are the witness of our roofs and preserve the importance oof our past. To stimulate an
association with illuminated manuscripts that are the purveyors of text embellishment and proof of important past human activity, here and there in this work, she added antique parchments.
In another Art Book,"Carnet de Voyage", as one’s gaze flows across the pages, the colours suggest paths in making, a mix of new and old landscapes and prospected spaces.
Attracted by the geographic maps that she saw when was younger, she started drawing and re-using maps, collecting and recreating little by little, a whole new wonderful world working on this transparent support.
The ductility of PMMA allowed her to imagine and create different landscapes: "Geografie Impossibili" was displayed at the DI SARRO Gallery, a Contemporary Art Documentation Centre, critic-curator Gabriella D’Alesio.
Drawing inspiration from a long trip to Africa, and employing some
original materials, she elaborated new
sculptures, "Ab Origin and Contro", the first questioning the origin of mankind, and claim the right to the plaisure, the second, shaming ongoing tribal practices such as
infibulation and excision of the clitoris.
In the early nineties, with a group of women artists, Gabriella cofounded Polisgramma - Gruppo 12,a cultural society and began a period of collective assemblies and interventions in the city of Rome.
Her social commitment become explicit while working with this civic interest group. To highlight the continuous metamorphosis of the city, the group created Building Ground Art.
The group’s intervention was of social and aesthetic importance offering a different space for the artists in the Polis and emphasize the necessity to preserve both the material and the immaterial things.
They choose metal fences of urban constructions to showcase these objectives. The fences, beyond being an ideal support for the
group’s artworks, become symbols of the city’s transformation: ideal places for memory, imagination and art; original spaces for the
artists and an alternative to museums. Further details of this social commitment can be found on Gabriella’s personal website : gabriellaporpora.it.
In the meanwhile, Gabriella continued to use or recycle plastic
materials to produce her artwork. She held numerous exhibitions in
different towns, with public patronage, or Banks as BNL e Banca Sella, and curated by Anna
Cochetti.
Some of these were: Questa non è una città at the Biblioteca
Nazionale Centrale; La dea Roma at the Termini Station in Rome; Le Radici del Tempo at Rome’s Imperial fora; Aspetti della
gerarchia immaginifica, at the Politecnic of Milan; L’ondata
burocratica tenta di travolgerci tutti, for Follia Urbana at Palazzo degli Alessandri in Viterbo. (All these artworks have had a very big dimension 3m X 3m and sometime 3m x 6m).
A new artistic adventure began after a stay in Beijing. Fascinated by Chinese ideograms, Gabriella began painting and creating a series of masks and art books. She employed authentic materials such as inks, papers, kites, masks and travel souvenirs, and played with the comparison of civilization “metaphors” that sprung up from these works. This series led to a personal exhibition, "Derive linguistiche", at the Gallery l’Ariete, curated by Valerio Dehò.
Following musical familiar tradition this artist take some inspiration to her grandmother, Elvira, having been a soprano and her mother, Fausta, a pianist. The Music, considered the form of abstraction for excellence, push her to create visual
abstract “musical” performances.
Only in the 1600s had a way of conveying music by means of
symbols, been elaborated. This would not have come, if human beings not listened, and heard that sound “travelled” inside of them, and made them vibrate like musical instruments.
At a vintage market Gabriella found some old rolls of piano music; continuous rolls of paper with perforations for the musical notes and music terminology such as incipit, andante, mosso, piano, ritmo and allegro. She sensed that these rolls were the perfect material to
incorporate in her artwork to provide iconographic reference to
music and she went ahead and inaugurated a cycle of artworks on this theme.
To signify classical music and call this historical period to mind, she added small details to the piano rolls and applied the rolls in
structural assemblages, that move in alternative rhythms, on the surface of her paintings.
Through these artworks, Gabriella introduced an “antiphonary”,
again emphasizing the importance of not forgetting one’s roots
while creating something new.
This series, entitled " Appunti d’iconografia musicale", was displayed at the Gallery Studio Storie Contemporanee, curated by Anna Cochetti.
Throughout her artistic career, Gabriella Porpora has conveyed, by means of all she embodies in her creative works, both emotional and rational stimuli that resonate in the imagination and allow
viewers to participate in a universal game.
Website: gabriellaporpora.it - artmajeur.fr, where it is possible to read much more differents recensions!
Inserita nell' "Enciclopedia della Storia della Arte del XX secolo" curatore G. Di Genova
Alcune sue opere fanno parte della Collezione della Farnesina - Ministero degli Esteri
