Once again adopting water as a basic medium to enliven chromatically ethereal and iridescent images, in … without troubling a star, Beatrice Pediconi proposes a new body of works in which painting with photographic fragments – adopted as a pictorial palette – leads both to highly evocative forms and an ars combinatoria in which painting, photography, and drawing intersect to highlight a practice the artist considers a never-ending exercise of investigation into the living world and the thousands of meanings that affect it.

Following a series of important experiments that brought her to new techniques in the field of photography with the insertion of abstract forms whose slender ribbons or sharp star-shaped traces that seem to follow the trajectory of a kite inventing fantastic pataphysical geometries, Beatrice Pediconi now presents refined compositions evoking natural scenarios that awaken wonder and invite viewers to rediscover the delicacy of a flower or a butterfly that coincides with the fragility of life.

In addition to a perfect and harmonious operation that leads to an elusive procedure beyond categorization, the ulteriority of these new works comes from the titles the artist has chosen with meticulous care and extrapolated with precision from poems, short stories, novels, and essays to and amplify the evocative level of the image. Trees are sanctuaries (2024) for example, is a title borrowed from Herman Hesse’s Bäume according to which trees are symbols related to remembrance, transience and rebirth, as well as growth, instinctive and natural life, carefreeness, and fertility.

“My latest body of work is the result of a process that explores a combination of painting, drawing and photography. Emulsion filaments subtracted from Polaroid scraps are transferred in water onto canvas and paper, both previously painted with pigments of various shades. Evanescent traces remain, bearing witness to loss and regeneration. Minimal and organic, many of these works are reminiscent of flowers, thus reflecting the fragility of life, its inevitable progression toward renewal, and its message of hope in times burdened by destruction”.

Antonello Tolve