Alina Vergnano Uses Water and Pastels in Her Poetic Paintings
My favourite subject to talk about with painters is mark-making. Yet it’s tricky to talk about, isn’t it? Words don’t quite capture the nuances. I mentally note the “smears” and “scrawls” and “squiggles” in my favourite works, but those words never fully describe the marks. In fact, it was that last word - squiggles - that I landed on for this week’s artist: Alina Vergnano.
Alina’s work is, for lack of a better word, squiggly. Her deceptively simple works use minimal colours and repetitions of related gestures. Her gestures are the “squiggles” I speak of. They move in broad, sweeping lines. They confidently curve back and forth across the canvas. Their fluidity suggests the movement of water, but also the contours of the human figure. They also appear to be slightly blurred, as if something had been dragged over them before they had dried, or as if they were being slowly washed away by flowing water.
I knew there was something intriguing going on in Alina’s process, so I planned to get to the bottom of it when I reached out to the Oslo-based artist on Instagram.
Hey Alina. It feels like water and fluidity are important in your work?
Fluidity and water are very central to my work, both formally and conceptually. Water is the main medium I use to execute the works, and it’s also a reference to the poetic and philosophical concepts that inform my practice.
When I think about fluidity, I think about movement, change, and becoming. I’m drawn to the idea that if you look closely enough nothing is really solid or fixed, but everything is undergoing perpetual and constant change.
I see you’re using pastel and water on canvas. Is that how you get that blurry line effect? Do you drag material across the wet marks?
Yes, most of my canvases are made using only water and pastels on a semi-primed cotton canvas. When working in this way, I need to be very fast and deliberate. At the same time, there are many factors that I can’t control and that I embrace; for example, it’s impossible to predict exactly how the surface will dry and what marks will become more or less evident, as environmental factors like changes in humidity or temperature can influence the process quite a lot.
The more I look the more I see what looks like abstracted nudes? Is that the basis for some of the works or am I just imagining it?
People see different things in the work, and I like that. But the body is indeed present, even if for me it serves mostly as a point of departure to convey a sense of movement that eventually becomes quite abstracted from it.
It also looks like drawing is really important to you. Do you view your work as drawings or paintings or both?
The works belong in-between drawing and painting. I see drawing as a convergence of thinking and feeling in a mark, and in its synthetic quality for me it stands very close to poetry. Painting is more expansive, it allows for simultaneous and interlaced discourses to happen on the surface.
In the large pieces, you also capture the movement of your body. Is it important to feel the scale of your own body and its movements?
Definitely. Those two movements - that of my body and that of the lines in the work - in their echoing want to suggest that somehow what happens on the canvas is not entirely contained by its surface or borders.
I found your work via Instagram and your page looks great. What do you love and hate about Instagram at the moment?
I think Instagram is a great way to connect with other artists and colleagues. It’s a great tool to keep together a community that is otherwise geographically very spread out. But in terms of experiencing art, I do not see it as the right place for it. If something, I think it has created a quite sad uniformity in terms of artistic expression.
Is it ever a struggle to make work?
I think my best works come when I am at peace with the possibility of failing.
Any upcoming shows or shout-outs?
I just did an artist residency in Bulgaria and have a solo show on at Gallery Heerz Tooya in Veliko Tarnovo as a conclusion of the residency period.
Follow Alina on Instagram: @alinavergnano
Things on Our Radar This Week
Alina’s show at Gallery Heerz Tooya in Veliko Tarnovo, Bulgaria (runs till 20 Oct)
Wish we could go to this new Mark Bradford ‘Exotica’ show at Hauser & Wirth Hong Kong
Plaster mag asks what the deal is with all the artist fashion collabs
A video tour of 3 new abstract shows in NYC including works by the late Daniel Weissbach
Shaan Bevan and Owen Pratt have a show at Palmer Gallery (opens 9 Oct)
Thanks for reading, see you next time!
Oliver & Kezia xx
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