Heaps of Rubble: A Review of Angelina Gualdoni's "Proposals for Remnants"

Electing subject matter that is negligible and often abrasive to the eye, Angelina Gualdoni has extended the commonplace phrase of “beauty in the eye of the beholder” to the final products of her collection. Each piece illuminates the desolate and fragmented residue of miscellaneous items surrendered to decay and resulting futility. However, they are presented in light of warm, dream-like swirls of color and are arranged in geometric compositions, indicating there is more to be understood beyond the seemingly ordinary heaps of rubble. Gualdoni’s investigation into the apparent beautification of waste and discarded materials hints at themes of rebirth, purpose, and even glamour.

A cursory glance of the exhibition and all that would be grasped at is a painting style reminiscent of abstract expressionism. Upon closer inspection, however, Gualdoni’s technique is anything but standard and reliant on past traditions. Dependent upon unprimed, raw canvas, Gualdoni’s style combines brushstrokes, drippings, splattering, and staining of acrylic and oil paint. Paint is poured directly onto the canvas, evoking a sense of immediacy and animation. While her technique stems from the practices of color field painter Morris Louis, where paint exists solely as paint, Gualdoni addresses her works in a more personal manner. For instance, to make a distinction, whereas in Morris Louis’s 1960 Alpha-Pi, the absence of the artist in directly molding the final creation is substituted by the free will of the paint, Gualdoni’s “Proposals for Remnants” require the specific undertakings of the artist. Although the material essence of paint is still applicable, Gualdoni’s works take a more serious hand by lending her thoughts to making metaphors from the disarray of discordant materials. These evidences of decaying waste are more significant than the subjectivity of materiality as in Louis’s works.

Each piece, though indicative of the same process, carries a story and unique mood of its own. As a collective unit, each work possesses a similar background of blended colors, formed by a staining/wash method that loosely allows paint to drip to the edges of the canvas. Notwithstanding, the size, shape, and location on canvas of the debris chosen for concentration, the selection and range of colors, the texture and number of paint layers applied, as well as the size of the canvas varies between each of her works.

Before entry into the gallery, the first painting to encounter, Untitled, gives a sneak preview of the remaining collection. A somewhat childish depiction of a sailboat amidst a disaster scene of fire and explosion indicates a catastrophe. Yet the event is pictured in a pyramid formation and is painted in soft hues of primary colors. The odd yet delicate nature of the painting gives rise to peaked interest. It is a welcoming starting point for Gualdoni’s Proposals for Remnants.

In the confines of the actual gallery, the largest, and consequently, the most visually attractive pieces are displayed directly across from one another. Aside from physical dimensions, they are complementary opposites. Blush, the most ostentatiously eye-catching piece, with its bright rose-red and yellow-orange shades, sheds light upon another pyramid pile of miscellaneous rubble. This triangular form is a motif that reoccurs in other pieces like “Odds and Ends.” Although outlines suggest the forms of a stool, overturned table, and scattered books, it remains, unperturbed, an enigmatic structure. At a far distance, the pale background, thickened with swift brushstrokes alternating between horizontal and vertical, interspersed with bleeding techniques, make the work deceiving. The pile of wreckage could easily pass as a pile of toys in a child’s playroom. Over all the other works, it is the most luminescent. The more somber counterpart to “Blush,” “March Through April,” painted in army greens and blacks, exudes an eerie quality. Identifiable objects consist of jagged rocks and shattered windows. Though it evokes a more natural setting, the subject materials in this painting have no conjunction with one another, strewn randomly across a barren floor and appearing lost within the painting. Both works romantically illustrate anonymous clusters of remains but do not delve into their purposes.

Remote from the other pieces in the exhibition, the most strikingly inharmonious is “Cosmic Painting.” As its title indicates, the work illustrates an outerspace scene, fit with floating fragments resembling asteroids and meteors. Though lacking a main subject of a pile of rubble uniform to all the other works, “Cosmic Painting” develops the same technique. Additionally, a sense of lurking potential for the dispersed objects nags at the viewer.

The title “Proposals for Remnants” has two conflicting goals. For one, the use of the term “remnants,” though markedly vague, forms boundary lines for the viewer’s imagination. For each piece in Gualdoni’s exhibition, the abstract subject at hand has already been determined, “remnant,” meaning excess or undesired scraps. As such, the viewer can not stretch the analysis of what he sees. In contrast, the “proposals” portion of the title gives way to intense uncertainty and much questioning on the part of the spectator. One might inquire, “proposals for what intention?” Given the brief title, it is understood that Gualdoni’s pieces illuminate “remnants,” but as for the “proposals,” this is to remain a grappling issue for viewers. In this way, as ambiguity claims possession of her works, Gualdoni leaves her fans and critics in a state of understanding yet confusion. The potential of the heaps of rubble are to be decided on the viewer’s part.

By producing this state of half comprehension half doubt within the viewer, Angelina Gualdoni is a magician in her artistic ways. To further the irony, Gualdoni paints these messes in an organized fashion, inferring the continual existence of discarded objects. She makes a proposition against the idea of the eventual dissipation and disappearance of refuse. Collected and gathered together, her heaps of rubble purport that abandonment can lead to prospective uses. Possible arguments for recycling, reconstruction, and perhaps even unexpected beauty encircle her works.