FREEDOM AND SILENCE
All those who have written about Aldo Rota - from Ada Masoero to Osvaldo Patani, from Victor De Circasia to Marina Mojana - have emphasized that his paintings give energy and feed from colour. These words are recurrent from all those that have spoken about him. Well, this time the colour is not present. For Rome, Aldo Rota has intentionally chosen to have one exhibition rigorously in white and black. He is showing a new perspective, as if discovering another part of himself, secret and mysterious. It's true that in his previous exhibitions there was always a monochrome interval, a short movement made of black brushstrokes on a deep white background, or viceversa; but on this occasion the context of the work involves leaving out what is better known and, perhaps, what could also be described as more striking and seductive of his pictorial work.
Perhaps, like a beautiful woman who decided to go out without make up, leaving, everyone flabbergasted. There is Rota for me. These are his diaries in White and Black, collected in a kind of sinfonia in the passionato movement, rigorous and coherent, explosive sounds, precious, sumptuous, unexpected. As always. The mourning black is known; white and black combined, perhaps, more so. Sometimes artists have a better understanding of this than others.
Pablo Picasso would be a good example; he chose to eliminate colour when he decided to tell us a story. The bombardment of Guernica for him is a monochrome; a horror that involved men and animals. Everything screams pain, death and blood. There is no need for red in order to express this. For Rota it is not like that. Black here symbolises "luxury, a wanted tranquility", the white is light "joie de vivre". The exhibition, I imagine, is like browsing through a book. It's as if all of these works exist beyond themselves; also as if each one has a role in a wider story or is part of a history that the artist has decided to tell to us; with a beginning and an end; a tumultuous sequence which involves us in the intensity of stains and drippings and a whispering fine white.
All concludes with that arrow that seems to want to indicate the infinite. Because everything is renewed, it continues; it becomes something other; it moves without stopping its a rhythm of rounded off shapes, unexpected beams, of a chasm, or of small swells, waves, stinking, depths, superficially uneven, breathing and alive. Rota uses the matter with confidence, transforming it showing it and deciding it to us. Is it possible to have a story without figures? One history of separated events, without recurrent images to an obvious aspect of reality? If we speak about the cosmos Rota has chosen to represent a kind of dance, at times convulsive but more often tranquil.
These pictures demand to be looked at, investigated, enjoyed, smelt. They entice us to touch, even if we cannot. They withhold under the skin a tremor, something that is breathing. Its always possible to discover something new and unusual: something amazing. These are the works of Rota (and those who know him will know that they are created in his own likeness). It is beautiful to listen to the breathing.