7 OCTOBER 2023 | VIA DI CITTÀ, 49 SIENA
7 October – 15 November 2023
Eltjon Valle’s solo exhibition “IgnoteTerre”, curated by Elena Violetti in conjunction with the nineteenth Giornata del Contemporaneo.
An exhibition on earth and matter, which proposes a reflection on the concept of the unknown, not with a negative value but with the meaning of new, not yet explored. Cosmic landscapes that suggest the idea of distant scenarios, free from constraints and borders. In a continuous alternation between hope and condemnation towards contemporary man responsible for our future, Eltjon Valle critically investigates a very current issue, against the backdrop of new international conflicts, with a strong ecological accent, namely the issue of oil, questioning the possibility of representing the contemporary world marked by human choices.
Through the use of poor materials, such as debris or earth, mixed with raw materials and colour, the complete absence of figuration leaves no room for anything other than the suggestive power of raw objectivity.
Eltjon Valle introduces us to a poetics based on the intrinsic value of matter reduced to its primordial state. He gives life to a research that frees itself from the ideal and rational control of the image in favor of the expressiveness of the polluted earth in its crumbly and lumpy substance. Valle intends to project himself “beyond the boundaries of terrestrial reality”, to the point of investigating the mysteries of the cosmos.
His “Lands”, portions of land contaminated by oil, become installations with clear implications of environmental and geopolitical denunciation. Valle draws on the Land Art experiences of the Seventies, even at the level of the very conception of the project. The fragmented surface, which recalls the cracks of the clayey soil, reflects the “suffering” of the material subjected to pollution: a composition that prefigures all the drama of the contemporary. No less important are the social and anthropological meanings that this work presents, linked to a specific place, but which are a model for examples on a global scale.
The works presented in the exhibition are actual traces of soil and bitumen transported from Albania. Like finds, the disconcerting geological paintings emerge to self-represent, to self-denounce and to put the observer in contact with the tragic reality from which they come, as an extra-pictorial and anti-illusory reality.
In the “Missing Earth” cycle of paintings it is the gestural charge of painting that imposes itself, incorporating different substances into itself and connoting the works with a plastic-spatial quality. Here the language becomes more symbolic, hopeful.
Extra-pictorial materials such as titanium, aluminium, iron, zinc, petroleum or various chemical compounds are his new world; the cosmic elements, reacting with each other, create a balance of fine and elegant coexistence, the result of a conflict of action and thought.
The material that the artist recreates with his hands becomes an act of reaction to propose new linguistic essences of an epochal landscape.
Valle places emphasis on the primordial and instinctive aspect of the interaction of oil with the earth, creating works that appear as actual portions furrowed by signs and engravings, solid presences that invite us to go beyond the material itself. The thicknesses of bitumen, the “drippings”, where the reflection on the gesture finds space, define these canvases with a magnetic force.
Eltjon Valle proposes a personal act of direct confrontation with the power of irresponsibility: therefore a theme of social art, which, despite the undoubted aesthetic value of its articulation, must be measured overall in its narrative and political effectiveness.
Violetti Arte Contemporanea intends to propose an exhibition that is able to highlight man’s indispensable need to confront the choices that have defined the contemporary landscape.
Valle’s transversal language has a universal value: he wants to trace a path of individual consciousness that leads to a solid collective experience for an urgent and radical change of perspective towards a new world.
