Sculpture of Paul Villages the first element, with its evidence, immediately impresses and fascinates, giving it an originality very much alive in our time, is an intricate cultural hub, in which they are practiced innestiformali and iconography from different sources, and, above all, of histories, diverse. Almost all the commentators have recognized the far archetype of a classic, revived not only as a thought and as imagination, but also as a form. The bodies of men and women, for the more narrow in couple, who are the protagonists of this sculpture, they were created harmonics, turned parts, strong, long-limbed, according to a reinvention of the classic memory, and with a wonderful yet formal. As in the classical sculpture of the bodies are often awolti drapery. But the folds that pointed beyond the rhythm of the calm and real, become in the sculpture of the Villages so dense as to be disturbing and so prolonged as to give the awio to a process of metamorphosis. The myth comes in this sculpture, with its classical roots, and with its symbolism moderna.
This memory of classicism, in its long journey, in its reinvention, in its newness, is justified as a romantic act, according to a process already carried out in the Nineteenth century; and as a form of anxiety that is dramatic, according to a conceptuality contemporary. The reference to Bocklin, which are both explicit in the use, conceptual, and symbolic de The island of mortz, both as a recovery of the reasons of rocks, cypress trees, and buildings, from the Ruins on the sea, a Villa on the sea, he is a spy. In fact, these, Böcklin, they are among the most mysterious, the enchanted, well saturated one Stimmung melancholic, sorrowful and loving, that western culture has given us. And deposit ambiguity and spirits neo-romantic in the work of Villages. But temperar memories, classical and romantic, I see you then enter the elements, formal, above all, to Mannerism, to that of the original sixteenth-century: the relax rangy bodies; the elegance of the gestures, the chords, the conjunctions; refinement of every thing, nudes, of clothes, of the breasts, which appear under the transparency of the fabric. The ingenious invention and the strength of the Villages are in the fused king of all these cultural suggestions within a work which, while preserving fragments of the spirit and of the atmosphere, the voids in its complete originality. We have described, on the whole, only one of the elements that make up this work. In fact, that originality is born from the union with the other element, that is the nature. Hard to find an artist that introduces the subject matter and the natural objects in the work is sculptural with the strength and presence, with the need, that have his figures, and any other object; that is so constantly consider time zones in the complicated thought of the work; that join so closely, and with mutual exaltation of meaning, culture, and nature. Since the beginning, Apollo is in the perfect light of his body, from the rocks covered with trees, from the earth, real, and humanized in the figure, the expanse of which you can see protruding only the legs. Arches of stone, cypress trees, groups of bushes, the flow of vegetable fibre, chains of mountains, trees, large rocks in shallow fractures, by erosion, by cutting, support, creating an envelope for the human figures and mythical, and in many places merge with them to form the single subject of a substance that only the poetic invention can produce. The myth is part of the nature, you will find the primary dwelling. The heroes are associated with the rock; and as the Polyphemus of Poussin and Prometheus Böcklin.
The metamorphosis presides over the event, already in Apollo, and/or that it is a central work of Villages, in 1987; he has written Calvesi: “Daphne is the time that you can hold; that is the mystery of time, which can not penetrate; it is the destination of the truth that man can never possess. Apollo and is a symbolic work, the paradigm, the transformation from the human to the natural, the tension towards the natural, is the entrance in time, a metamorphosis in the nature that is the face of the time. But later in the works of Villages nature is conquered and merges with the human. At times the hands outstretched, and gently pressing within the material, you connaturano and seem to continue with lefibre terrestrial or vegetable as if they were roots. Almost always in more recent works, the drapery, the robes that wrap around the female figures, multiply the folds, ripples, seem to flow on the bodies as the water and then continue swelled like a river; or develop, a green, such as fibers and branches thin, and then become thick, wide, vegetation. Often the folds of the clothes, and the waves of the river, the fibres of plants, smash up against the bodies, or overlap, intertwine, as beaten down by the wind. It seems that Villages carve the wind. Sometimes there is a further metamorphosis, vegetation, stone and rock, in the powerful block, furrowed by ravines, real estate, and the final. That is the cliff, cliff, or mountain, that the servant of support to the trees, to the figures, a city or a unique construction, which is the final outcome of the metamorphosis of matter, always in recent years, a large block of stone or rock is the primary component of each complex sculptural. Villages loves the mountains and has with her a direct relationship, contact, as a climber. The mountain evokes the sacred; for the spirits that govern it possesses a sacredness mysterious, indefinable, far away; it has the sense of the original; as a work of immense carved by the winds, weather, and time; as an ancient monument. It may be the stone of the Alp; it can be the Dolomite, pale and grey, and pink in the evening; or the mesas of Uttering a Valley and the great cathedrals of the rocks of Monument Valley in the western of John Ford. If you lived at the contact, the wall cut off from the face of those who scale, offers the irregularities of the footings, the recesses, projections, shadows, and variety of delicate colors.
The mountain, the stone, the rock, so feel and understand are constants, as part of nature, in the work of Villages. One of his latest sculptures, the great, the mighty, in the tones of variables of terracotta, of which you can see a model on a reduced scale, is named after The Alps. A couple of man and woman is lying down and colour over a landscape that develops in depth until the end of a long chain of mountains, the more clear in the distance a comparison of the rosatura intense that the terracotta gives to humans. I do not know the works, where the sacred and the natural, the mythical and the real are so in harmony states; and although the view is still unfinished, it seems to me a masterpiece. And if I look at then, in some of these works (On the cliff, The last Esperors, Above the landscape, In the wind of Thrace), in addition to the figures, and the nature, presence, always discreet and seemingly marginal, constructions, groups of houses, small countries that seem to be not inhabited, to me, is to the memory of another great american, Anse! Adams, a photographer and a poet of nature, who has resumed, modest and abandoned by the majesty of the Canyon de Chelly in Arizona, some of the oldest settlements in india. The meaning that comes from the one and from the other works is: live in the nature. But the artwork of Villages has not finished to surprise us, because it shows us another original invention: the bodies of those who, for the most coupled, populate it as its real and mythical at the same time the bodies of gods, of heroes, and of men, are subject to a process of melting, which contradicts the reality, and does not invoke the myth; happen is tti illusionist and unexpected. Often it can happen that one and the same limb, almost always, a leg, it belongs at the same time both the man and the woman, so that a particular p anointed of view with only three legs; it may happen that the two bodies are it was you in one, up to a certain height, as if you were born dalia same matrix, d to the same matter; p can happen that they have in common other parts. And a man on horseback, who ends his run against a rock, in the work Cavalcade stopped, seen from one side is a knight, and from the opposite side of the centaur; within the same figu ra performs a partial metamorphosis with the outcome of the fusion between man and horse; while there is already the beginning of fusion or penetration, the limbs of the horse and the rock. So the multiplicity of points of view that we have, as usual, around a sculpture, not only that, here, you play, but they offer different figures, reveal illusions, it is unreal, multiply the effects and meanings of the sculpture. The sculpture, in addition to that mythical, symbolic, narrative, real, is also fantastic.
This process is not derived n is the movement of Futurism, n is from the” monstrosity” of Surrealism, nor dalia magic of the alchemical process. Only this last, perhaps, of the three, it is more likely, although partial, of the reference source, as indicated by the Portuguese. But I think part of the general process where the whole sculpture Villages is subject; and that of the fusion. The myth merges with the reality, the human and the vegetable, the woman with the man, the robe with the stone, the child with the mother, the knight, the horse, the matter with poetry. The fusion is done through the metamorphosis, but is the outcome of the contradictory and unified; it represents the unity of life, of matter, of nature; it is the great harmonic motion of the world. The last cause of admiration, not to interpret but to see that it is opposite to the relationship that has Villages with the matter. All the sculptors must have a contact with the material, since it is the very substance of their art; they need to know how to choose, and use, since this is the meaning of their technique; they must know pearl rape, modify, sublimate, because this is their language. But love the subject matter is something more and different. Paolo Borghi is one of those real, extreme and sculptors who love the subject. The change according to his intentions and need for expressive and poetic; the change, the adula, he knows how to draw different agreements, as from a musical instrument; the house with innate ease; the works directly in contact with only through the tool that they use, the touches, the caresses, the smooths, change the opacity with waxes his invention, which let reflected light continuously renewable; the colors from the inside with a mediated process, using, for example, for the same work, the clays of different cooking take different colours or including chemicals that coloring modify and enhance; it moves in detail, cesellandola, the surface. This chisel is a particular dowry and passion, according to you from the father, Stanislaus, who was a very fine and rich engraver; so in his works the bodies have subtle vibrations, the delicate shadows, hints of indentations and protrusions, which make them alive beyond the measures of the sculpture, and its drapery, have thicknesses of pleats and ruffles, as produced by the wind on the water. The engraving has now become almost an act of delicate of love for the subject, and the act of love finale to the opera.
Roberto Rates
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