Memory is what exists and co-exists contemporaneously in everything, in the eternal, magical and mysterious sense, in as much as it takes the form of a truly philosophical image. In creating art, the aspect of memory does not coincide with, nor does it even touch the dimension of recollection. Rather, it is an image thought of or a thought imagined (the relationship is inevitably reversible), within which to allow the flow of passages, signs, scraps of something indefinable that has to do with the eternal, with whatever exists in an individual’s intuition and is expressed in a collective feeling. If to these few, short considerations we add the historic atmosphere of the city of Ferrara – which was the first to give visionary aesthetic revelation to the artists who lived there – it is not hard to understand the birth and structure of an exhibition such as “Traces of Memory”, designed and staged by Paola Trevisan inside the Estense Castle. It is a varied exhibition which has brought together the works of dozens of international artists, all of whom, each from his or her own individual stylistic perspective, have considered the aspect of memory in relation both to themselves and to the city which has been their home. They show a many-sided world of ideas formed around things that are just as they appear to be, authentic sources of revealed and magically enigmatic visions. Among the writings in De Chirico’s “Memoirs”, allusions can be found to Ferraran interiors, rooms, workshops and some of the streets in the old ghetto, all viewed and reconsidered within the mysterious dimension of the “hyper-real”, that spontaneous, important expression in which time is not allowed to become past. It is an unedited vision which records everyday experiences, common events or objects, among the eternal signs of memory or, rather, of an art of memory through which to practise the subconscious sense of the already known or the experience of a future which has features of the old. In its vast display of disparate artistic techniques and expression, “Traces of Memory” has not diluted this central character that, in sudden revelation, acknowledges that absolute of magical, aesthetic, immediate, even considered values that will never cease to interest the most demanding sector of the public, who will be leaving the halls of the Estense Castle hugging a dream, clutching a mystery. .
Alberto Grossi - Art Journal January-February issue