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Martina Cassatella
PH Alberto Nidola
San Giovanni Rotondo (FG), IT – 1996
Lives and works in Milan.
Martina Cassatella’s paintings are composed of hands, light, and subtle, sinuous lines, which are used to represent hair and have become increasingly formal matter in her latest works. Three elements that allow her to investigate the way in which painting manages to become a plastic form, the way in which colour becomes a nucleus of light, and the way in which the line can be a figure capable of activating and destabilising the pictorial surface, creating intense ghostly figures charged with magic, mystery, and – why not? – spirituality.
Her practice evokes the many hands in the history of art, which, thanks to their magnetic force, have managed to take the leading role even in works where they occupy a tiny part. In her paintings, hands reclaim their ancestral role as the tool to every magical language, a source of energy, life, and sensuality. In this latest series, fingers occupy almost the entire scene, stylised to be even more polished and performing in the way they interact with light and shadow. Whilst the lines resemble fingerprints, they are finally freed from their epidermal prison and able to flow like long golden threads
