Paolo Porelli: Classic White, 2021-2024
In addition to creating works that actively advocate in favour of nature, I devote myself to parallel installations focusing on important concepts of reality. This series is distinguished by the use of white, which is an indisputable reference to the classic, an ever-present memory of the archetype of sculpture.
In the case of The Metamorphoses of Minerva, I focus on the duality of human behaviour that inhabits the human soul in a complementary fashion. Rationality represents objective and functional knowledge, while madness arises from the visionary and surreal unconscious. The porcelain sculptures, created during the 2024 International Ceramics Symposium: “FIGURES” in Kecskemét, Hungary, are conceived in two autonomous and independent parts. The lower part of each figure is cast from a mould based on a 3-D printed scan of a classical figure of Minerva. The upper part of the sculptures, on the other hand, is an example of the unpredictable creation that arises from an improvised technique adapted to the needs of the moment, using an alternation of coiling, hand-building, wheel-thrown, press-moulding techniques plus the addition of slipped organic elements.
The installation Sibyls evokes the five sibyls depicted in Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel. Sibyls are mysterious figures with prophetic qualities, intermediaries between the divine spirit and humankind. Thus, beyond the literary reference, the Sibyl is a symbol of hope for humankind to be clairvoyant. In the Sibyls, I analyse the concept of prediction in relation to contemporary man’s inability to foresee the effects of consumerism on nature. With this installation, I also experimented with projecting videos taken from nature onto the white surfaces, creating an interplay between the static nature of the sculpture and the dynamism of the video.
Panthèon Blanc reflects an openness to the influences of the history of art of all times and places, passing through the votive sculptures and figurines of the Western and Eastern traditions. The installation is a review of figures of diverse morphologies and styles almost as if identifying a globalisation of the deities parallel to the temporal phenomenon of globalisation that invests our society. The sculptures are composed of porcelains from many countries to become a metaphor of biological and cultural contaminations, the maximum expression of our times. This plurality is also expressed in the use for the first time of many ceramic techniques contemporaneously to define the diverse natures of the figures of the Panthèon Blanc.
Captions
- Metamorphoses of Minerva 2024, porcelain, 73,5cm H max
- Panthèon Blanc, 2021, porcelain, 52cm H max. Exhibited at the 3rd Blanc de Chine International Ceramic Art Award, 2022-23, Hangzhou, China
- Sibyls, 2022, slipped, glazed terracotta, 187cm H max
