Paolo Porelli: Green (R)evolution, 2023-2024
My most recent sculptures seek a symbiosis between man and nature, becoming a fusion of vegetal and anthropomorphic memories in an ever-unpredictable and undefined interplay of figuration and abstraction. The works belong to the new creative season still in full development in defence and support of nature, as emphasised by the use of the colour green, an incontrovertible reference to the natural environment. Green, with all its shades, is the colour I am using to cloth this new generation with a chromatic tone that immediately refers to the plant world and the chlorophyl that creates the vital miracle of oxygen. The diversity of techniques that normally characterises my work becomes a reflected metaphor for the natural model of biodiversity.
In the installation 3D Green Iconology, the sculptures are “combines” of a repertoire of various forms, printed in clay and combined to personify botanic creatures, manipulating classical sculptures, that projected into another dimension, biological and organic, become estranging figurative inventions. The 3D printer is not used to reproduce stereotypical copies of a model but creatively, indulging the imperfections created during the printing process to give rise to unexpected aesthetic inventions used in the composition. The sculpture is also enriched with real, natural elements from the plains of Montana in evocation of the ecosystem in which they grew. The three sculptures are covered with a green lithium, copper, and rutile glaze that creates a variegated and richly evocative naturalistic surface. Both this installation and the next were created while I was visiting artist at The Archie Bray Foundation’s Voulkos studio in 2023.
Green Regeneration is a group of eight atavistic deities of the ancestral spirit of nature that promote an ecological rebirth in response to the environmental crisis that is the principal emergency on which everything else depends. For the production of these stoneware figures, a wide range of techniques from the most traditional, modelling solid, coil and slab, hand-building, wheel, to 3-D printing in clay are used, with the addition of organic materials dipped in slip. The installation is unified by the green glaze, a pop symbol of the Green movement.
Sacred Wood is a spontaneous generation of anthropomorphic images condensed into a vegetal repertoire, giving rise to a symbiotic hybrid figure, both abstract and figurative, which serves as a model for a new approach between man and nature. The title “Sacred Wood” refers to enclosed, uncontaminated places dedicated to the veneration of the sacred, a concept that is now absent in the abuse of power by contemporary man. The terracotta sculptures, modelled in my studio in Rome, are glazed with fusible transparent glazes tinted with copper.
Captions
- 3D Green Iconology, 2023, glazed stoneware, 56.5cm H max. Exhibited at the 63rd Faenza Prize, Museo Internazionale delle Ceramiche, Faenza, Italy.
- Green Regeneration, 2023, glazed stoneware, 68cm H max. Exhibited at the 2025 NCECA Annual, Utah Museum of Contemporary Art, Salt Lake City, Utah, US
- Sacred Wood, 2024, Slipped, glazed terracotta, 91cm H max. Exhibited at Alive and Unfolding, curated by Vasi Hirdo, Ceramic Art Andenne, Le Delta, Namur, Belgium
