BETWEEN REVIVAL AND WONDER
«I am the material that liquefies but I am also the immaterial that seeks new forms to express itself .» – Annalù
Just like her works, Annalù is a metamorphic creature and in continuous transformation, although always faithful to her own personal poetry. She has always demonstrated her capacity to play with sensory short circuits with extremely present and complex creations, but at the same time elusive, evocative, fluid.
From the very beginning, Annalù had to learn how to shape the matter: primarily fibreglass, her instrument of choice, difficult to control but powerful in its plastic rendering, that makes it identical to water (biographical element from which the Venetian artist draws constant inspiration).
She arranges it in an alchemical way by assembling it with incongruent elements such as ash and paper, bark and roots; in her vast and already iconic artistic production she has always been able to reach new heights of expressiveness and emotion, with a language full of wonder and vitality, without ever ceasing to experiment. Profound passion and a lot of research, these are the solid pillars of her work, that have allowed her to consolidate an elegant but never banal aesthetic.
In the weeping, wind-blown trees of the series FUKINGASHI and KENGAI, in WATER BOOKS, in FLYING FEET, in SPLASHING FEET or in the more recent LIGHT DISC, Annalù’s nature is never dissipated or clouded, and on the contrary has grown and magnified one work at a time, until reaching a level not only of extreme beauty and compositional perfection, but also of undeniable identity and uniqueness.
In front of a work by Annalù, an experience that is both corporeal and mental is always unleashed, both rational and dreamlike, instantaneous and cyclical.
With her DREAMCATCHER – poised between sculpture and painting, between physics and dreams – the artist is able to hypnotise the observer, building vortexes of matter and colour. The eye and mind of the viewer remain entangled in the circular movement that becomes the motion of body and of spirit.
«Works of a furious beauty» – writes the curator Angelo Crespi, in the critical text that accompanies the exhibition “ALCHEMIC”. Works that disperse without ever exploding, «thus the gaze is forced to move between the outside and, falling again, the inside, in a continuous effort between concentration and dissipation».
Works that can only be understood with «the kinetic effort of our entire being» and a consonance of our inner motion with the movement, albeit frozen in an instant, that elevates the matter of the work itself before our eyes.
Even this iconic series of hers grew with renewed wonder, little by little as Annalù experimented with swirls of new colours, textures and materials, reconfirming her own vivid creative soul.
In her butterfly mandalas she inserted, with an extraordinary effect of luminosity and appeal, discs of murano glass or vortexes of mother of pearl, once again materials with strongly autobiographical connotations that tell us of an Annalù that always returns but each time unprecedented and surprising.
Here then with the new series Light Disc the artist enters in a dialogue with the world of Design and Interior design creating luminous accessories in which the beauty of shapes and meanings does not succumb to pure functionality.
From the first glance they have the potency of a revelation: the light, that seems to naturally spring from the explosive centre of the work, silently deflagrates in the surrounding space, filling it and at the same time precipitating into the very interior like a “black hole” – recalling another happy expression of Crespi.
The 3D painted wooden base converses with a disc of glass paste and Murano crystal and mother of pearl, amplifying the extremely evocative and complex composition in apparent unity. At the centre of the work, the explosion of resin (Annalù’s stylistic monogram) creates a vortex: precisely where the viewers are invited to lose themselves.
It is in this direction, and once again with a surprising final outcome, that the series VAS – a word that derives from the sanskrit root vas – develops. The meaning of VAS is “to burn, shine, enhance the luminous component”. We find once again crystal and the resin vortex as protagonists, a small hole in the centre where all the driving power of the work is condensed, yet eternally motionless and held firmly by painted iron bases.
This passion – for innovation and renewal – has brought the Venetian artist to approach works in all formats, from 15×15 cm surfaces to site specific installations sometimes of monumental dimensions and today we see her engaged in the study of the most recent languages and instruments of contemporary artistic production, from the techniques of 3D printing to Blockchain and NFT technologies.
Able protagonist of the imaginative world, poetic engineer of the abstract and the oneiric, Annalù couldn’t feel but at ease in the exploration of these new worlds.
For example, her series of lenticular-printed Dreamcatcher, a technology that allows the obtainment of images that give the illusion of depth and that change colour when viewed from different angles. From the synergy between print and resin a captivating work is derived, that comes to life in a subjective way, or rather in the eyes of the viewer, thus acquiring an independent life.
Through experimentation with 3D printing comes the homonymous series 3D TOUCH in which she adds a clear tactile component to the work: the surface is immediately very palpable, reassuring, and this softness accentuates and facilitates the mandalic vision.
NON-FUNGIBLE ANNALÙ
«All that which usually frightens, for me has always created a curiosity which drives my necessity to find new ways of communication. Necessity drives my action and pushes me to find strategies to narrate my own worlds hoping that they create vibrations with other worlds.» – Annalù
Annalù is an artist endowed with great imagination: she works in three-dimensionality but does not consider herself a sculptor in the classical sense and talks of herself as a hybrid artist, in constant transformation, sometimes unpredictable.
The Venetian artist has entered the world of NFTs with two projects: the first step was “Annalù in Wonderland”, 2D works to show a first glimpse of her ever expanding world. Then in 3D she has created new and unique digital works, retracing some of the most iconic elements of her work (Splash feet, Dreamcatcher, Fukinagashi and Waterbook), but giving them new lifeblood and new breath, without betraying their vision of fluidity, lightness, daydreams, suspended time. In the cyclicality typical of virtual video loops, for example, the coherence with the poetic cyclicality of her fibreglass works immediately emerges.
«In the exhibition ALCHEMIC I will show works and corresponding NFTs together for the first time, so for my personal artistic story this event truly represents a fundamental point in my work».
The artist – she tells us – wanted first and foremost to approach this new form of art and creation energetically, studying it to understand its mechanisms, possibilities and strategies of action. Once again, therefore, she has not betrayed her nature as a great experimenter: «I did not find anyone to explain to me or paved the way for me, but I sought answers as always when investigating and analyzing. […] It was certainly challenging and at one point I got help from professionals in the sector.
However I believe that for an artist it is always fundamental to be vigilant, mindful of new development and growth and to be ready to question yourself. Always.»
It could seem paradoxical to think that an artist as extremely tactile as Annalù could find her path in such an impalpable world as that of non-fungible goods. However, it is precisely because she is always poised between real and dreamlike, between physical presence and a psychic elsewhere, that we are not alienated when we see her works become even more elusive, digital yet vivid, unique, irreplaceable, unrepeatable, indivisible…
Loving the world of the imagination – she continues – I couldn’t help but feel at ease in exploring this new frontier. When I decided to begin a digital, NFT art work, my interest was immediately in telling stories: the same stories that I tell to myself when I create my sculptures. I have never been interested in proposing my sculpture in a video for its own sake but in telling the stories of the worlds that make that sculpture. The telling of the creative process that leads to the sculpture. Video finally permits me to recount these passages by animating stories that inhabit my sculptures.»
For Annalù an NFT will never be a digital copy of a sculptural work but a real expansion of her own creative world, to highlight all the power of the movement, the mutation, the vitality that the fibreglass freezes in a moment of eternal waiting. Certainly a profound link exists between the physical work and the digital one: the NFT opens her work and research to new possibilities, and at the same time enhances its intrinsic characteristics. For sure the choice is dictated by the wish to reach a new public, but even more by that internal drive that has always distinguished her: the drive to amplify her expressive channels to say all that she has to convey.
BIOGRAFIA
Annalù was born in San Donà di Piave (Venice) in 1976. In 1999 she graduated from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. Her works have been shown in many important solo and group exhibitions in Italy and abroad (United States, Dubai, China, Hong Kong, France, Germany, Belgium, Slovenia, Switzerland, UK, Singapore, Russia). She took part in the Venice Biennale in 2001 and 2011 and she has won several awards and mentions. In 2009 she was selected as Italian representative in the international group exhibition at the Moya Museum in Vienna. Her works have been exhibited in Italian and foreign Museums and are part of the permanent collection of MACS in Catania and MIM – Museum in Motion Piacenza. In 2020 one of her sculptures has been acquired by the German VAF Foundation. Throughout her career she has created
artworks of all sizes, from 15×15 cm to site-specific installations of monumental dimensions. She is an artist endowed with great imaginary where nature is declined in liquid forms. From the resin, which is very used in her sculptures, it comes a poetic work played on the short circuit between the natural element and a great artificiality, between the apparent fragility and consistency of the material. She focuses her work on the moment of transition between one state and another, through a dynamic balance very close to the alchemical science aimed at the transmutation of one matter into another. Annalù’s artistic project is different from all contemporary art proposals; the oxymoron that underlies her poetics is evident in her work: a three-dimensional sculpture that seems absolutely, incontrovertibly liquid. She lives and works between Jesolo and Dubai.