Photo

CHRYSALIDS

To talk about Simona Ragazzi we must first of all talk about her versatility, where nothing is secondary or at the service of, but everything is part of a path which, while not always following the same path, always chooses the less easy path, or at least, as Robert Frost, the least obvious one. And Simona's photography displaces, it is nothing of what you would expect, her way of transmutation between the immediate concreteness of a solid work to the light sweetness of an image allows steps of absolute strength and depth. They are absolute steps. This starting point is essential for placing oneself in front of her photographic works, one cannot ignore this mobile aspect when approaching the photographer Simona. And preparing to read the photographic themes of the artist Simona Ragazzi one perceives that Crisalidi are among the most interesting works of her. Every reference to the chrysalis cannot disregard, in widespread knowledge, the intrinsic concept of transformation. Somehow this is associated with the alchemical maxim that would give her, on the basis of the principle that "that which is continually transformed cannot perish", an aura of immortality. In immortality it is not the caterpillar, nor the chrysalis that dies, and perhaps not even the butterfly, if everything is seen in a broader perspective of change, then everything remains transforming itself continuously until perhaps, a distant tomorrow, it can only return to what it was. As Ragazzi herself states, the photographs "..symbolize the transmutative work.. the continuous and unstoppable transformation of my sculptural works. Immortalizing a stage of creation as an ephemeral song, transitory and circumscribed in time… like poems, wonderful butterflies, memory grids..” A work on the job.. The photographic research-documentation of the artist Crisalidi is not a work in support of the other sculptural-ceramic, it lives of its own nature drawing strength and conceptual proposition from it. In fact, there is a moment in which the filter of an artist's perception is capable of transforming, through skilful plays of light and shadow, the coating, which will become glassy on her works, into silent poetry. Crystallize the moment of poetry in the continuous change of reality..... in this case before the transformation of fire. The theme of transformation and the passage of time is very dear to the artist and it is highlighted in all his creations. In fact, in his sculptural works Sequenze, they become a series of dichotomous representations in which the "in the making" image is juxtaposed with its subsequent - last but not least - becoming, ideally projected as a perception of it which is in continuous evolution, between feelings, emotions, memories and other human instabilities. In this way this series of works lends itself alongside the others and is also accompanied by the photographic work Viaggi which is a real and explicitly represented becoming. All to represent, à la Gerhard Richter, how Simona's work is a continuous, non-stop research, steps, long strides, more or less meditated steps, steps of the soul and of the heart, and it is a pleasure to live these steps with her.

WOODS - CATHEDRALS - TRAVELS

More than photographs, the works of Simona Ragazzi are majestic and impalpable images. Textures of lights and colors that blend immortalizing these timeless spaces, giving us back that intimate atmosphere that is impossible to describe and that only these places can give us.
A photograph with a primordial and avant-garde flavor at the same time, thanks to a pictorial composition technique that delicately outlines soft color geometries. An "incorrect" use of photography through which the artist transfigures the solidity of these architectures by giving us back works, with a new and unedited guise, made of places in their essence of light and movement.

In the photographic projects Boschi, Cattedrali and Viaggio the artist offers a sample of images rich in pathos, unreal and evanescent. A series of photographs of what the eye does not see, what it cannot grasp, what perhaps does not exist except in that still moment in which the calm spools of light seem to form an evanescent vision in translation of a personal mystical suggestion.

This is the moment in which Simona Ragazzi captures the strong emotional beauty of these places: she moves the lights on the image, calibrates its movements and orchestrates plays of reflections. Hers is a personal style that aims to capture the interactions between light and the subject who faces it to restore the pure moment in which reality is transfigured, in which matter becomes impalpable and only the soul remains.