Grey Blue Empowerment, 2023

Patrizia Casagranda  

The works of Patrizia Casagranda are an alluring invitation to dream, the opportunity to take your thoughts on a fascinating inner voyage. Looking upon these charming women‘s portraits, you are led to believe that they have originated from an alternate bygone era and world, although they clearly depict the faces of modern young women.

Casagranda creates expressive connections through the coalescence of collage, painting and graffiti - the complexity she thus achieves in her paintings is fascinating. At first sight, these works appear very illustrative and aesthetic. However, the deceptive use of materials unveils a continuous array of new levels and perspectives; the fragility of the seemingly crumbling layers of paint, the lace and fibres that have been incorporated, as well as the relief-like impasto brushstrokes merge into a symbiosis of ancient murals from a long past epoch with that of contemporary, modern art.

Through the apparent weathering of her works as well as random corrosion pro- cesses, damaged metal, torn and yellowed paper and structures, which are reminiscent of crumbling plaster, and decay, Patrizia Casagranda portrays a transitory world; however, it is one that also encompasses a piece of eternity. This transience - which is evident in both the material and the depiction of youthful beauty - is, on the one hand, part of „Vanitas“ symbolism, which is repeatedly used in art, but, on the other hand, proves to be a reflection upon the fast-paced media landscape and its rapidly changing advertising strategies and ideals for beauty.

Through their almost tangible materiality, Patrizia Casagranta‘s works offer a remarkable level of fascination – which is quite rare in a world where we see an ever growing abundance of digital art. Layer for layer, they reveal their soul to the observer and what lies beneath. You can read these paintings; you can wander through them and even lose yourself in them.