The arstist open the new season at Circolo Brandale

Imelda Bassanello’s magic world by Viviana Siviero

The funny and peculiar characters, painted in a fanciful game, move in the magic and muffled winter atmosphere.

" January, the month of lethargy - the air is sharp, the brightness and warmth of the holiday are just a memory. Tradition wants snow to protect under its cloak the earth resting. In that suspended atmosphere a melody rises. It comes out of the cold winter with a fragrance of old trades which have not survived or maybe have never existed. The sweet smell of boiled chestnuts is overcome by something else that smells of winter: the potatoes fragrance which, with a bit of fantasy , is similar to the smell that comes from wood. And just from this a blond child, with half closed eyes absorbed in playing the fife – the instrument of enchanters, takes form. There you go the work is done: all elements are uncovered. To rhythm of this imaginary music that smells of winter thousands of elfish children are born: it’s about Imelda Bassanello’s characters, with their small lively and clever eyes. Their wise expressions sometimes like grown-ups bend the world to their will and invade all imaginary spaces that surround us. They can appear or disappear, play a tune, eat, play a game, read tales. Theirs is a parallel universe, where there is certainty that dreams can come true and all inhabitant have continuously a joy to make them smile.
About Imelda Bassanello’s works – a vital and resolute woman, in love with her profession – one could invent endless tales. You just need to observe one of her board and every spectator can build up her or his own magic tale.
These paintings makes Imelda Bassanello a particular phenomenon on the art sphere. On one side her work can be seen as a kind of craftwork but it’s not like this. The hand of the artist seems almost not to enter in the creation of these childlike and joyful worlds. You may think that the figures painted on the boards keep silent in front of human beings, waiting impatiently that Imelda let them in solitude shutting the door of the Studio. Only then they can go wild in unbridled entertainment and play vortical games because it seems that as soon as you reopen the door these elves instantaneously fix themselves in the place where they were caught. In Imelda’s world the potatoes peeler really exists, so do other pseudo-imaginary characters like the boy who happily follows a soap bubble caught by a sunbeam or a fantasy manufacturer puppeteer. "

Viviana Siviero