There is a time and a place, in the immensity of the soul, where everything flows and soars into the rosy dimension of memory. Instants, fleeting moments of existence become colour and rise in the synthetic tonal stratifications of artist Paolo Mariani. Using mixed techniques, mainly pigmented paper collages, he creates fascinating visual rhythms, sharp and delicate, sublimated in a persuasive balance between transparencies and matter. Traces of experience are transfigured in the landscape, in the place, in the events that those places have had in history, becoming, in the geometric stroke, a phantasmagorical meta tale.
There is a time and a place, within the vastness of the soul, where everything flows and soars into the rosy realm of memory. Fleeting moments of existence become color and ascend through the synthetic tonal stratifications of artist Paolo Mariani. Using mixed media—mainly collages of pigmented paper—he creates captivating visual rhythms, both sharp and delicate, sublimated in a seductive balance between transparency and substance. Traces of lived experience transfigure into landscapes, places, and events from history, becoming, through geometric lines, a phantasmagorical meta-narrative.
I met Paolo at his booth at the 2024 ArtePadova Art Fair. I was struck by his intellectual vision, his immense professional dedication, his aerial compositional style of painting, and our shared passion for flight. His works search within color for the vibrant sonorities of distant memories that become a testament to a life devoted to beauty.
In his compositions, the artist captures the vastness of dreams, shaped by the reflections of memories, by gusts of wind swirling fiercely during a first parachute jump. In the immensity of the blue sky, the roar of the engine shakes the brilliant white clouds. Then comes the leap into the void, followed by silence—at times light and controlled, at times free—allowing one to marvel at the wondrous fragments of land and sky in simultaneous sequences of ardor and paradise. The earth draws near, the white canopies of parachutes appear, and one’s shadow is reclaimed upon the lush green airfield of Campoformido. The material takes on new life, the colors become rich and iridescent, breaking the fluid threads of wind into a dazzling energy of light that spreads across a thousand grassy terrains, magically generating a dizzying and transfigured perceptual ideality.
For Paolo Mariani, water too becomes an essential fluid, a living, moving entity that flows through the continuity of time. The Adige River, shimmering with emerald-blue reflections, takes on an even deeper hue when navigated by all kinds of vessels or admired from the ancient red-crested ruins of Castelvecchio in Verona. Poetic and scholastic memories speak of that enchanted place that once witnessed the story of King Theodoric, riding a fierce steed, pursuing a wild deer—mysteriously appeared—that would lead him on an incredible journey into the crater of a volcano. Between light, form, and space, memories overlap pleasantly, creating chromatic juxtapositions that define a place-memory.
For Paolo, the image of time becomes a complex revelation, where every moment, every color, is charged with infinite intellectual tenderness, suspended between the outer and the inner worlds—giving each journey, regardless of its temporal or geographical span, a newfound meaning. Paolo Mariani’s works explore invisible and visionary territories, navigating beyond the imitative dimension of reality, suspended in an infinite becoming—witnesses of moments, precious gems of irrevocable breaths, light and sensitive, dwelling in the depths of the soul.
