Critical texts

Marco Meneguzzo

ARS GRATIA ARTIS

In an era where even in art the main purpose is to strike the eye with immediately astonishing images, it may seem strange that there are artists who ask their interlocutor to slow down, pay attention, depth, constancy, intellectual participation, visual intelligence, and contemplation. Yet they exist, they are not few, and almost all of them practice some form of abstraction, a term that can range from the most hermetic conceptualism to the more traditional pictorial abstractionism, as it came to be specified during the first seventy years of the twentieth century. Raffaele Cioffi is among the latter.

Carlo Franza

LA LUCE LIBERATA

La luce cresce fra soglie e passaggi, entra lentamente e si spinge nell’aria delle stanze ideali. Quella di Raffaele Cioffi potrebbe sembrare una pittura destinata a un gusto prezioso dell’occhio, invece bisogna avvertire la profonda necessità di filtrare il reale in questa sottile consistenza di una pittura che è riflesso di una disposizione mentale adatta a sciogliere gli ingorghi confusi della natura su uno schermo di trepide intuizioni.

Alberto Barranco di Valdivieso

La pittura che si muove di Alberto Barranco di Valdivieso La forza della pittura. Raffaele Cioffi ha sempre dimostrato un istinto “sensuale” per la disciplina della pittura. Formatosi all’Accademia di Brera nei primi anni Novanta dapprima con Luciano Fabro, artista concettuale dai paradigmi severi, e successivamente scegliendo percorsi didattici diversi, ha dimostrato già nei primi…

Alberto Barranco di Valdivieso

BEYOND THE THINGS OF REALITY. A DISCOURSE ON RAFFAELE CIOFFI’S PAINTINGS

Analytical painting and post-analytical painting: a necessary transition.

In 1990, Raffaele Cioffi enters the Brera Academy of Fine Arts in Milan. After his first year attending the course, he understands that, for him, there is an urgency to apprehend and carry out a “real” pictorial research; it was stronger than just following the conceptual line of his teacher Luciano Fabro, one of the founders of Arte Povera. At that time this was a subject which still had great cultural impact on the Italian art world and, together with Transavanguardia, it was probably the main art wave of greatest relevance in the most important commercial and exhibition channels. Therefore he decided to abandon the lure of a route that perhaps would have been easier to follow but that did not convince the young artist from Desio to leave the path of painting.

Roberto Borghi

STELLE VARIABILI

Guardare un’opera d’arte non è un’azione semplice: presuppone l’abbandono totale alla visione e il soffermarsi senza limiti di tempo, per lasciarsi andare alle infinite possibilità di ciò che può accadere. Questo approccio ascetico è ancora più efficace nella contemplazione della profondità e dell’oscura luminosità delle tele di Raffaele Cioffi, raccordate meticolosamente e in modo studiatamente selettivo nella mostra “Light Screens” della LM Gallery.

Alberto Barranco di Valdivieso

VAPORS OF LIGHT

Light stimulates the perception of things. The reflex of electromagnetic radiation delves into our deduction of the world through a mechanism of filtration done on the chromatic light spectrum. Reality, then, reveals upon our eyes and from these to the brain, distinguishing shapes and physical space. In Art history, from Impressionism onwards, the theme of light is faced as a field of survey in order to explore what is invisible in objective reality: that is the principle of a research that makes visible the shape beyond the naturalistic glance, which does not describe but instead suggests.

Martina Valente

LIGHT SCREENS

Looking at an artwork is not a simple action: the viewer has to totally abandon itself to the vision with no time limit, leaving it to the endless possibilities of what could happen. This ascetical approach is even more effective while contemplating the profound and obscure brightness of Raffaele Cioffi’s canvases, meticulously collected in this exhibition curated by LM Gallery.

Luca Pietro Nicoletti

SOLIDITÀ DELLA LUCE

Scrivendo nel 2009 del lavoro di Raffaele Cioffi, in occasione della mostra dell’artista a Villa Bagatti Valsecchi, Claudio Olivieri parlava di “sipari”: era una definizione precisa, seguita dalle riflessioni di un pittore sensibile e acuto osservatore della realtà e del lavoro delle generazioni più giovani. Un pittore che parla di un altro pittore conduce inevitabilmente la sua lettura in relazione alla propria ricerca e ai fondamenti di poetica che lo hanno animato, ma in questo caso il dialogo risulta particolarmente felice perché colloca il lavoro di Cioffi dentro una determinata linea di sviluppo della pittura, ma dichiara bene anche la distanza, la specificità di una generazione rispetto a quella da cui virtualmente ha ricevuto il testimone.

Vera Agosti

CROCE DI LUCE E DI EMOZIONE

With the advent of Christ, the History completely changes and together with it mankind and its destiny. The philologist Erich Auerbach (whose work I have briefly analyzed) explains that we could find a new idea of God in the Christian literature, a spirit made man, and – closely related to this – a new idea of man, flesh created as an image of God. Each man is an image of the image of God, namely Christ.

Claudio Olivieri

SIPARIO

È come un bagliore che mi accoglie entrando, dopo la penombra di una prima stanza, nello studio di Raffaele. Allora, osservando il grande dipinto, mi chiedo se sia finito, appeso alla parete e come in attesa. Forse manca un segno, una stesura, ma è come se già si svolgesse, annunciandosi in questo riverbero abbagliante che ne è già l’essenza, ciò che darà forza al suo compiersi.

Giovanni Maria Accame

CIOFFI, THE EMOTIONAL SPACE OF PAINTING

Long before being an artistic practice, Raffaele Cioffi deeply conceived and lived painting like a decisive event of his own life. I’ve been a precocious witness of his passion as he was one of my students in the course of the History of Contemporary Art at Brera. I can perfectly remember his predilection for Rothko and Newman, whose art would leave an evident trace in his younger works. Almost all his paintings till the beginning of 2000 are based on the conviction of going ahead not only with painting but also with its reasons, by showing somehow its sense, its reflections and its reprocessing.

Matteo Galbiati

THE PRINCIPLE OF PAINTING

Artists, as they trust completely the inspiration of their artistic vocation, should never disregard nor betray the sense of their actions and their research and, by showing an affection and a fidelity to their own poetry and their own language – even to the unpredictable variations and tendencies that may come out – they need to connect themselves to their individual thinking and painting. Through the assiduous practice, that goes along with the urgency of communication of their soul, the singular individualism of Art shows a particular feature.

Claudio Baglioni

CONTINUUM…

Ten years ago I wrote a song, as a suite, entitled “Le vie dei colori” (Colours’ roads). The history of a lonesome journey of a man (and of every man) searching for himself, through truth and beauty. I found those colours’ roads in Raffaele’s works. Roads, tracks, meadows, rivers, courses, railways, canals, tracings, paths, lanes which show and paint the eyes’ path and guide the heart’s trip.

Francesco Tedeschi

CONTINUUM…

“…Continuum…”, like a development with no interruptions, where space and time get combined. “…Continuum…”, like a slow movement, made of barely  visible metamorphosis of light and colour.” “…Continuum…”, like something intangible, between the appearance to the presence and the persistence of a hidden and nearly secret life. “…Continuum…”, like the awareness of the “continuity” of a tradition, the tradition of painting which doesn’t necessarily have to be new or amazing.

Claudio Cerritelli

IL VOLTO DELL’ANIMA

1. Le porte del silenzio, la coscienza del colore (1989-1993)

Come in uno slancio verso uno spazio sconfinato la ricerca di Raffaele Cioffi offre i primi segnali di luce alla fine degli anni Ottanta, con un gruppo di tele che si staccano dalle forme figurative che costituiscono l’approccio iniziale della sua pittura. Come avviene in questi casi, il periodo di formazione di un giovane pittore è sempre un laboratorio istintivo di forme che si accavallano, di ipotesi che si rincorrono, di progetti che si sviluppano  prima di giungere ad una convincente scelta di campo.