Dirty Water: Davanzo gives up colour to express the urge of an authentic ecologic anxiety.

To Sergio Davanzo water has been in the past the source of inspiration and strength, but it is also integrating part of his favourite expressive technique, acrylic painting. Indeed water is a component of the colour itself, diluting it and making it liquid. Moreover, water is used to wash the paint-brush, cleansing it in a metaphorical way as well, because also the memories of what has already been painted are washed away. After the brush has been polished, what is left is Dirty Water.

The major theme of the exhibition faces in depth the problem of pollution. It deals not only with the pollution of the water, seas and lakes, but with the cycle of water as a whole. It focuses on the silent disease which deprives water of its purifying qualities, both natural and ritual. The main feature of Dirty Water is the almost complete absence of colour, which achieves an effect of bareness and sterility. Rebirth and regeneration energies, together with the vital force of lines and shapes, seem to have been lost, faded away. Only a shadow of these forces is left, expressed by a wide range of grey nuances, by means of which the painter defines his own, personal geometry. Movement and speed still belong to all the paintings, such as the strength of the stroke. But the latter is deliberately considered, on several occasions, the vehicle of a malignant and disquieting message. A few remains of colour, reluctant to abandon Davanzo’s production, linger on his canvas, as if they were intruders. Tiny dots, flashes, gleams. They are the last evidence what the world, and the human soul, were like before being definitely spoilt. In this landscape of general anxiety, only one source of hope is given, and the proposal is partly ironical: the communication with other creatures, with what/whom may exist beyond the dimensions of time and space. Therefore the only feeble note of optimism comes from the signals one gives to another, waiting for a positive reply, which seems to be extremely remote, but still possible.

(Maria Sole Politti)