The art of Bergamasco born, 52 year old sculptress Nives Marcassoli from Pavia, is a remarkable synthesis of light, colour, and shape, in her splendid glass creations, fashioned through careful projecting together with an erudite alchemy of heating and cooling. With her innovative ideas and solutions, one can acknowledge the revival of an age old Italian glass tradition.
Marcassoli’s recent creations will be exhibited until May 30th in Milan, the title of the exhibition is Fire and Water (Galleria 9 Colonne/Spe Via Tadino 30) . Organized by the historical magazine D’Ars directed by Grazie Chiesa, always careful in valorising the talents of contemporary artists through a rigorous screening of esteem.
Marcassoli began experimenting with glass during the 1990’s; here she affirms her sensitivity and intelligence, together with her flexibility in tackling these challenges. Her artefacts are presented as layers of mysterious and fascinating morphologies, instant clouds, caskets of crystallized matter, transparencies evoking depths of oceans, capturing bubbles, symbols and sketches in vibrant mirrored nuances, various etchings of fleeting memories and echoes of life, sensations of a picture trapped in the mass of glass, composed of precious shadings of deep and celestial blues, soft pinks, delicate pearly greys, joined with evanescent yellows and reds, a liquid world, or rather, a vanishing fluid planet, condensed and imprisoned into shapes and figurative formations, especially those of hands and of bodies of naked women.
Nives’ confidence with these glass elements (which has also permitted her to create between 2000 and 2007 more than 100 square meters of stunning stained glass windows for the Crocifisso church in Pavia) is found in these small masterpieces such as Silk (in the photograph, 2010) Dialoghi (dialogues) Vibrazioni (vibrations) Vita (life, 2011) special effects that go beyond a technical virtuosity to be documented, instead with a poetical, visionary mind, capable of pouring into the mass through the translucence of white heat, and combining a specific gesture of the process of fusion and furnacing together with illustrations and iconic suggestions.
Marcassoli avails her complex and personalised stratagem of design and glass fusion, combined with the pouring into the melting pot and casting into the mold, giving us microcosmic dreams and levity, trusting the pledge of the flames and a random destiny, masterfully controlling the shape of the final result in a variety of tactile surfaces that fluctuate from soft and smooth to rough and jagged.
Domenico Montalto
May 2011