Meetings with the community of immigrants that now form a significant part of the population of Santa Croce sull’Arno, notions of the town’s history, and a close contact with a company of excellence that makes leather for luxury fashion items provided further inspiration for reflections that eventually condensed around the image of “becoming”.
The two large installations expressly created by José Yaque for Villa Pacchiani, one outdoors at the entrance to the Villa, the other for the display area’s central hall embrace all these suggestions together. The ideas of flowing, of debris of perpetual change, of the catastrophic event that generates a new form of beauty are all concepts that emerge from the artist’s research are expressed in the two installations that encompass the life of the river, life, and the things of Man. Two different sets of paintings and drawings done over a few years - the fruit of other experiences - take up an entire hall of the display space: one is based on paintings of bridges in certain cities, the other regards the role played by art and its display. The paintings and drawings depicting bridges was done in 2013 during the artist’s residence in London and Warsaw, two cities defined by their rivers. The bridges that connect the two banks are privileged vantage points for recording the continuous flow of people parallel to the water’s movement, strategically located observatories in representing the metaphor of movement and evolution of humanity and its civilization. The same wing of Villa Pacchiani hosts a set of drawings (Devenir, all from 2014) depicting painting galleries and museums in which display structures are shown as the piers of bridges against which a flood’s floating debris and dead branches have piled up against and accumulated. This set of paintings and drawings mirrors a sign of continuity of the artist’s actions and search, in a continuing flow of thought and image in a new set of drawings focused on the photographic images collected in Santa Croce sull’Arno during the artist’s stay is featured in the other Villa’s other wing.
Hammersmith Bridge, 2013, acrylic paint, enamel on canvas 120 x 150 cm
Courtesy: GALLERIA CONTINUA, San Gimignano / Beijing / Les Moulins / Habana
Photo by: ©Yaque