THE “INCARNATE” MISTERY, by Mario Dal Bello

What is the world, the cosmos like according to Piva’s artistic vision? Today, as we witness the grievous death of nature wounded by man, there are poets – their expressive form is not important, whether fi gurative, literary, musical, fi lmic or theatrical – that look at it with an unwounded, we might say, primitive eye. They are artists who conserve a basic spotlessness, a virginity, so that their expression maintains the candour of innocence, a child’s gaze. But, at the same time, the child within them understands life, pain, love, and creative torment.

There is a new kind of artist in these creators and Piva is one of them – that do not deny the discoveries of the past and its achievements but do not stop at memory except for using it to create a launching pad for the exploration of new paths and original ways of speaking and looking look. His works, in fact, mirror someone who – temporal and spatial, whether they are seasons or places – with the soul of an untiring researcher into thoughts that are conceived out of visions and emotions. The titles of his works –“Galassia”, “Sinergìa”, “Tessuto Organico”, “Gora Konder”,”“Sogno d’Inverno”, etc., do not seem to be mere assignments of mood or naturalistic descriptions but the intimately profound thoughts of the artist, providing a view of his intellect and imagination that together succeed in emerging as a kind of “new creation”. Using untraditional materials, laying out the scene in an abstraction that makes the material the protagonist, and assuming the non-fi gurative nature of language. Piva does not break with his past or tradition but develops from them. And, as in music, moves from the tonal to the atonal system, not brusquely but with sweet harmony. Antique and new sweetness reign in Piva’s work, a distension of the soul even when the colour is violent, the fl ashing lights probe, and the forms are apparently unresolved.

The author loves the order of things. He lingers over the infi nite mystery of the cosmos as if infront of a miracle. There is in him a frequent capacity to amaze that permeates the material in his work with tremors, implied sighs and perhaps also groans. Piva knows horror and certain vivid and brusque tonalities reveal this. He does not ignore “blame” as some material explosions seem to confi rm. Basically, as a true poet, he investigates because he wishes to know man, who, however, is absent-present. It is nature for Piva – and he seems to mean by this everything alive in the cosmos – voice, word, thought. Conceived out of a longlasting, amorous, acute overview. And this overview is concretised in pulsating material on a support. But what material? Piva is not a doubting, asphyxiated poet, twisted around himself. He is not enclosed in questions without answers like many artists of our Western world.

Piva makes light, glaring or suffused, clear or dense, pass depending upon feeling. There is fury and enthusiasm in it but also a maternal touch of velvet and tenderness. It is rare that a contemporary painter achieves a similar feeling. In Piva, the mystery of this material that illuminates makes it appear to our eyes as “meat”. The nature that he extracts does not remove the “carnality”, i.e. being full of life. If we stop, just for a while, in front of his works, even leaving aside the subject, also if we do not know the title, we would, in any case, feel our souls expand. Because the mystery of existence, material awaiting to be come fl esh, is presented by Piva in its pure state: colour, form, light. I.e. life.

This is why, now, his form of art cannot be other than abstraction, the language of the infinite. Where Piva is and towards which he wants to take us.