The Journey

The journey of Gianna Albertin begins with her favorite material, terracotta, which has long lent itself to countless and highly personal interpretations.

The artist has accustomed us to seeing vases, plates, shields, original forms with meticulously crafted plastic decorations. She amazed us when she exhibited two-dimensional tapestries and carpets, monochrome or vibrant in tone, but always interwoven with geometric inlays, breaks, and connections evocative of distant worlds, of archaic cultures, yet at the same time symbolic of universal inner conditions.

Now she surprises us even more with her recent and very recent production, which features an everyday subject, apparently banal and of common “use”: shoes. Not to be worn, certainly, but to be seen, enjoyed, observed in the smallest details. The strong desire is to touch them, to caress them, because these are works that require tactile exploration, direct experimentation.

Colorful or muted, aggressive or soft, elaborate or simple, these shoes—always in pairs—embody moods that belong to all living beings, such as anxiety, aggressiveness, ambiguity, anger. These are surreal and metamorphic figures, shaped with great scenic and chromatic effect, which in some cases also represent the urban skyline of skyscrapers and metropolitan architectures or the gears of futuristic machines.

There are also the “spy-shoes” equipped with perfect binoculars that look at us and scrutinize the world around us. A world that is worn out, that has lost its vigor and beauty, as told by the bent tree with its torn foliage and eroded trunk.

This is the emblem of nature insulted, defaced, assaulted, and abandoned.

Other shoes, covered with fallen leaves and equipped with large eyes (the act of looking returns) bear witness to all this, but the artist Gianna Albertin does not give up. The creative urgency of her hands and the power of the material work together to build a new world, where crystal-clear water flows again, the branches turn green, and the plants come back to life with unexpected golden flashes.

If the mythical Pandora’s box has been opened and all evils have spread, there is still the possibility of redemption, of overcoming, of rebirth. And this faith springs from the earth, from the mixture, from the form, from the will to raise horizons of hope and light to reach another dimension, an intimate and personal latitude where salvation is still possible.