You must have chaos within you to give birth to a dancing star. This famous and frequently cited Nietzschean aphorism captures the energy and restlessness that generate beauty. To speak of a complex artist who chooses abstraction to paint, giving rise to a big bang of strong chromatic tones, and creating the harmony of a visionary world that binds both the inner and outer self. Painting and sculpture become the domains where the artist reclaims an expressionist figurative approach; for Laura Alunni, this is a mindset fueled by reflection, curiosity, enthusiasm, passion, and freedom. By sensitivity, sensations, awareness, memories, fragility, and impetus. Her expression is the flight of a butterfly possessing the strength of an elephant—an emblem of a reality filtered through dreams, in pursuit of enchantment. It is an "archive of light," a metamorphosis, and simultaneously a creative act serving as the origin of all things, where the totality of elements organizes itself to become a world. Where creation is birth, sealing the essence of the spirit within the identity of matter.

 

Giving life to an abstract image in the manner of Laura Alunni means holding the reins of the game, taking on the responsibility of evoking the reality of complexity, and tracing the path of plurality and possibilities. It means crossing the boundaries of the unknown in a bond with the surrounding world, celebrating an identity that transcends a single dimension. "I work with humility; in my creative path, I always follow a guiding thread, a weave driven by the desire to transmit and stimulate desire." Laura's journey is one "into wonderland," akin to an im-possible fable.

 

Her works are the rainbow of a visionary sky—a musical score possessing the sinuous rhythm of sea waves that advance, recede, approach, and pull away from the shore. In her work, there is the motion of a swing, a path of colors and forms that seek and find one another, at times appearing to overlap. There is the desire to let go while simultaneously retreating inward, the urge to narrate and to be narrated. In every work of art, across different styles and eras, there is a truth alongside something secret. Within it, an area of shadow and an inscrutable halo always remain, just as an impenetrable margin persists at the very heart of every phenomenon. A triumph of colors—red, blue, green, and the "days of yellow wonder"—serves as the visiting card of Laura Alunni, marking a body of work that exudes vibrant energy through the breath of a chromatic dance where colors shine and chase one another amidst brushstrokes and impulses that shield the dark tones, and shadows that traverse the canvas almost in silence. On tiptoe. Traces of the darkness of an unconscious imbued with the anxiety that surrounds us, which the artist manages and skillfully sublimates. Paintings and sculptures embody freedom and purity, "traveling against the wind" like the branches of a tree with deep roots hidden in the darkness of the earth and branches that nourish themselves on light toward the sky. The poetics guiding her hand draw nourishment from the present, from History, and from the great themes of life, keeping a watchful eye on art history and literature. The very title of the exhibition refers to the time of the pandemic—the present looking toward the future.

 

At the crossroads of possibilities and interrogatives between a new evolutionary dimension and a permanent involution, poised between a possible collapse and a hoped-for rebirth. Sculptures, paintings, and assemblages showcase the work of an abstract artist who, surprisingly, delivers figurative traces of a face, a body, and awareness. When everything obeys a compositional harmony and the aesthetic sense of dynamic creation. "A work guided by something that stems from my inner feeling," Laura states. "A painting carries the flavor of a journey, a life story, lived experiences." Laura Alunni's distinctive style features chromatic brushstrokes that, while more fluid and rapid in places, elsewhere turn more tactile, accompanied by scratches, lines, and unexpected marks. These elements reveal and testify to a struggle of existence—of human beings "thrown" onto the earth against their will, striving for stability to reach a safe harbor.

 

The exhibition features large canvases, some from the series "The Plunge into the Soul," consisting of geometric compositions where the geometries also belong to "destiny," embracing plexiglass forms in a series aptly titled "The New Embrace." The transparency of a material that the artist frequently adopts to narrate what exists within and around us. It is present yet unseen, much like thought, emotion, the profound, and the dimension of the spirit. The inclusion of plexiglass also serves as an emblem of alienation—a separateness that Laura herself confirms: "I live the separateness between what we are and what we seem," when the transparency of this material and abstract forms, to which Laura imparts the lightness of flight, evoke freedom. Conversely, where her works take on the emphasized, geometric autonomy of a soaring arrow, they become the matrix of a desire to achieve order and equilibrium, transforming into a cradle that shelters the tangible sign of that very order and balance which the works return to us.

 

The exhibition is anchored by a large site-specific installation that gives the entire showcase its title: "Living is not difficult if one can then be reborn." A three-meter-diameter black disk hosts a cascade of fire-molded plexiglass forms—twisted silhouettes in graceful transparency descending from the ceiling to the floor in an ideal fusion of earth and sky. A series of votive statuettes inhabits this sort of pyramid of cultures: clay symbols, like fragile nests that the wind might sweep away, drawing inspiration from statuettes of distant epochs and global locations, alongside coins from every corner of the earth. Because man is no island, and Laura feels she belongs to a universal dimension even when her work evokes the realm of nature.

 

It is the pictorial sequence "Paths" that returns wide brushstrokes, serene chromatic tones, and flashes of red cutting across the canvas like unexpected joy. In "Mare Nostrum," the colors are those of a changing sea—the sea of migrants. It is an invitation to reflect on the sacrifice of the many men, women, and children who lose their lives crossing the sea under precarious conditions. "The surface of the sea is rippled, but calm lies at the bottom," Laura reminds us; and while light restores the sea's brilliance, the other side—fascinating yet shadowed—belongs to the darkness of the abyss. "On the Road," "Toward Unknown Lands," and the artistic voyage of a globe-trotting artist become metaphors for the existential journey. In Laura Alunni's color palette, there is also an invitation to pause and celebrate the theme of blue: an homage to blue, the color of depth, interiority, and night. Life itself is "Blu life."

 

Naturally, the exhibition includes an homage to Dante on the seventh centenary of his death, alongside that "Eternal Torment" accompanying the hearts of humanity across all eras. A red heart housed within the skull of a black bust declares "Love, that speaks to my mind," binding heart and intellect in an eternal, insurmountable conflict. The dreams in many of her works are cast in gold. The manifold twists and turns of Laura Alunni's fascinating journey testify that art is no fleeting instant. Alice, in "Wonderland," asks the white rabbit: "How long is forever?" "Sometimes, just one second."

 

Cecilia Casadei