Catalog of the exhibition "Surfisti. Cacciatori di orizzonti"

The catalog of the project "Surfisti. Cacciatori di orizzonti" with text by curator Ivan Quaroni.

Horizon hunters by Ivan Quaroni

The “line” is an eminently aesthetic concept even in a sport like surfing. As the American writer Ryan McDonald explains, in the language of surfing a “line” is the path a surfer chooses to take on a wave. It is the pattern he or she traces, darting across the surface of the water as a kind of elegant and ephemeral personal signature. A line is also the imaginary one where waves break and where surfers stop, sitting on the board, waiting for the next wave. This is perhaps the most ma- gical and contemplative moment of a practice that can be variously understood as a simple athletic activity, or as an absolute, obsessive lifestyle that influences every aspect of daily life, sometimes resulting in the manifestations of a macho culture perfectly embodied by the figure of “Bodhi,” the romantic villain played by Patrick Swayze in the movie Point Break.

In contrast, sitting on the board in line-up at sunrise or sunset, as Michele Reda- elli tells us, represents the most spiritual part of surfing. In that waiting time on the border between night and day, an individual has the opportunity to get in touch with his/her deepest dimension: “I obviously look for the waves,” the artist confes- ses, “but first of all for a context, a dimension in which I can find myself suspended between sea, land and sky and my soul”.

That is why the adrenaline-fueled vision of Waves Hunters, as troubled surfers in search of the perfect wave are called, never dominates in Redaelli’s imagery, but rather the lyrical, enchanted, twilight version of a sport usually associated with sun, beaches, and the offbeat, lighthearted lifestyle of the California coast.

The way in which the artist treats these subjects - and it should be remembered that they are not the only ones explored in his research-is very different from the stylistic features of what is commonly called Surf Art. No giant waves in the manner of Raymond Pettibon, who reinterprets Hokusai’s The Great Wave in a punk key, and no Rick Griffin psychedelic drawings or John Van Hamersveld lysergic graphics.

Michele Redaelli’s imagery is far from the visual grammars of the Lowbrow Art and Pop Surrealism galaxy, but it is rooted in an abstract and figurative painting tradition centered on color. A kind of noble twentieth-century descent that arrives from Henri Matisse and Raoul Dufy, to the painters of Color Field Painting such as Mark Rothko, Helen Frankenthaler and Morris Louis through Milton Avery to arrive at Peter Doig and above all at Katherine Bradford finally. She is the painter of seaside nocturnes - for example those of the Lifeguards series - to whom Redaelli is perhaps most similar in temperament and sensibility.
And yet, in Michele Redaelli’s canvases, watercolors and even etchings, a graphic vein can also be traced alongside the coloristic matrix, one that looks on the one hand to the lesson of illustrators such as Saul Steinberg and Jean Jacques Sempé, both New Yorker cover artists, and on the other to eclectic artists such as Philip Guston and George Condo, who integrated certain aspects of comics into the courtly language of painting.
So line and color form the backbone of his paintings, while standing between them almost in a relationship of mutual contrast. Over a chromatic carpet that can take on the appearance of a magmatic informal field often characterized by gestural imprints, Redaelli overwrites, almost as if they were a counterpoint, his sparse and synthetic figures. Looking closely at works such as In acqua (2022), La nuotatrice, Giorni felici (2023) or Il bagnino dorme sotto l’ombrellone (2022), the cha- racters seem to be laid on the layer of color of the background like papier collé, cut-out figurines with marked contours that, create volume, three-dimensionality and, above all, legibility to paintings that would otherwise be purely abstract.

These floating charachters are, mostly surfers sliding on the surface of the water as can be inferred from paintings such as Area riservata ai bagnanti (2023), Mare di Vigne (2023), Mickey (2023), Planetaria (2023), Pasta fresca (2023), but in the artist’s paintings there are also subjects in which surfing takes a back seat, and a more poetic vision - or “romantic,” as the artist would say - also linked to the discovery of places plays an important role. It is observed from “a privileged point of view,” that is, that of someone who can admire the landscape of the mainland from the sea. The artist recounts, for example, that “In Versilia, especially in winter when the bathhouses are closed, you are surrounded by maritime pines and the backdrop of the Apuan Alps; in Liguria the mountains plunge directly into the sea; in Lanzarote or Fuerteventura, where I lived, your gaze wanders between desert lands and volcanoes; in Costa Rica, for example, you float admiring the jungle, listening to howler monkeys, surrounded by cormorants flying at the water’s edge just inches from you”.
It is not surprising to find these same geographical suggestions in paintings such as Line up (2023) where we recognize the howler monkeys of Costa Rica; Vulcano (2023), which refers to the eruptive landscapes of the Canary Islands; Passeggiata sul molo (2023), where the hint to Versilia is filtered through the reference to a gloomy painting by Lorenzo Viani (Passeggiata notturna sul molo, 1919), takes on the classical form of the pier, a construction that also appears in the painting Il pontile del Forte (2023) and in the watercolour painting Il pontile del Tonfano (2023) respectively located at Forte dei Marmi and Marina di Pietrasanta -and then also in the etchings titled Versilia (2023), that show a typical seaside village close to the Apuan Alps. The fantastic elements that peep into Redaelli’s ecstatic and nocturnal imagery are more impressive than the geographical references. If the figures suspended in the sky clinging to the fins of a large flying fish in Dall’alto (2023), or the cosmic horseman crossing the night sky in Galactica (2023) bring to mind the more fabulous Chagall, the flying saucers that appear in Planetaria (2023) and UFO (2023) wink at the paintings of the American Esther Pearl Watson who, just like Redaelli, uses an intentionally naïve pictorial language to evoke the wonder of the child’s gaze. When, having shed his self-taught shoes and forgotten for a moment the iconographic theme, he really becomes a painter, capable of penetrating the dimension of vision with simple and exact, synthetic and precise images that would have pleased the Calvino of the Lezioni Americane.

In paintings such as L’attesa I and L’attesa II, La surfista tra i bagnanti and also the aforementioned Il pontile del forte, all painted in 2023, poetry and geometry seem to merge into a perfect synthesis where horizons (those of the title of this exhibition) take the form of a straight line.
That of a pier, a surfboard or the surface of the water that segment the image like the fields of color in a Mark Rothko canvas. Details like this make you realize that here more than the surfing experience is worth that of the painter, of the artist who wisely holds a mute dialogue with the masters of the twentieth century, without renouncing the stylistic freshness and immediacy typical of outsider art.

A few words on the project by Michele Redaelli

The idea for the exhibition was born in 2022 when I discovered Lorenzo Viani’s painting “Passeggiata notturna sul molo”, which depicts in an extremely simple and straightforward way a shepherd walking at a leisurely pace on the Viareggio pier during a nighttime sea storm. I was thunderstruck by it. I already knew Viani’s work to some extent but that painting sparked something inside me.

From the following day I started working on a series of large paintings focused on my passion for the ocean, and in particular for surfing.
I already knew for certain that one of the works would be a tribute to Lorenzo Viani and his lone man on the Viareggio pier, in a modern key and with brighter colors.

Encouraged by friends and artists, including Blandine Pellet and Tano Pisano, I started a dialogue with the Municipality in Pietrasanta in order to organize an exhibition of large paintings in a proper space. By setting the date for the opening almost a year away, I had the opportunity to reflect on the atmospheres at length and recreate it with my works.

I tried to approach the surfing theme in a barely hinted way, dwelling more on the poetic, romantic and contemplative aspect of this discipline. To big waves and scenes related to technical sports performance, I preferred dreamlike situations.
I began a deep research on color and abstraction to create backgrounds in whi- ch the images could merge or rest gently, letting my more graphic and illustrative vein coexist with this new expressive need. These canvases were then joined by smaller works in acrylic or watercolor, and some etchings.

The title “Hunters of Horizons” comes from my personal experience.
i often find myself in the line up at magical times like sunrise or sunset and in good sea conditions i have the privilege to admire the incredible colours of the horizion. The same if i turn my esyes at the shore. That is a unique point of view.

I always need to travel and explore new places but i also search for deep and personal horizons in a more reflective way. You have the opportunity to get in touch with yourself, experiencing moments of pure presence, listening to your breath and contemplating the infinite. You feel part of something, when you are in the water, especially alone or with a few people. This is the feeling I always look for and wanted to try to convey.

The exhibition in Pietrasanta, besides stimulating my artistic research, gave me the opportunity to get in touch with people with whom developing fruitful future collaborations.

In particular, I want to thank Piergiorgio Castellani and Materia Prima Foundation for inviting me to their art residency in Ceppaiano (Pi) where I painted “Mare di vigne,” that will become part of the Foundation’s private collection.

I would also like to thank the Municipality of Pietrasanta and the Mayor Alberto Stefano Giovannetti for the opportunity given to me, Valentina Fogher for her pre- cious help and Sonia Pasquinelli for her endless support, the enthusiastic collectors and customers, friends and all the people who stopped by to visit the exhibition making it even more colorful.