Art Critic
SPIRIT
Across her Mandalic works, Carla Sello represents the process through which the Cosmos was formed from its umbilical center. Through a complex and diversified symbolism, it represents a sort of initiatory journey which elicits an inner development. It synthesizes the union and harmony of the Self with the Universe, of the inner world with the outer one. This cosmic diagram is a support to meditation, for it constitutes a perfect sacred sphere that shows the order and harmony of an ‘enlightened’ mind. Similarly to the rose window of a Gothic cathedral, the Spirit engraved by the artist in the wood using the pyrograph and the airbrush, and subsequently painted with acrylic colors, is made of a generating ‘wind’ which translates into ànemos, fire, colored light. There merge the Eastern, Western and Middle
Eastern processes, all in a quest for the absolute Light: from Buddhism to Platonism, to the Jewish symbologies contained in the Torah and in the Essene doctrines; from Neoplatonism to the Ficinian Humanism; from the medieval mystical Christianity to the ratio and the Cartesian (then Illuminist and Masonic) ‘geometric’ clarity, to the luminous vibration of the unrepeatable instant painted by Impressionism. Thus, a sort of movement going from the outside to the inside, that is, a metaphor of the spiritual and cosmic ‘objective’ reality imprinted in the subjective and individual consciousness.
PAX HOMNIBUS
Spirit, painted by artist Carla Sello, is a radiant image of the circular shape – the ‘sacred’ par excellence – in which the
light emanating from the central ‘opening’, or ‘navel’, generates a few rays forming two Byzantine crosses, rotated by 45° in relation to each other. This ‘icon’ of the mandala represents the psychological dimension of spatiality with a cosmic illusion, where the sign engraving rises to the etymological value of the term.
These signs, like concentric waves that spread in water, or rather, in space, expand from the generating center in which they were formed. As streams of cosmic and spiritual energy that affect and shape the primordial matter, they have their origin in the symmetry of the Tibetan Mandala (in Sanskrit “container of essence”, also translated as ‘circle’ or ‘cycle’), consisting of a sacred diagram, a symbol of the universe and its vitality. It represents the process by which the Cosmos was formed from its umbilical center; through a complex and diversified symbolism, it allows a sort of initiatory journey that allows a person to evolve internally.
It synthesizes the union and harmony of the Self with the Universe, of the inner world with the outer one. This cosmic diagram supports meditation, as it is a perfect sacred sphere showing the order and harmony of an ‘enlightened’ mind.
Similarly to the rose window of a gothic cathedral, the Spirit engraved by the artist on wood with the pyrograph and the airbrush, and then painted with acrylic colours, is made of generating ‘wind’, that is of ànemos, of fire, of coloured light – thus merging Eastern, Western and Middle Eastern processes in a quest for absolute Light. It spans from Buddhism to Platonism, to the Jewish symbologies of the Torah and the Essene doctrines; from Neoplatonism to Ficinian Humanism; from medieval mystical Christianity to the Cartesian ratio and ‘geometric’ clarity, then Illuministic and Masonic; to the luminous vibration of the unrepeatable instant depicted by Impressionism.
A sort of movement from the outside to the inside, therefore, that is a metaphor of the spiritual and cosmic ‘objective’ reality that is imprinted on the subjective and individual consciousness.