To describe the works of Ciani is not easy. Looking at them is an easier task. This is because the pictorial field of each work is not busy. Ciani’s compositions are elegant, uncluttered and crisp. This is largely realized by the polished use of sparse visual elements that have through the years become staple iconography in the artist’s visual repertoire. These are images of birds, eggs, insects, leaves, shells, and, of late, strings.
As I wrote about her exhibit at the Duemila in 2001, Ciani’s maintaining sparse visual elements in her pictorial field "echoes the sentiments of Modigliani…. For if one can capture a thought through a line, who needs a mesh?"
Take for instance the signature work entitled "Composition on White," a reproduction of which adorns the invitation. The negative space is almost left untouched, only to be visited by the inclusion of a magnified image of a continuous strand of ecru string looming large in the upper portion of the canvas – twining and tousled, almost yellowed through years of constant use, and casually strewn on an immaculate surface, where it is allowed to cast gray and muted shadows on it. In the lower left hand portion of the canvas are images of seven shells arranged in a row, as if in a procession. Starting to join them are images of three black ants slowly creeping in from one edge of the pictorial field, one ant in fact already perched on the first shell.
In this stunning painting, Ciani shows how to successfully combine the vital visual elements within in a white color field in quite a remarkable quiet fashion. It is a creative disposition, call it even chutzpah, which is uniformly carried out in the works in the collection, all done this year.
"Composition on Payne Gray" displays the same flair and sophistication. As the title suggests, the work is muted in monochromatic gray. The effect is breathtaking. The color field of gray is transformed into a grid- like structure where strings cross one another from edge to edge, only to be slightly disturbed by the image of yet another favorite iconographic detail of Ciani – a solitary egg painted in white off center the pictorial plane, to more or less break the rigidity of the grid and the plaintiveness of gray. Two tiny images of house lizards, also rendered in gray, are included near the right-hand lower corner of the canvas, to provide added visual texture and appeal.
In "Nest," terra cotta and terra bruciata become the color focus, while "Composition in Mint Green" is self-explanatory. In both cases, Ciani approaches their compositional concerns in terms of a single color scheme to anchor the works. Spare fields in layers and layers of oil render the backgrounds a painterly look, giving them rich texture and enabling them to act as hospitable ground for Ciani’s accustomed iconography. Even the way the artist affixes her signature – LINA ’03 – is unobtrusive. If one is unaware, it can be mistaken for a linear element in the composition.
The poignancy in her paintings is a product of long years of steadily developing her craft. There is no denying Ciani’s technical dexterity in capturing verisimilitude of external reality. She is a wonderful craftswoman. In depicting illusion of depth in her work, she is able to trick the eye of the viewer. In "2D Installation No. 1," the painted slits on the canvas from where strands of thin thread cascade down seem so real. Here she displays her mastery of providing shadows to the thinnest of line. Even the painted pins tucked on the wall seem to protrude from the surface in all their tactility, inviting the viewer to touch them as in an actual installation.
The use of an iconographic detail like the image of a string breathes Ciani’s works with multileveled dimensions. The intention of the artist, however, to focus on the string for the ongoing exhibition does not really mean presenting it as the "protagonist" in her works. It is simply a visual presence, where myriad meanings can be conjured: "Like life on a string: A thin existential platform which can hold or break; like the wish to bind and preserve, to keep life’s pieces together, or like memories as a messy tangle of thread, inextricable but vivid," as she herself states.
By focusing on few and well chosen simple details, Ciani, through her paintings, is able to present, if not capture, a mind-blowing string of events. The juxtaposition of commonplace but disparate things, when strung together in the mind as triggered by their gorgeous visuality on Ciani’s canvases, results in a narrative where fact and fiction, musing and memory, merrily intermingle. This may be one reason why her works are loosely described as surreal. For it is oftentimes in the banal aspects of life that wisps of wisdom surprisingly spring from.
Probably, this is Ciani’s re-definition of genre painting – that aside from depicting scenes of daily life, she has amplified it to focus on things of everyday life instead. It is also a re-statement of still life painting. The works certainly engage the viewer to look at familiar objects like birds, eggs, insects, leaves, shells and strings. In Ciani’s art, however, they are not only there for their own sake, but for their symbolic and hierarchical functions, thus expanding their scope and range, depending on the kind of personal experience the viewer may bring in to the works. Being so, Ciani’s art waxes poetry. True, they are still lifes, yet they are moving.
A graduate of the UP College of Fine Arts, Ciani took further studies at the Accademia delle Belle Arti in Perugia, Italy. She has held numerous solo exhibitions in the Philippines, Italy, and the United States. Born in Daraga, Albay, she has mastered her craft through years of living and working in the Europe of the art masters Heironymus Bosch, Peter Breughel, Caravaggio, and Giorgio De Chirico. Her works have been critically praised and collected here and abroad.
Ciani alternates her sojourns and painting between Manila and Rome where she maintains separate studios by bodies of water. One studio overlooks a lake in Trevignano Romano, Italy. The other in Sogod, Boracay faces the Pacific Ocean.
Strings and Things, as the exhibit is billed, is on view until Dec. 15.