"A DIALOGUE WITH THE WORLD AROUND" by Paolo Levi

 Carla Insalata is a brilliant post Impressionist painter . Up until now, an exact definition for the work of this painter was missing, an artist of inviting visions of everyday life . I will try to give one myself, studying deeply the analysis of her figural research: in comparison to the strong narrative evidence of painters of the reality who worked in the second half of the twentieth century – for example Renato Guttuso or of the pitiless representation by images of certain “current” painters, the procedure chosen by Carla Insalata resolves in the softening of the tough appearance of urban and rural world. In fact, this kind of Impressionism – our artist knows how to enhance the image, pointing out with a strong pictorial sign the contrasts - looks like the visual praising of a poetic formulation. I am sure that the merits of her painting resides not only in the sincerity of expressive choices, which are dedicated to the man in her life, and to the landscape in its emblematic silence, but also in the determined effort to absorb and reflect the transitional nature of events addressed in every single work. Carla Insalata transmits to the observer the objective effectiveness of a contemporary iconography, but also and above all a lasting and complex combination of rhythmic and dynamic moments. Taking her subjects directly from reality and transforming the image into an intimate lyricism, the artist expresses her refusal to deal with the ' right ' and the ' real ' as cold representatives of objectivity. But also: her investigations of the outward appearance of life, lead her, sometimes, to insist on the mysterious ambiguity surrounding man. This element of disenchantment gives unknown echoes to her expressive language. And if I spoke of lyricism, I must also speak of the critical intent with which the painter revisits everyday life and leaves room for the interpretative uncertainty of the world that surrounds and involves her. She is careful to offer suggestive messages, and to redefine the subtle connections that bind humanity to the town and rural habitat, resolving possible dichotomies between the one and the other through a highly eventful representation; which might also suggest the deceptiveness of relations between space and time. Carla Insalata has in her painting the feared sweetness and the kindness of real poets who narrate by images the essential, implying the superfluous. In this way of chanting a world however accepted and loved, the shapes tend sometimes to dissolve in a pure vibration, without colour and without descriptive pleasure. For this reason the narrative complexes end in the evidence of an unusual pathos; the colour is bright and pure; the representation is clearly deduced from an emotional suggestion; the overall vision comes from a shot instinctively grasped and plastically – not surprisingly it was sculpture that marked her debut -before being reworked on the canvas; you notice the preference for cuts almost expressionistic, which refer to a direct appropriation of the chosen subject; all this, finally, gives the narration a unique effectiveness. What is striking in these works – where idyllic relationships do not exist between human presence and the environment – is, on one hand, the ideal tension that in her appears strong and mature and, on the other hand, a collection of tenderness and concern, namely the language of emotion and poetic reason.