ROSSELLA PEZZINO DE GERONIMO

by Gianni Dunil

Originally from Catania, Rossella expresses her creativity through a number of different techniques. A visual artist, photographer and entrepreneur, she has been working for many years now on gradually elimination of the superfluous, with the goal of reaching the essence of the themes and topics she addresses. As a photographer, she has taken enchanting and intense photographs of exotic places over the years, documenting and reporting on her travels around the world. In the cycles on “Ethiopian Blood”, “Fragments of identity”, “Women of Burma” and “Japan”, for example, Rossella produces photographic portraits of great beauty, revealing the roots of the places she has visited through the faces of their inhabitants. After this photographic genre, the artist undertook a path leading toward abstraction, seeking, through simplification and rarefaction of her work, to achieve results of purity and sublimation of suffering. In 2012 she has also began working with holographs, once again demonstrating her strong interest in research. An optical technology capable of memorising visual information, the holograph produces a form of perception that truly involves the spectator, and Rossella’s experience makes a significant contribution to the results of her work. The geometric structure of “Phoenix” creates symbolic images with a very precise meaning. Composed of three cylinders which in turn support three holographic displays, inscribed between a square (symbol of the earth and materiality) and a circle (symbol of the heavens and perfection), the holograms float in succession: just a weak spark at first, then serpents biting their own tails, ouroboroses, a metaphor of eternity. The ouroboroses then struggle and contort themselves until they become one, which is transformed until it is liquefied in a fine trickle of water, which dances, giving origin to a number of images, culminating in the phoenix, which bursts into flame in an explosion of colour. An egg is born out of the ashes of the mythological bird, giving origin to existence: it breaks up into particles of light, which then condense into the rebirth of the phoenix. The same as itself, but new, in the end the phoenix represents the eternity and indestructibility of life: through its transformations the artist leads us toward the invisible, where the earthly and the divine coexist in continuity. Rossella draws on a number of ancient Egyptian symbols and archetypes. In a hermetic, alchemic spirit, Rossella interprets ancient symbols and beliefs, adding layers of philosophic significance and mystical knowledge to her work that are capable of igniting amazement and great curiosity.