An artist on the go, capable of transmitting pleasure and attention to the material, shapes the sign, capable of communicating the analysis of emotions.
This is how Stefano Rambaldi presents himself, an eclectic author who through sculpture has arrived, through various expressive phases, at an essential and existential painting. A path that has its roots in simplification, in the exact synthesis of the material, through a continuous and thoughtful evolution.
Rambaldi's sculpture represents the starting point of an elaboration which, nowadays, can be defined as 'countercurrent', because it is not based on the instinctiveness of the gesture, on immediacy, but which is the result of constant research.
An in-depth study that finds its strength and accuracy in coherence, which is the leitmotif of his entire artistic journey. The theme of the path, of the itinerary is the basis of his refined work.
It is the labyrinth that emerges both in the sculptures and in the paintings. Labyrinth intended not as a puzzle or obligatory, blind path, but as a perpetual motion, an exploration of infinity through the definition of space. A road that opens up, which must be completed in its entirety to be reborn to new life.
A journey, this, which can be long but which does not lead to error because in the labyrinth there is always an exit. Thus the labyrinth emerges from its disturbing connotation from its dimension of bewilderment and becomes synonymous with evolution and continuity in progress.
Here, then, that all of a sudden, the line naturally comes to be interrupted and the artist manages to follow the sculptural and pictorial expressive paths in parallel. This is the moment of balance and transition, in which Rambaldi comes to create sculptures that explore color and are linked directly to painting, in a pure synthesis that is also increasingly open research, and not exactly minimalist, of emotion.
As always, the works of this artist represent a complex and long creative elaboration, which finds its realization in a rightly defined and, as we said, absolutely not immediate expression. Rambaldi knows how to embody the deepest meditation and succeeds, in his constant and precise path, in reaching a purer creation of elements.
They are almost sonorous geometries, tinged with lyricism and yet immediate in their apparent light-sculptural simplicity. In reality it is a complex language, what emerges in these works by Rambaldi, which also summarizes his search for archaism and roots. It is no coincidence that this in-depth investigation also involved the acquisition of elements of the East, the cradle of civilization.
Before reaching his current expressive configuration, extremely defined and dynamic, the artist made the gold of Byzantium his own, an element that in his works becomes the apex of abstraction and at the same time the unifying principle of color, in precious and exciting conjugation solutions material, which sometimes bring back to the dimension of the myth and offer splendidly sought-after and not purely decorative ethnic suggestions.
In fact, these are elaborations that give life to mainly fantastic forms,
born of a deep conscience and an undeniable cultural knowledge. Knowledge is not just memory, it is constant learning, infinite progress, research, ability to follow the mark. Of a guided path, as in the labyrinths of antiquity.
The sign, therefore, that in Stefano Rambaldi's latest works lives, together with color, in a meditated and fantastic symbolism. It is no coincidence that he also excels in engraving. Even the title of this publication is not accidental: Sampling.
For the artist Sampling rightly means tasting, sampling, until reaching the extreme synthesis of sign and color.
Finally, the artist reaches his maturity, current but certainly not definitive, and finds in the large-scale work the possibility of providing a different expectation: the line is no longer an elevation of the sign but is encountered repeatedly in warps and wefts, almost to create a frame to weave the space.
It is not a simple puzzle based on numerical and intellectual elements.
The line becomes a horizon, a pentagram, an element that is not only visual but a grid that welcomes the color and binds it to itself in a complex representation of extreme emotional synthesis, even tinged with musicality.
Simplicity is certainly not the key to understanding Rambaldi's works: continuous discovery lives in them, the dialogue between passages and situations that are not always defined but never definitive, the pure synthesis of space and matter, basic elements of life that they become tools to investigate the infinity of emotions.
Modena, September 2020
Cristina Boschini