Open
Closed
Pia Pizzo photo
Pia Pizzo (Long Beach, CA)
Dream
2014
One-of-a-kind sculptural book
Black Arches paper, 100% cotton, Old book covers, Nepalese hand made paper and Japanese rice paper, inks of China, Acrylics, Prismacolors and Prismalo watercolor pencils, 23 3/4 K. patent deep gold leaves, Velvet textile for the cover, bound by the artist.
30 pages
Dimensions, open: 15” x 60-1/2″ x 2”
Dimensions, closed: 15″ x 22″
Since the early seventies my research has led me to a continual exploration of the book as Art form. In my books or pages the tactile values of materials are found in each and every sheet of paper that is torn and worked upon with such patient care so as to lay bare the innermost fibers, to feel its textures, its porosity, the very tissue of its surface.
The non-books or rather the non-readable books that I contemplate as extension of the perspective of both mind and memory, set out to recount a happening, a state of affairs or a journey within the page or through the pages. The page is therefore the chosen setting for any hypothetical adventure you may embark upon or any hypothetical message you may be seeking: the blank page thus represents the virgin void of mental space. In this way the progressive cutting, this virtual inter-framing between one page and another, opens up upon the perspective against which and within which the mind can roam at will.
The sequence of the pages, which act as the filters/screens of an unidentifiable complex machinery, unfolds with kinetic rhythm as you turn the pages, so these books become the arena within which to unwind your mind rather than the stage for grasping codified messages. For a non-initiated person a page from a scientific magazine of contemporary physics is mysterious as a Tibetan Mandala. Both are registrations of investigation on Human Nature. My tearing the paper is never the outcome of an aggressive approach but occurs rather from studied feeling and touching, from physical contact with both the material and reality at the same time, as a step towards thinking once again in tactile terms.
Symbols and diagrams are sometime used to explain, through the golden proportions and sacred geometry, the relationships that exist within Human Nature and the universe. The mythical representation of the Symbols represent the many complex aspects of reality . The Symbol is the psychological mechanism that goes beyond limitations, as a tool to transform Energy. C.G.Jung: On Psychic Energy.
When I start a work of art, there is an empty space, a void, and I search how to balance form with emptiness, knowing when one has ” to says ” enough. The shapes are so integrally related to is empty space giving the feeling of marvelous Void. Because Void is a dynamic entity. My Non-Books and pages without words or images are focused only on the light and shadows created in the empty spaces of their construction. My works are composed with natural light, which cause the pieces to vibrate as the light change through the course of the day. As well as an awareness of the unknown phantoms of exploration, my work demands the music of silence.