10 Apr GIUSEPPE MARCHIORI, 1978
( from a conversation with the artist – opening of the solo exhibitions at Trissino and Vicenza, 1978).
…If the Abstract Art of today has a shortcoming, it is the preference for repetition, the preference for repeating patterns that have been exhausted in the past. Here, on the other hand, we have something new – a unique way of being. Work that makes one say: “This is Gard, an artist unlike any others”. It is interesting how, in your paintings, the abstraction appears through lines that “interrupt” it, like shutters. Your style of painting is quite different from the prevailing Abstract Art. The forms that appear behind these “grates” are different. I don’t believe that any others have done it.
The small figures that are always at the centre of the composition are what interest me the most. Looking at them again, they must be considered from a strictly formal approach, beyond the value of symbols. In this sense, you have achieved a remarkable quality.
You represent man with symbols. Even in figurative painting, think of how many ways there are to represent man. And I do not believe that the possibilities have been exhausted, in spite of the suspicions of so many of today’s youths.
Bacon and Dubuffet, for example, have created a new type of figuration. Bacon through a dramatic conception of the solitude of man, and Dubuffet, who enjoys playing with invented forms in a fanciful game that builds upon I don’t know how many experiences, all needed to arrive at the forms of today, in the L’Hourloupe period. Thus, you as well. You have found something new that continues to be new.
Virgilio Guidi, when discussing your paintings, speaks of light, as a function of space. He wrote: “In addition to geometric shapes, Gard’s space can accommodate all of the shapes possible in free, creative imagination”. What Guidi asserts is really true. In addition to possible shapes, this space could also accommodate impossible shapes – it is an ample space for the creative imagination.
And it is also our hope. For a youth, particularly one like you, it seems a boon to the future.