Henri Lorenzi’s landscape imagery that bespeaks of a communion with the forces of nature will remind the viewer of Northop Frye’s famous paraphrasing of Mircea Eliade’s writings on myths. Frye notes that the central symbolism and the central conception of myths and rituals is that a renewal in time is normally thought of as a renewal of time.
The recalling and the recapitulation of places and landscapes within time which is captured in Lorenzi’s Scotland. His work celebrates and heralds the imaginative patterns of the movements of natural forces. His work and its aura might easily be traced back to the School of Paris and to the German Romantics’ deep empathy with nature and later to the Transcen- dentalist movement’s roots in American landscape painting. Lorenzi’s images are evocations of the deep symbolism of life embedded within the cycles of nature.
Indeed, the strongly sculptural impulse in the Henri Lorenzi’s paintings and studies make them immediately recognizable as well as intensely realized. It is worth devoting a bit of time to look at the structurally sound pictorial strategy which the artist employs throughout his work. He adroitly translates the essential shapes of trees, hills and villages into spare works. Large areas of color connect pictorial fields and at the same time,become equivalents for light and space. Thus, his formal innovation offers us sensations of breathtaking views, vertiginous and strong flows of cascading currents — imagery that is simultaneously benign and awesome.
Such is the mystery of multi-valent visual drama, such is Lorenzi’s talent as a firmly committed and uniquely perceptive artist. For through his suggestive use of the symbolics of form he arouses subliminal readings of transcendence. The uni- versal language which he speaks in his art is one of narration and incremental readings rather than one of directness and of complete texts. The evident purposeful play of absence and presence is allowed its full presence in Lorenzi’s work which, in turn, charges it with a deep sense of authenticity.
For more information and visuals please contact the gallery.
ARTIFACT
84 Orchard St
New York, NY 10002
Phone: (212) 475-0448
Email: info@artifactnyc.net