A shimmering white is perfectly spread in Claudia Desgranges studio, wrapping every corner and highlighting the polychrome presence on walls and papers, and artists‘ books still in process; the light falling from a single high ceiling is the result of different relationships between natural and electric lights, providing an atmosphere of total isolation. All external distraction being removed, the reading can focus on the relationship between working tools, materials and works, those that are still being drafted and the fully completed ones; the aesthetic enjoyment of Claudia Desgranges work is articulated through specific, targeted suggestions, and it self-renews year after year, following a progressive and regular experimental process, systematically, never abruptly. White and colour are the essential elements that mark the architectural space of the studio. They are then confirmed as values of her linguistic method, in museums and exhibitions; it is fundamental to be respectful of the work centrality aiming to reach a true and perfect balance, avoiding unnecessary intrusions, even in private spaces; the expressive quality of Claudia Desgranges work is clear and sharp, never unintentional, always resulting from a carefully achieved balance. Choosing the installation space then, seems to be fundamental to its full and proper enjoyment.

The choice of an extremely rigorous and minimal support like aluminium, industrial and not crafted, leads to isolate the work from the context, to separate it from the wall, allowing it to dominate space, to assume an independent structural function; sheet metal, a privileged medium that replaced the canvas, host visual communication processes, choosing both horizontality and verticality, exploring the sequence of different planes. Being at the centre of Claudia Desgranges’ interests and experimentations colour has been taken to a further and more specific expressive value. Through the perfect definition of a ‚chromatic writing‘ system, by combining supports and tools, size and thickness, colour can finally communicate at its best its intrinsic values and constantly renew them. The colour is ‚dragged‘ along the aluminium surface, it is not diluted or thrown, so that it can leave traces of its material dimension and a track of its nature; the colour is distributed on the surface so that a careful and firm hand can extend its specific qualities. This procedure carried out by flat brushes, seems to “enfeeble” the single colour composition, to fully prove the psychological essence of a glowing nature. Claudia Desgranges transfers this procedure from severe and cold aluminium surfaces to warm and absorbing papers. Her artistic work shifts to the sheet domain and big artists‘ books; as it is compared to the rigorous analysis of the metallic support, the large group of books and papers collections seems to multiply and expand the liberating value of her expressiveness, highlighting lightness and confirming its elegance, without losing any preciousness. The perfectly balanced aesthetic relationship between aluminium and paper reveals itself in the studio, preparing then to characterize exhibition spaces and private collections through colour vitality, consequential of analytical processes sensitively carried on. I noticed that changes in paintings size correspond to three different and independent results in exhibitions. Installations seems to prefer horizontality, through a process of modular composition, which is often very extended and therefore intense and spectacular. Vertical installations dominate the space, creating a close connection with the architectural framework. A different arrangement, marked by the relationships between different pieces for shape and size, opens to the experience of ’narration‘ and leads our perception into the dialectic confrontation domain. Over the last years, Claudia Desgranges artistic heritage has seen a significant number of museum display solutions. The pictures in this catalogue suggest new insights and further possibilities, focusing on the relationship of her work with the architectural function. The artist, intervening with colour on the urban pavement, or on vertical glass wall, accomplish an expressive commitment based on inner rigor and determined to communicate a single colour vitality, but also the number and quality of possible contamination and development practices into space.

Translated by Chiara Finadri