CONNESSIONI SUL FILO DI RAME: LUCIA BROLLO E PATRIZIA POLESE
*Featured photo: Patrizia Polese, portrait in studio
Due donne, un’imprenditrice e un’artista, da anni rendono possibile coniugare un’azienda che produce trasformatori con la fiber art contemporanea dando vita a opere d’arte esposte in manifestazioni nazionali ed internazionali ed entrate in collezioni pubbliche e private.
They are Lucia Brollo, managing director of Brollo Siet S.r.l. in Caerano di San Marco, and Patrizia Polese who, after a long experience in the field of restoration between Milan and Venice, specialised in Weaving at the School of Applied Art at Castello Sforzesco and is now an established artist and lecturer in Fabric Design at the IUAV University of Venice. It was precisely from her experimentation that their collaboration was born: the search for alternative materials for works made with textile techniques led her, somewhat by chance, to this company that uses copper wire for its industrial production. Born from the merger of the family’s industrial activities, active in the Triveneto region since 1947, Brollo is a company that has treasured a decades-long legacy of experience while being young and dynamic. “Copper is a precious material and therefore even failed coils or scraps have their own market,’ Lucia Brollo explains, ‘but when we were offered the opportunity to use some of these materials to give shape to works of art, we got curious and started this exclusive collaboration, the genesis, development and transformation of which we have appreciated over the years. Some of the works are now part of our collection and are on display in the company’s offices and meeting rooms.”
Polese “sees weaving as a natural, ancestral instinct that belongs to everyone, like the spontaneous action of weaving blades of grass when stretching out in a beautiful meadow. Touch becomes a desire for construction, a search for a connection, a dialogue with us and a possible interweaving with the outside world.” Her recent experimentation with copper wire has given shape to the Paesaggi Alchemici, a series of sculptures made by weaving them on a loom in a composition where the warps themselves become wefts, distorting the traditional fabric construction.
The artist chooses copper because it is a material that comes from the earth and on encountering water and air is transformed, triggering constant change and mutations that cannot be fully controlled; “subverting the beliefs and certainties of one’s own experience to solicit an inner and outer change is the task of alchemy and nature to which I willingly leave the task of welcoming these unconventional tangles,” he adds.
Continuously searching for a common language between all things in an interweaving of space, time, human, animal and vegetable elements, Polese gives his artistic practice the objective of awakening consciences to the truth of the continuity between the self and the environment, “of how everything is governed by individual perception through which everything is composed, decomposed and connected.”
Her artworks have been exhibited at the XXI Triennale in Milan, the Central Textile Museum in Lodz (Poland), Miniartextil Como, and galleries in the United Arab Emirates, among others.
