Piccoli Girasoli (Small Sunflowers) 1989

Curator: Before us is Giancarlo Tognoni's "Piccoli Girasoli," or "Small Sunflowers," from 1989, a work that blends etching, monoprint, drawing, and ink. Quite the alchemical combination of materials, wouldn’t you say? Editor: It feels almost spectral at first glance. Wisps of memories, maybe, clinging to the paper. I can almost smell a sun-baked field giving way to dusk. There's a delicate melancholy hanging in the air. Curator: I think what intrigues me most is the method—the layering of ink, the textures built up through printmaking and drawing. How do we define these things when the labor becomes so intensely individualized and specialized. Editor: Well, thinking about Tognoni's methods reminds me how accessible flowers became over this period; but his certainly have more spirit than simple decorative work. This feels more about hinting at feelings related to nature, with the "small sunflowers" motif acting as an emotional placeholder. They're reaching toward something, or maybe they’re remnants of something beautiful that has already occurred. Curator: Precisely, they lack a kind of functionality of most still lifes we might examine from other periods. Are they truly sunflowers? That may not matter at all, what strikes me more is that we’re in conversation with his choices in the studio –the selection of papers, inks, and processes that led to this ghostly finality. The image begins to decompose even as we are still observing it. Editor: Right! They're simultaneously emerging and dissolving before us. I feel I'm viewing the moment when potentiality flickers into existence or fades away just as fast. Curator: There's such a rawness to its creation. Each line seems to carry a hesitation, or a yearning... Editor: A very poignant dance between what we recognize and what eludes our grasp. It's a reminder of nature's transience. Thanks for pointing that out, what do you think our listeners might reflect upon in light of your description? Curator: Perhaps, by appreciating his labor, Tognoni invites us to notice the beauty, or even the strangeness, embedded in all forms of physical production, reminding us of the effort of being, of becoming.