Studies of Clouds

At the end of a long series of studies dedicated to the key themes of artistic research, Ernesto Morales presents at the Area35 art gallery in Milan the exhibition "Studies of Clouds" focused on a deepening on the themes of transformation and metamorphosis.

The clouds are accompanied by some works that represent another theme dear to Morales: that of the forest, a symbolic seductive and primitive place, as opposed to the built and civilized city. A space that, like the clouds, is full of contradictions: a dreamlike place, home of unconscious thought, precluded to sunlight, dotted with allegory and initiatory symbols, the matrix from which the clouds originate with their changing and metamorphic characteristics.

As in the case of the Studies of Clouds by the English artist John Constable, so Ernesto Morales has composed real cloud studies during his many travels around the world - in New York, Singapore, Buenos Aires, Bangkok, Rome, Florence - with the aim of recreating a sort of cosmic mapping of the skies. A source of inspiration for these sketches, which are born at the beginning of the millennium and constitute an evolving encyclopedic project, is a systematic look not only on the representation of the infinite shapes and textures of clouds but also on the ontology of painting. A pictorial exercise that proceeds through a series of thematic variations, an experimentation whose profound reasons naturally derive from the painting itself.

"Morales' technique chooses the color as the field of research, the most irrational, indefinable and unstable side of the work of art, but also the most open to change. The clouds exposed in the gallery are accompanied by two equally symbolic colours that connote the space of the horizon: the gold that generally corresponds to the mystical aspect of the sun and of the celestial phenomena in general; the silver that corresponds to that of the moon and infinite planetary surfaces. Both gold and silver express two opposing but complementary elements that act on the emotional component of our vision, refining sensitivity and infusing balance through a process of introspection.