INTERVIEW
A Conversation with Chiara Smirne by Veronica Riva
(2014)
V. R. – Your paintings are centred on recurrent subjects: urban landscapes and human presence, even if at times hidden. A constant that your works give is the striking dreamlike atmosphere, a suspension of time and an immersion into places of realistic fantasy. How do you define this atmosphere? Considering that the environments you create are often without unnecessary frills and “useless” figures, how do you choose which elements to include in your “scenic design”? C. S. – I use very few focused and defined details. There’s never any overcrowding in my landscapes, because I want to create surreal unrealistic atmospheres with few infringing elements and of the few that are there, each has the function to evoke something, they are never casual, never put there just to fill the empty space, but to create a particular atmosphere. I’m not interested in…I don’t need…to add realistic decorative elements. Staying figurative, however, I want to try and take myself out of reality. That which I paint is a more intimate reality, more mental than non physical and tangible. It is the reality of dreams. I objectify real places, remove unnecessary elements. Therefore, even if I start with a recognisable landscape, I always tend to purge it, making it an urban glimpse that can be of any city. Even the lights and architectural details are reduced to a minimum so I can concentrate more on the emptiness to highlight the sensation of alienation. They are images from dreams where very few essential things count; those that capture my attention. Therefore, these are the ones that I exclude from real images to make them live in my dreamlike scenes, accentuated even more by the fact that they are nearly all nocturnal landscapes or with particular lights, surreal where it’s not clear if it’s dawn or dust. Or neither. Something unnatural. Therefore, I’ve never painted broad daylight with a blue sky. Realistic representation is something that’s never interested me. V. R. – The human element is always present even if it’s not obvious or is sometimes even oppressive. As in your previous works, is it always connected to the theme of maladjustment, of anxiety? Humanity in your paintings is sometimes depicted with excessive dimensions instead of being reduced to a minimum. What significance does this choice have? C. S. – Awkwardness and alienation characterise my landscapes, which are lonely places. The urban presence is always connected to man’s maladjustment. This is the focal point of my research: in the places I create, I try to underline through the use of essential “scenography”, the emptiness around people. This is what I’m interested in representing, helped by inserting an human figure, which at times is oppressive and worrying, and at others almost indistinct but still present. Like in the painting in which a man, far from the viewer, walks away in the dead of night towards an horizon illuminated by shop lights symbolising a consolation, an ephemeral goal for those who are lonely. Sometimes even where there aren’t any people, you feel, for example, if the human figure isn’t present, that there are instead some objects created for man’s use: like a car with the headlights on hinting that someone is sitting in the driver’s seat. While where I use the device of placing huge faces in the work, I’m trying to fix a state of mind connected to that environment, to create a connection to the place. This is the case in Clinic, where the setting is a home for the mentally ill and the face that takes up an entire window was taken from a medical magazine. It’s a stereotyped face expressing universal states of mind, like suffering and unease. V. R. – Another fundamental element that characterises your paintings is the well-connoted colour spectrum that contributes – together with the light and subjects – to creating a dreamlike atmosphere. You don’t leave anything to chance, you don’t paint “instinctively”, each layer of colour is studied and mediated on to give the desired emotional effect. The hues are completely different from the photographic starting points you use, therefore you transfigure reality also through the use of colour? C. S. - My challenge is to be able to put the emotions on canvas also through the use of colour so that they transmit a sensation of anxiety, of temporal suspension, of angst. This is what I want to do. Mine are always an augmentation of colours from reality. Here’s an example: in a nocturnal environment the choice of using true black for the sky is because I really like exaggerating the chromatic graduations found in the real world, without ever making the palette too violent. This is something I’m very careful about. I try not to make the use of colour too strong, unless I want to bring attention to a precise point in the image. In those cases I also add a pure tone, like when I use yellow for the streetlights, windows and shop windows, but generally I tend to mix a lot. V. R. – You always start from a photograph for the construction of your paintings. In rare cases, for example, in the aforementioned "Clinic", you used photos from magazines and newspapers, but normally you take the photograph of the subjects which are destined to take form on the canvas. Therefore, the starting point is already your very personal point of view. How does the landscape take form from the photograph to the paintbrush? What remains of your photographs in your paintings? Do they become more distant from reality also because you use another device: the excluding of the lines and their geometricity. Tell me more about this… C. S. – The photographic basis is only a prompt. I never reproduce the photograph exactly as it is. I try to give a geometric layout to the painting to highlight the prospective and the vanishing point. Sometimes I add elements that aren’t in the photograph, in other cases I remove them. The photograph is the starting point of my research, the beginning of a trip in evolution towards the creation of fantastic places that sometimes are the composite of more photos, real collages that I need to “construct” the painting. But even when I combine several photos, the painting will always be something else, something different. The scenes are always taken from photographs that I take myself. The gestation period of a painting is often long: the ideas ferment with time, they leave something then reach maturation and the painting arises. Often, even before I take the photo, I have an idea in mind of the ideal landscape and then go in search of the right place to immortalise and then begin to work with my paintbrushes. I look for public places because daily life inspires me, and I also like to recreate it in a dreamlike manner. This is fundamental for me, because the dreamlike aspect is that in which I see myself the most. Therefore, I exaggerate some details to create geometry on the canvas – though keeping it absolutely figurative – which contain abstract elements from the context in which they are placed thanks to the geometricity of the forms that are no longer recognisable as elements from reality because I deliberately brought them to their essential lines to transfigure them, thus creating a visual awkwardness, a non-definition of the place. The device of adding geometric elements in figurative paintings is useful for me to highlight the distance from reality. At the same time, I leave many other elements completely recognisable. This is instead to create a connection to the real world. Recently what I’m trying to do is merge the abstract-geometric of some particulars with the figurative. I find this sort of purging of the lines that become so clear, so sharp, so cold, highlight the state of mind and sensations of unease and alienation. V. R. – What would you like the observers to take from your works? C. S. – In my paintings what you see is the “external” reality, but in effect what counts isn’t even represented on the canvas, it goes beyond because I really like stimulating the imagination of the viewer. More than the representation as an end to itself, painting something that already says it all, I prefer to raise perplexity, questions, reflections. But the viewer also puts himself on the line and has to put something of himself into it. I try to inspire emotions.
An interview with painter Chiara Smirne by Tasha A. Mathew (2015)
T.A.M. - Tell us about Milan and the people. C.S. - I have always considered Milan a wonderful city to live in. I moved here nine years ago, at twenty-six. I was born in Novara, a very provincial town. Generally speaking, most of the people in Novara are very narrow-minded. Milan is really different in this respect, since moralistic attitudes and ways of thinking are much less common: people are more focused on their own life, rather than judging those of the others. This is one aspect, but right now Milan is not going through a happy time. Chances are much less than in the past and it is really difficult for an artist to have a good visibility and the right opportunities. In addition, I have the impression that, especially in Milan, most of the people who can spend their money prefer to do it on fashion and luxury items, rather than investing in art, especially if emerging art. T.A.M. - Who are your favorite artists? C.S. - I have always been fascinated by Surrealism and Metaphysics. Max Ernst, Dennis Hopper, Mario Sironi, Giorgio De Chirico, Alberto Savinio are certainly in the list of my favorite artists, as well as, and perhaps most of all, Renè Magritte. T.A.M. - Many of your pieces showcases places, entrances, and windows - Where is your favorite place to be? C.S. - There is not only one place where I prefer to be, but one has a special role in my painting, Venice. For its dark water, its narrow alleys, its glimpses and for the atmosphere that takes on with a crepuscular light, Venice has always inspired me particularly. But it's not the only one, also Milan, Berlin, Genova... Every place is potentially a place for my works, because I don't care about the specific features of the different places. I'm interested in creating "an open scene where a spectator can construct the plot" (cit S. Cortina ). I objectify real places, remove unnecessary elements. Therefore, even if I start with a recognisable landscape, I always tend to purge it, making it an urban glimpse that could be of any city. I really like stimulating the imagination of the viewer: in my paintings what you see is the “external” reality, but what actually matters isn’t even represented on the canvas. More than the representation as an end to itself, more than painting something that already says everything, I prefer to raise perplexity, questions, reflections. T.A.M. - What roles do figure and color play in your work? C. S. - Figure and colors play an essential role in my work. Starting from the figure, it's always present, even if sometimes it's hidden. Even when there are no people, you may feel that there are instead some objects created for man’s use: like a car with the headlights on, hinting that someone is sitting in the driver’s seat (Work In the street, 2013). Other times figures appear in solitary landscapes, with very few focused and defined details. Every element in my works has the function to evoke something, it is never there by chance, just to fill an empty space, but it has to create a particular atmosphere. I don’t need to add realistic decorative elements. Staying figurative, however, I want to try and take myself out of reality. What I paint is more an intimate reality, rather than a physical and tangible one. It is the reality of dreams. Figures and colors (and the particularly the light that I create with color) and their combination, allow me to create a dreamlike atmosphere. I never paint “instinctively”, each layer of colour is studied and mediated on to give the desired emotional effect. My challenge is to put the emotions on canvas also through the use of colour. My colors are always an augmentation of those of the reality. For example when in a nocturnal environment I choose to use true black (ivory black and/or mars black) for the sky, it is because I really like exaggerating the chromatic graduations found in the real world. But, I'm very careful not to make the palette too violent. I don't want to make a too strong use of the colour, unless I want to bring attention to a precise point in the image. T.A.M. - You've stated that your work is about the subconscious. In your work, the subconscious appears to manifest itself as places with the lingering presence of people. It appears to have a mystery that yearns to be revealed and yet it doesn't. Why do you feel that this is the case? C.S. - Yes, often my paintings emanate sensations of bewilderment, mystery and apprehension. The mystery that hovers in my works can never be revealed, because I think the mystery of human life cannot be known. But the viewer may, or may not, feel, something by observing my painting, something that can be similar to what I felt when I painted that particular work, or something different. This is because it doesn't exist a universal interpretation of the existence and of what we see. I also think that the line between reality and fiction is very thin, if it exists. I put on a surreal show. “The urban glances are like theatrical or cinematographic set designs, artificial architectures showing the emptiness and inconsistency of man-made fictions” (cit. V. Riva) to build a sense. The atmospheres in my paintings are in part influenced by the work of David Lynch, a director who has always impressed me deeply, since I was ten years with the television series Twin Peaks. "The poetic and absurd visionary of David Lynch is closely felt and internalised by Chiara Smirne. She, like Lynch, represents public places of an exaggerated normality that hide terrible emotions. The artist paints worlds belonging to an apparent daily reality, but, like she herself says, they are places inspired by dreams, memories, fears. [...] It is the time of human fiction that is present in these paintings, where that which really counts can not be seen by the naked eye, but only by letting yourself be transported by the emotions. Behind the placid semblance hides the dark side of human existence, which Chiara Smirne brings to the surface with a representation of the unconscious through slow and numbing visions of an unnatural world created by man, where absurdity prevails over reason." (cit. V. Riva) T.A.M. -The figures in the window and those that wander the streets, are they elements of your subconscious, an expression of your inner state looking upon the dreamlike landscape? Who are they? C.S. - The figures in the windows can have many meanings, certainly connected to my subconscious. Normally I use the device of placing huge faces in the work because I’m trying to fix a state of mind connected to that environment and to create a connection between the person and the place. This is the case in my painting Clinic (2013), where the setting is a home for mentally ill people and the face that takes up an entire window was taken from a medical magazine. It’s a stereotyped face expressing universal states of mind, like suffering and unease. In fact, I often use huge faces in the windows, or large parts of them, to create confusion and anxiety; many people told me to feel being observed by them. In other cases, they are real faces and sometimes we can recognise characters from cinema or music: I put them in my works since I really admire them or since they are closely connected to my private sphere. For example because I feel connected with their way of thinking, or their behavior, or with their personal life and their choices. The solitary people appearing in my works could be everyone. Awkwardness and alienation characterise my landscapes, which are lonely places. The urban presence is always connected to man’s maladjustment. This is the focal point of my research: in the places I create, I try to underline through the use of essential “scenography” the emptiness around people. T.A.M. - The figures in the buildings that are disproportionately large seem to say to me that they are trapped within square spaces that are too small for them? How do you feel about this statement? C. S. - I agree with this interpretation, since in most of the cases these figures actually represent conditions and moods related with being trapped, with discomfort and with lack of interior freedom. But this kind of works can also be seen as a specific inner feeling, which is proper of some people too advanced in years with respect to the world they live in: like an adult person, who keeps having a childish inner self, or like someone who stopped, who is trapped in a part of his life, which is very far in time. T.A.M. - You have strong interests in literature and philosophy - would you say that there are any major works that have influenced your art? C.S. - I like a lot of different authors, but two have particularly influenced my way of seeing and feeling reality, and, as a consequence, also my art. Franz Kafka, for his atmospheres, strongly dreamlike and worrying, as well as for the complete lack of answers to the questions that are unavoidably raised by his works. Surely, Kafka is the author, among those I know, that can induce in me feelings and images full of mystery and anxiety, which are to the largest extent similar to those I try to represent with my art. The same can be said, even if in a less direct way, for the second author I want to mention, Jean Paul Sartre. The first work of him I have read is Nausea and from the very beginning I felt a very strong, even dramatic empathy: I was reading what I was feeling, but which was written by another person. This entailed a strong inner change in me, which had a lot of consequences in my way of looking at reality and thus, I think, also on my main artistic contents. T.A.M. - Many of your pieces are about revelations and perspective - do you feel that this is inspired by your interests in philosophy and literature? C.S. - I think I have already answered to this question in the previous point; hence, I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you something that is really important to me. Art has always to convey beauty and harmony, even if its focus can be unpleasant, tragic or terrifying.
CRITICAL TEXTS
Presentation text for the Exhibition 'Realtà sospese' by Marina Tappa (2023)
Chiara Smirne was born in 1980 in Novara, where she lived until the age of 25 before relocating to Milan. Following her attendance at the artistic high school and the completion of her degree in literature and philosophy at the Università Cattolica di Milano, she resumed her educational journey by undertaking advanced painting courses at the Naba Academy in Milan (2010) and the Scuola Superiore d'Arte Applicata del Castello Sforzesco (2011), driven by an urgent need to express herself through painting. Her success in the art world was swift. Following her participation in around ten collective exhibitions—already marked by a style of painting that garnered international interest (at Marzia Frozen Gallery in Berlin, Studio28, Galleria Eustaki, Galleria Campari in Milan, Galleria Domus Talenti and Casa Internazionale delle donne in Rome, Scoletta di San Giovanni Battista in Venice, and Galleria Atena in Como)—she was discovered by the esteemed Milanese art dealer Stefano Cortina, who promptly welcomed her into his gallery. The year 2013 marked her breakthrough: she exhibited in Milan (ArtMeet Gallery, Amy-d Arte Spazio), New York (Angel Orensanz Foundation), Trento (Spazio Klien), Ferrara (Estense Castle), and at the IV Biennale di Lodi (Spazio Bipielle Arte). In 2013, she successfully staged a solo exhibition titled "Apparizioni e assenze" (Appearances and Absences) at the Cortina Gallery in Milan, followed the next year by the exhibition "Città aperta" (Open City) at Galerie Kuhun and Partner in Berlin. In both cases, the exhibitions were accompanied by catalogs published by Cortina Arte Edizioni, featuring critical essays by Veronica Riva and "Città aperta – Quasi un racconto ispirato ai quadri di Chiara Smirne" (Open City – Almost a story inspired by the paintings of Chiara Smirne) by Stefano Cortina. In 2015, she was selected in an international contemporary art competition to participate in the group exhibition "Banlieu" at Palazzo delle Stelline in Milan. That same year, she was a finalist in the "Premio Gambino 2015," allowing her to exhibit at the Chiostro Madonna dell’Orto in Venice, where she also won the "Galleria Luce" award. In 2016, she was once again a finalist in the "Premio Marchionni" and simultaneously participated, alongside three other artists (Giovanni Colombo, Carlo Ferreri, and Lorenzo Pietrogrande), in the exhibition "Paesaggi umani" (Human Landscapes) at Spazio Natta in Como. Subsequently, her work primarily continued online—a phenomenon that affected artists worldwide due to the epidemic—and she participated in events curated by a US platform and published works in English magazines promoting emerging artists. Today, Chiara Smirne presents "Realtà sospese" (Suspended Realities) at the "scuderie" of Park Hotel Italia in Cannero, with a significant exhibition curated by Borgo Arte of Borgomanero. From an intriguing interview conducted by the critic Veronica Riva (2014), a lucid analysis emerges, in which Chiara combines the abstract-geometric elements of certain details with the figurative, representing everyday reality purified of embellishments and details, rendered in a dreamlike manner to create surreal atmospheres. Her images are dreamlike, with urban landscapes, often nocturnal, or interiors characterized by cold light and exaggerated colors that together contribute to creating a sense of estrangement and loneliness, further emphasized by the figures—sometimes looming, sometimes images with cropped faces appearing in windows, like observers of an alien world devoid of empathy. Her art is entirely contemporary but keeps alive a European tradition reminiscent of Neue Sachlichkeit, of German origin, or our own Magical Realism, referring more to a provocative and dry painter like Cagnaccio di San Pietro than to the dreamy Antonio Donghi. The settings created by Smirne are built with a more modern eye and sensibility, which, in the interplay of references found in the fabric of 20th-century art, find resonances in the painting of the loneliness of the American Edward Hopper. Endowed with a cultured and refined personality, Chiara Smirne's works, as she herself declares, aim to provoke perplexity and reflection in viewers interested in engaging with them.
Open City. Almost a tale inspired by the paintings of Chiara Smirne. By Stefano Cortina (2014)
In the shadows that stand out clearly in the lamplight on a spring night, the glance of a solitary pedestrian moves slowly. He walks in the night letting his thoughts and his hungry and thirsty look run free to examine the crevices, the couples giving their last kisses…quickly…I have to go…they’re waiting for me, just outside the door, turning the corner in the alleys that face the large avenue. The night is the city of silence, a game of shadow puppets that tell true stories, dark dramas, fun evenings, filthy passions. As soon as you hear the rumble of a distant car and the headlights like spotlights illuminate fleeting moments while the walls of houses create the backstage of our comedy. The city is the open theatre of the representation of our dreams. Life or fantasy, it’s not important. We are the actors, we chose the masks, the stages, the script of the incessant happenings of each day. The drama, the comedy, the farce, in the streets, in the piazzas, hidden between the noble palazzos of the centre or among the sad public housing of the outskirts. Behind the shudders of shops with their mannequins lit only by the streetlights, or… I swear… those two in the window… moved… or…? and the face of that girl, the lost love, the longed for heirloom, the damned mistress, peeps out, studies you, appears and disappears in the phantasmagorical posters, there behind that window, it was her big eye, there in the palazzo across the way, only her ineffable smile, her mouth that can be both sweet and cruel. Pouring out of dark corners, the slow processions of devils not for saints, but for he who still wants to live in sin, authentic salvation from paradise where the light annihilates feelings. Only in this desolate night, between the pavement and the walls full of graffiti, listening to our steps, can we find our soul and return to love. The city isn’t perhaps the paraphrase of our existence and the inevitable scene? And the night, where thoughts and hopes germinate, the placenta which lovingly envelops us giving us a new life with the inescapable beginning of a new day? This is what the author gives us, an open scene where we can construct the plot. Chiara Smirne says that she outlines precisely to avoid misunderstandings, places the light, chooses the colours, gives profundity, indicates the escape routes, alternative scenes, defines the location of the performance. Scenographer, architect, carpenter, painter. She leaves us the job of director, to choose the plot and actors. She doesn’t judge, she limits herself to creating a world that we can populate. With reality and fantasy. It’s the freedom of art, the magic theatre of painting, where anything can be or nothingness can dominate. Freedom to name the stage, define the city of our story. For some it’s Milan, for others Berlin or Smirne, nomen omen of our author. For others still Tokyo, Vladivostok, Buenos Aires. For some Paris… …when in the belly of Paris the voice of God suddenly envelops you with twelve violins and bows and… When in the viscera of Paris a (amplified) gypsy guitar overwhelms and smacks you. When on the treadmill of Chatelet a man suddenly changes direction and walks against the current, crying while the people insult him. When in the crowded bistrot the hundred voices mix together and are your friends, your loves, your memories… When the old professor falls in inevitable and impossible love with the twenty-year-old student, and his long grey hair turns white and becomes lost in the wind of dreams. When in the full moon of December a single man feels the weight of all those abandoned. When the elderly merchant glimpses among the waves of the Seine the red hair of his lost love (a sign or word would have been enough that day at the station and I…and I…It was all my fault…). When you return home in the evening and the rubber soles don’t even let you hear that magical tick tack and there is only silence. When a glass of Bordeaux helps you reconcile with the world and with a warm belly gives you back to the cold universe. When at the end of the street you have sold your soul to God and you don’t know how the night will finish. When the words of love scattered in the wind are confused with the rain, like your tears. When the unmistakable smell of an old bookshop excites your senses and stimulate nostalgia. When the memory of tired flesh after lovemaking is only a memory.When in the crazy city the men pour out like ants throwing themselves into a billion stories. When you look at your face and ask yourself, “Who’s that? Who am I?”. When a man turns and sees his own shadow become longer and longer…transient?
Appearences and absences by Veronica Riva (2013)
Chiara Smirne paints at night. This did not surprise me when she said it while telling me about her way of creating art. In the cocoon-like silence of a world buried in sleep, Chiara goes to her easel and frees fantasies, the unconscious, the deepest emotions, her delicate and tormented sensibility. It is in the crepuscular atmosphere that her imaginary urban landscapes: whether they are metropolises congested with billboards, piazzas and historic streets, glimpses with a brave photographic perspective of shops and facades of palaces, long boulevards lost in the darkness rather than in a background of skyscrapers, they all emanate sensations of bewilderment, mystery, apprehension. The sounds of the city seem to be off and the frenetic beat slows down. Of course the style and technique adopted by the artist contribute to creating this distorted reality: the clean defined lines, the areas of flat, uniform, cold and at times gloomy colours confer to the landscape a temporal transcendence that imprisons the sentiments and angst of metropolitan existence on the canvas. Existence, human life in which the presence and the breath are felt, but are often not seen, sometimes glimpsed or which take on forms recalling “man”, but which are not human: this is the case in works like L’attesa and Le tienda in which we presume there are people, but in the paintings only mannequins appear. Other times, as in Statue, the human figure is evident, but objectified, almost as if it has been deprived of its soul and compared with a cold marble statue that seems more vital that life itself. Thus the urban landscapes of Chiara Smirne become symbols of memories of life, of existential awkwardness, mirrors of anxieties, full of apparent gratification but lacking sentiments and values, where a lost humanity is always present with appearances and absences. The artist puts on a surreal show. The urban glances are like theatrical or cinematographic set designs, artificial architectures showing the emptiness and inconsistency of man-made fictions. In these places, the windows of the buildings take on an emblematic value, they are opening-closures, membranes between the private and public worlds. Openings where, through the glass, we glimpse a light, the shadow of a body. Closures when bars, shades, darkness imprison those inside and do not let an external gaze enter. Confusion and anxiety where faces, often only excessively large parts of them, fill the entire expanse of a window. They are real faces and sometimes we can recognise them as characters from cinema or music, in the works more for great admiration than for being closely connected to the private sphere of the artist. For example in Vicolo K.C., details of Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love trapped in the window frames appear. It is hard to identify them, but what counts is the artist feels a deep connection of solidarity and comprehension towards them – despite the success, the fame, the riches – they were not able to give sense to their lives, to find happiness or at least serenity, they were not able to quiet their existential torment and to fill the abyssal emptiness of a psychological drama. Dreaming an inland empire is instead a clear tribute to David Lynch, where his fragmented portrait is recognisable through the openings of multiple windows. The poetic and absurd visionary of the director is closely felt and interiorised by the artist. She, like Lynch, represents public places of an exaggerated normality that hide terrible emotions. Chiara Smirne paints worlds belonging to an apparent daily reality, but, like she herself says, they are places inspired by dreams, memories, fears. The effect of bewilderment embedded in her canvases is given by the creation of a dreamlike structure and of a scene of unconscious visions, delineated by an ambiguity that is apparently normal in context – the glance of a piazza, a courtyard, the angle of a city street – stereotyped scenes where reality is the paradigm itself of superficiality, of daily life, of the obvious. With a careful glance it is possible to get the message common to many of Smirne’s works, as for example For sale, which represents a boulevard with an array of shops and buildings running along each side and at the horizon the profiles of skyscrapers stand out in the surreal colours of the sky. The artist is always able, here as elsewhere, to create a temporal deformation in which the hours seem expanded and uncertain. She represents the urban landscape with a solid and exaggerated slowness able to gather what is happening behind the scenes: the anxieties and human suffering in a daily environment, but also the dreams and hopes that this world can change, the shops reopen after a static period of crisis, the windows, all the same, open up to let a vital breeze enter the homes. It is the time of human fiction that is present in these paintings, where that which really counts can not be seen by the naked eye, but only by letting yourself be transported by the emotions. Behind the placid semblance hides the dark side of human existence, which Chiara Smirne brings to the surface with a representation of the unconscious through slow and numbing visions of an unnatural world created by man, where absurdity prevails over reason.