Chiara Vellini's Architectural Paintings of Stairs, Suitcases and Mirrors Explored in Critical Essay

A critical reflection on the work of Chiara Vellini describes her paintings as built around architectures — walls, corridors and doors — that direct the gaze toward openings revealing only part of a path. The essay, published on Segnonline, reads these interiors as spaces awaiting the viewer's own memories, desires and difficulties, with works in the exhibition space echoing one another through juxtapositions and reflections. Stairs recur as a central motif: though they can be climbed and descended, the author sees them as always looking upward, with light on the steps and upper openings figuring ascent as an image of freedom and growth. Color carries the emotional register — red returns insistently in bright or dark, luminous or shadowed tones, evoking energy, desire and alarm, while blues and greens build depth and distance and yellow, pink and white introduce openings and suspensions. Suitcases appear as a transitional element, still open and ready to disclose what they hold, turning the past into a form that can be observed and drawn on for the present. Eyes and faces stage a direct encounter, and a mirror entwines the viewer's presence with the image and the environment. A postscript addresses the photographer Alice Brizzi, whose images accompany the works and whose gaze, the author writes, captures the intimacy and tension running through Vellini's practice, making photography another meeting place from which to observe the time of creation.