2017 Catalogue Archive

Italian artist Monica Cecchi’s Day Glo Spring is made from antique tin cans. Seven cheerful floral motifs are linked by sections of worn, striped tin in pale hues. The potential sweetness of this neckpiece is restrained by the use of a found material that carries with it a sense of its previous life. This recognition allows for meanings that are generated by emotions such as nostalgia, or the protective gesture of the collector preserving the past and giving it a new life in the present. Cecchi is also careful to interrupt the original communications of this found material, and to select surfaces that can’t be read as brands, but instead become abstract patterns – in this case, a schematic garden filled with the sun’s rays. Printed tin becomes a palette of pattern and color, and a source of visual delight and aesthetic pleasure that isn’t dependent on the figurative representation of nature. Cecchi has studied with leading artists Giampaolo Babetto and Manfred Bischoff at Alchemia, Florence, and is a graduate of the Libera Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze. Her work is represented in private collections in Europe and the US, including the collection of Deedie Rose.