Pioneering and indispensable

Sculptures by Raffaella Brusaglino

In the installation “Pioniera” and the small sculptures of the Indispensable Flowers, Raffaella combines artisanal techniques and traditional materials with technology.
The Pionieras are laser-cut sculptures, always identical in form, but each time different due to the unpredictable use of materials: they represent a dialogue between nature and the human body, playing on varying proportions in a metaphysical and poetic dimension.
The interpretation of the material is destabilized by the chromatic variations and evokes associations of ideas, bringing the work to a broader semantic extension that concerns the moral and spiritual aspect of the relationship between humans and nature.

The Indispensable Flowers are small masterpieces in wire mesh, inspired by the inflorescences of wild pioneer grasses, picked at different stages of their life cycle. They represent the structure of the flower that guards the seeds, with shapes that express a dynamic tension toward movement—a symbol of life spreading—and intense colors, which in nature seduce pollinating insects and also capture human gazes. Indispensable bearers of new plant life.
Born as elements of the Pioneer sculptures—female figures bent over to observe a flower sprouting at their feet—the Indispensable Flowers evolve into autonomous works. The study of pioneer grasses, resilient species that bring life to hostile terrains, promoting environmental regeneration, has driven the artist to experiment with modeling and coloring, freeing these vibrant flowers from their original integration. A personal technique transforms the rigidity of the wire mesh into soft, mobile, and unique forms.
These works convey a symbolic message of care for nature: they introduce it where it is lacking and invite us to observe and protect it where it is present.

Raffaella uses materials of a mineral, vegetal, fabric nature, or even synthetic materials but inspired by nature, which are both an object and a creative tool. She creates stains, lacerations, aggregates of random materials, concretions of debris that wear mechanically or with chemical agents. She studies the potential hidden in materials: she observes them, experiments with their responses, tries to control coincidences, looking for a point of contact between expected results and real solutions. Both Nature and the creative process are the object of her investigation, both expressions of a parallel concept of transformation. She is interested in the manifestations of “transit”: her intent is not to reproduce nature, she does not see it as a sort of catalogue of forms, but considers it in its constant unstable state, of structural change. This concept that is at the basis of life itself, is the starting point of her research. She observes matter and the process that transforms it, and at the same time evolves her thought and the emotional universe that accompanies this process.

Change involves all aspects of our existence over time, and the spontaneous plant kingdom is a virtuous example of how this phenomenon is the opportunity for the ecosystem to survive, together with the ability to collaborate.

The Pioneers are a project, open to different levels of interpretation, to suggest multiple points of view on human society: they are an experimental attempt to compose installations in continuous transformation, within which dwells the idea of ​​a future made of balances between artifice and nature, ancient and contemporary, dominant cultures and minorities, established and invisible social realities.

We know Raffaella Brusaglino as a painter active in the production of polymaterial works, characterized by a multiplicity of techniques on different supports and in different contexts: canvases, wood, frescoes, wall installations, scenography. Starting out with an illustrator background, today she deals with sculpture on aluminum plates in large and small formats, creating works with living plants and inanimate matter.