The oeuvre of Danila Narcisi is inscribed in the ambit of an abstraction which in the end expresses its iconic essence, its veiled naturalistic contents.
These are veiled now by decorative (Magnelli) or symbolic (Mondrian) geometrism, now by the abstract sign dissembling recognisable references (Kandinsky), now by the instinctive voracity of informal gesture. Ms. Narcisi is aware of this, she exhibits a predilection for the sphere of signs united with the play of pure introspection (Malevitch, Klein), she allows the icon (from time to time involving somatic, psychological and autobiographical hints) to emerge and yet at the same time she delivers well-aimed blows to figuration tout court. She has reached maturity: stylistic and "ideological" (which she certainly has no intention of renouncing) and also technical.
The die is cast. But the game (the research) surely continues. The most striking overall result at the moment seems to me to be this: rather than a formal and autistic "wiping out" these, meticulous, pieces lead toward the dimension of "starting from scratch".
(Carmelo Strano)
To establish connections with context, to embrace "other" is a vital process of consciousness and for Danila Narcisi the artistic subject is the instrument par excellence to make the our most secret strings vibrate, in elaborate re-proposal, with an extremely personal intensity, of the Kandinsky principle which sees the piece as generatrix of stimuli, a true and proper poetic mechanism re-proposing profound questions concerning the identity of pictorial language beyond the nominal labels recurring throughout the jargon of critics. (Patrizia Ferri)
The oeuvre of Danila Narcisi is enunciated on various fronts contemporaneously.
From the conception, or rather from the thought to the artefact, to the piece, every thing is executed under the control and by the hand of the artist. The ground is already artwork, the paper is in fact manufactured by Ms. Narcisi. The density and thickness of the material are the first choices of aesthetic nature and in the transparency of the ground are delineated the forms.
The surface is still intact, the artist has not defined its structures, but little by little the paper is populated by symbols, by personal memories, signs and designs, figures arriving from afar, intimate pathways are traced and dear outlines placed.
The silhouette of the artist stands out clearly, repeating itself in the magic number of seven. The figures of the circle, of the spiral and square are recurring and not by chance; while the first two clearly refer to the principles of life, of dynamism and of movement, the square in its compositional equilibrium is the image which recalls to mind stillness, reflection, consequently rational thought.
The surfaces are run through by threads of hemp, leading back to nature again, but together with them there are also copper wires which, as conductors of electricity, invoke the work of man, technology, progress.
All is always placed in a dialectical contradiction acting as the driving force.
Paper is for the artist not only the point of departure for her works, or material, precious ground, storehouse of forms and thoughts, but much more.
We can say with certainty that it participates in an active manner to the point where it becomes an integral part of the artist's poetic.
It covers, enfolds, englobes, but at the same time it engenders and creates, from container it becomes generator.
The work of Ms. Narcisi unfolds in an analogous way, while conducting a deep introspection of herself, she creates and gives birth to her works, that is from container she becomes generator.
(Barbara Tosi)
Intimate and profound tales, these are the "Dialogues" of Danila Narcisi who, with paper, hemp and copper thread, retrieves images of a familiar flavour and proposes the stages of a journey. Her pieces bring to mind original geographical charts of thought, and sensible retrieval of the invisible deep. In operation, her hands function as effective instruments of cognitive investigation, her alert observation leads each of us to probe the mysterious regions of the interior dimension.
With her artistic production, Danila explores a new code of communication, invents tales of white on white: numerous waves, metallic and photographic fragments emerging from the dark.
Threads of hemp lie over and flow through the work as though water in graphic terrain, the outcropping landscape read and reconstructed in an inimitable play of paths inviting us to lend an evocative ear to the sound, that of white silence...
(Simonetta Serangeli)
A ground of handmade paper is once again topical precisely because of its capacity to counteract the volatility of the artistic mark in era of electronic media. The adoption of a similar tool goes way beyond the choice of a technique and, indeed, of the very idea of the adoption of tool. Paper made by hand, will its soft complicity, but also with its unfathomable personality able to receive or refuse an image without further explanation, is in fact much more than the surface, it is already semiotic while not being able to be called principally text. On this basis for discourse which, in itself, already conveys intentionality and underlying human choices, Ms. Narcisi operates on different levels, one iconic, one symbolic and one introspective psychological.
On paper more or less frayed, more or less thick and more or less ascribable to archetypical forms of the square and the circle, the artist impresses images such as her own silhouette or the face of herself as a child, quotes phrases, sayings and sentences variously interrupted or laconically isolated from their original context and, in conclusion, inserts threads of copper or of hemp, all this almost as though wishing to weld together the three levels noted earlier, making the more obvious and garish mode of interpretation interact with that more intimate and secret.
Serial compositional completes the effectiveness of the discourse, creating an impression which leads the allusion back to reproducibility and consumption of the image back to a sacral and precious dimension such as that of a manuscript or of a palaeographic codex.
(Paolo Balmas)
Danila Narcisi interweaves surfaces on which she impresses visual traces, almost evocations of images, recognisable but at the same time unsure like certain memories, which emerge from deep the zones of consciousness, almost an archaeology of memory, with the same vitality with which she brings to the surface her material fragments, knowing how to appease every emotional excess, even in the material itself, in the form of a balanced, mature reflection. (Barbara Martusciello)