Susanne Kessler’s recent work „Scudi“ is fashioned from organically fragile and technically complex structures. The artist creates a series of poetical networks by means of stratified drawings, shapes and symbols. Three large standing circular structures exhibit diverse materials such as drawings and objects put together with wire and metal shapes. Even though their content is conjoined, each piece stands at a distance and independent of the other. Together they constitute archetypes and support structures representing the collective unconscious.
The metal wheels suggest the life principle which is the process of continuous change. A flow of life’s energy connects with the energy of place: the desecrated Church of Santa Rita mixing perspectives and epochs to form a content of meaning and soul. Similarly, the holiness of the former baroque church finds its echoes in the „Scudi“ creations that occupy this space.
Protective shields used in war serve exclusively for the personal protection of the fighter. “The shield’s symbolic meaning corresponds to a transfer from the defense function to the spiritual level” (Juan Eduardo Cirlotin the Dictionary of Symbols).
So concentrated is the artist on protecting her work from the debilitating effect of negatives, that it is defense against a serenity that could endanger our existence.
A further meaning of the work can be found in the choice of diverse disciplines symbolized by the number “three”. The artist divides her work to achieve a metaphysical triad of Being, Thought and Happiness. She has put up her installation in the space of a former church, conscious that its connection alludes to the trinity and other triple symbols closely tied to the Christian world.
Text for the exhibition “Susanne Kessler – Scudi” in Sala Santa Rita, Rome, 2016