Elisa

Werfel's dazzling abstractions convey a sense of lively vibrancy that instinctively takes the gaze to dance on the canvas, while retracing the artist’ movements and gestures in making it. 

Showing similarities to great masters of abstraction as Joan Mitchell, Gina Werfel's distinctively physical approach to painting let the forms and shapes to emerge and manifest themselves from the signs and chromatic atmosphere created by the colors in moving on the canvas. 

There’s clearly a certain level of improvisation closer to music, in this kind of compositions, but also a need to contain and control the effects that the color masses can offer, through the layering, and the contrast between the stenciled and hand-drawn marks she will later apply on the canvas. 

Those signs and marks work as accents or commas, that establish some firm point where the viewer’ gaze can stop, while going over the canvas and dancing on it without getting trapped in the color vortices. 

In this way, the  artist explores the world of color and signs through restless experimentation, which always preserve  a precise sense of aesthetic balance. 

It’s quite clear that Gina Warfel has no interest in establishing any specific subjects or can determine a specific reading of  the work: the main center of all her practice is the gesture of the color masses, and the narrative moments that can differently spark on the canvas for the viewer, while reacting with his memories. 

Warfel paintings,  as most of the classical  music, work through allusions and chromatic sensations that tickle the senses, without guiding them to any univoque response.