PUDDLE | FRANCESCA BRUGOLA

Francesca Brugola (Carate Brianza, 1996) is a multidisciplinary artist who, through conceptual associations of places and objects, explores the theme of changing and the dynamics and interactions between different subjects.

Puddle (2020) is a work with a melancholic mood, a two-minute video intended to be projected in a loop: the framing remains fixed throughout the video to allow the viewer to focus all attention on what happens on the scene.
What is observed is a natural landscape, an overgrown field covered with scattered white stones. A blue sheet, laid over the stones, immediately attracts attention due to the contrast it generates both visually – the bright color stands out against the muted tones of vegetation – and as an alien object in a predominantly rural setting.
Lastly, the gray mist that envelops the scene has an abstract function and transforms the landscape into a kind of non-place, nullifying any geographical connotation.

Initially, the video seems to be a still image, the only clue that suggests otherwise is the slight movement of the grass blades caused by the wind. At some point, however, the static balance of the composition is disrupted by the forceful entrance of a stone, thrown by someone outside the frame and landing on the blue sheet.
More and more frequently, other stones burst into the scene, falling on the sheet and consequently modifying its initial position. As the video progresses, the sheet becomes increasingly deformed, almost crumpled on itself, by the stones.

In Puddle, Brugola employs an association of images by correlating the blue sheet to a puddle of water and, at the same time, deconstructs her own interpretation through the throwing of stones, revealing the true essence of the sheet, that is “an image of something else.”
Puddle is a layered work that can assume multiple levels of interpretation, a video that is easy to be captivated by and to get lost in deciphering its intrinsic and philosophical meaning.

Francesca Brugola
Puddle, 2020
Video still, loop video 2′
© Francesca Brugola, courtesy the artist

29/11/2023