DVAA Member since 2021

Alessandra Stradella

About:

Alessandra Stradella is an Italian artist, from Venice, now living and working in Philadelphia as a Philosophy professor, with a specialization in Philosophy of Art and Aesthetics. She left Italy in 2000 in order to find herself.

There are three major driving forces in Alesandra’s life: painting, philosophy, tango, and meditation. When combined, these forces help her to create projects that emphasize the feeling of embodiment.

Alessandra feels that being a part of the vibrant and generous community of DVAA is helping her through the path of discovery.

Artist Statement:

“I am captivated by the pure physicality of the act of painting. I think of painting itself, as a physical action. I want the effort, the strength of the physical to be felt. This is why my present research involves abstract painting on a large scale, on paper, canvas, or other non-traditional surface. The action has to be intense, I have to feel it and be seduced by it and hopefully seduce the viewer into this imaginary space.

I live my art as my other reality, as my escape from the world of concepts, definitions, explanations, which define my world as a philosopher. I let my body and my pure sensory experience take over and speak for me, letting language aside. I like Deleuze’s simple definition of art as ‘a being of sensation and nothing else’.

Nothing is planned in my work, I let things happen and respond to them. Painting is for me a lived through reminder of how little we can control in life and how much happier we can be if only able to be absorbed by the moment. ”