The presence of alphabetical elements, verbal traces rather than words or discourses structured upon the signifying/signified relationship, is a fact to be put in relation to the path which Luciana Matalon follows in various stages and with various modalities between the concepts of nature and memory. Contrary to much painting that can be collocated in the area of the historical avant-gardes - Cubism, Dadaism, Surrealism, etc. - and which can be referred to these due to cultural depositing and logical development, Luciana Matalon's painting does not make use of the verbal sign in the expressive sense and, even less so, in the formal sense. In fact, the presence of these traces is not always perceptible at first glance. Rather, the "writing" seems to emerge - almost surfaces - from a process of stratification in which it is precisely the matter that is the principal artificer. In paraphrasing, we could talk about an "archaeology of the word" in which what counts to a greater degree is what has been visually lost of the word and not what has remained. At times the sense could also be that of an archaeological find, undecipherable outside of a determinate system. On the other hand, and anticipating fashion, Luciana Matalon has for years now preceded so-called "citationism". Her way of working on the figure, colour and on the overall image if anything refers to an alchemical 'atmosphere' of symbolic evocation in which the alphabetic sign - a "cipher" of "natural" identification which is certainly closer to Giordano Bruno than it is, let us say, to Descartes - takes on a catalyzing function vis-à-vis other materials.
And it is in this way that here and there these signs also become interactive, permitting the image as a whole to advance beyond a consumed pictorial concept.

Vincenzo Accame
Milan - December 1985 - From the presentation
of a portfolio of silk-screen prints