The die is cast

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The die is cast is a new series of paintings by Barbara Agreste.

This time I was able to do what really was in my mind, having discovered technically how to make sure that my oil pastels would imprint themselves into the canvas (this time smaller size watercolor paper) in a way in which they could dry and be secured beneath a shiny layer of transparent acrylic medium. Basically plasticized and packaged. No more insecure smudgy surfaces.

I said to myself: “This time I’m going to be free with my subjects, and represent through these images my real self”. It has been injected into these figures, as they tend to be contemplating a game of dice, chess (as usual), and cards, the impression that they seem to be wanting to hold or catch the time it takes for the thrown dice to reach the end of its journey. They stand still, waiting for the end of the gamble. It’s the state of uncertainty that I have come to immortalise in these images: they’re completely out of time, the space is expanded, and they live an eternal awakening, stepping into the light.

“Will I make it through the evening?”; “Will I make it to the next day?”: these are the questions that these characters are asking themselves, while the moon light, or a strangely orange sun, unveil their fear, which becomes a form of a courage when overtly confronted.

It’s a photograph of the very moment when someone realizes that there is nothing to fear at all, maybe that state of tension is a trap, it is that fraction of a second in which from being attached to that kind of subtle pain they take the step forward towards wanting to really see if it’s true that the future is so gloomy, so adverse. In that very moment we take that future in our hands, we step into to a place of slow observation, having come close to the mirror of fate, we really see its nature: however events unfold, the end of the journey of the dice is not so important after all as it gives us just two possibilities, and we’re waiting without distinction for one or the other.