The Vecchiato Art Galleries is pleased to present the important solo-show of Silvia Papas in our main gallery in Via Alberto da Padova,2 in Padova-Italy. Her palette in the style of "The Red and the Black," to quote Stendhal, draws from these two colours that same symbolism which in the novel is a metaphor for passion on the one hand, and grieving on the other. This dual colour scheme is also used by Silvia Papas, almost as if her women were part of a game of chance in which the numbers have only two faces, and no half-measures. The artist’s figurative, hyper-realistic style follows that of a certain type of American painting, in vogue in the late '80s, which mirrored the glittering society from whence it came. In particular, it is reminiscent of Richard Estes: shop windows, parking lots, city roads (with New York always playing the leading role) perfectly modelled with acrylics that deceive the photographic filter. Our artist is the daughter of American Pop Art, in her subjects, her environments and her technique. She is particularly inspired by Alex Katz and, like him, she translates shadows into layers of colour à plat, with no shading. Focussing on her trademark style, she uses and reinterprets the same subject, often against different backgrounds. Just as Katz spent the '60s busily portraying his favourite model (his wife Ada), Papas follows her icon without ever losing sight of it. Her technique is perfected and becomes a tool with which to create a certain form of aesthetics. From her study of photography, Silvia Papas acquires the stereotypical long shot, to which she adds a posing female figure: from the back, or crouching on cars, equally "cold" whether in the background of an advertisement or in the foreground, accompanied by strident slogans. If you look closely, the artist’s women are more than just erotic. They are inspired by the poses of yesteryear, by the collectable postcards of the 1920s portraying semi-naked women, prudishly wearing a hat, posing on the first cars, and giving rise to what has, since then, become an inseparable association of ideas: women and cars. However, unlike these women and the subsequent pin ups, which were supposed to ease the minds of soldiers in World War II, these "post-star" girls emanate no heat, either in posture or in tone. Back then, there was no mystery, but a burning desire for reality. Papas’ paintings unveil an eroticism that has become stereotyped and bothersome. Today, a “cover-page” society is simply too distant from the need for humanity and reality that is even more necessary now than it was back then. Papas’ paintings attempt to highlight this pressing need: in being tremendously glacial, they require an explicit effort to understand the psychology beyond appearances. Emotional aridity is indicated as the cause, and here portrayed as the effect. There is no such thing as the perfect woman, as Frank Oz reminded us when he portrayed Nicole Kidman – the icon of perfection – as a Barbie doll in the movie "The Stepford Wives" (2004). A subspecies of ideal reality, represented by robot-girls, calibrated on the model of the exemplary housewife of the 1950s, literally "at the service" of the male universe, collapses under the absurdity of its inhuman rules. The moral? Perfection does not last, and is wearying. Furthermore, “cover-page” perfection is openly false. In a globalized world, aesthetic contradictions are too strident to be able to survive. Once again, it is an artist who reminds us of this fact, through the truthful medium of paint.