Gioni David Parra Italy, b. 1962

Painter and sculptor. He lives in Viareggio and works in Pietrasanta.

Gioni David Parra focuses his attention on matter and light, analyzed over years of study. We find in him a real love for work and for the preparatory act, which has merged into his mixed techniques and collected in the Projectsseries. The tireless search for him designs possible new existential and spiritual balances from the unknown, despite his powerful and decisive sculpture. Already defined as the "Warrior of Matter" (Ilaria Bignotti), precisely in reference to his Bladelight, blades of light. He chooses to work the lightest part of his marbles (white marble is his adopted material he worked in Pietrasanta in the shadow of the Apuan Alps) and granites that come from all over the world, namely the slab. This is how sharp swords are born that Parra takes up from the classical tradition, in particular from the San Paolo by the Tuscan Masaccio. This sword, being in the hands of a man of faith, loses its offensive character and becomes a weapon of thought and belief for the artist. Thus, the Bladelights become a body, becoming a single sculpture, or they are deconstructed and freed, becoming a theatre where the blades move, creating ever-changing choreographies, both on MatterConceptual painting and on StoneTextures fabric. The whole is present as well as the broken one, and it is precisely on the latter that the gold leaf rests. Where apparently, there is a break or a fragility it is precisely when his poetics are strengthened, rediscovering its unity. There is a strong existentialist drive that goes to reconnect with human experiences, where sometimes personal growth and future self-realization is hidden behind the failures and traumas. Parra then removes the stone from the pedestal, unhinging tradition and succeeding in subtracting body and weight from the material to give spirituality and lightness to his works. The use of gold leaf derives from the study of Tuscan gold backgrounds of 1300/1400. He eliminates the classic decorativeness and makes it 

matter itself, topical in the crucial moments of his sculpture. Obtaining a real reversal of values.

The sacredness inherent in his works is clearly evident in the Matterspirit, Matter of the spirit, where the concept of the whole and of the broken is arranged in a checkerboard pattern like a path of life, interrupted by a split element, which soothed by the gold leaf, then perpetuates in its advancement with the rediscovered wholeness. The fracture is never definitive, never, it is placed at the end of the path, it is an experience that manages to mature its identity.

To close the Nocube, small and irregular blocks, where there are cuts, incisions or splits that require all the analytical steps of the practice of making sculpture. In fact, one often we encounter the raw material, then move on to smoothing and finally with the more reflective polishing. Even in the fractures and incisions of the Nocube we often find the gold leaf.

Parra's sculpture thus represents a constant body-to-body, energetic and visceral, where the intelligence of his hands brings comfort to the weak points of the material, generating a new dimension full of life.

Lisa Parra