April Design Art @ MAD Gallery Milano

M .A .D . G A L L E RY MODA ARTE DESIGN

APRIL|DESIGN|ART ARTISTS CATAL0GUE

ART EXHIBITI0N fr0m 12 until 29 april

MADGALLERYMILAN0@GMAIL.C0M www.madgallerymilan0.c0m

FABIO BELLONI

MAIA PALMIERI

DANIELA PASQUALINI

MIRA SATRYAN

CHOE VIO

MENO

MARICA MINOTTI

MARTIN RANGELOV

GEERTJE ESHUIS

GARULPH

MELANIE BOUCHARD HIROSHI TOBA LEIN WERRIT

TONY STUCKENS

TANA

WOO CHOI SALVO GIGLIO

LAPAZAL NAZILA SAWHNEY

ELLYANG

VIRGINIA FABBRI

GODE WILKE

MEMO MIFTARI

NIKO SADONKOV

BRIGITTE DELALLEAU

ALEJOS

MARIE OTTEBY

CHRISTINE NADEAU MARIA CLAUDINO

CHARITY JANISSE MICHELE GSCHWIND

PATRIZIA ZOLLER

STEFANY FISCHER JANE GOTTLIEB

LILI KIOUTCHOUKOVA KARLA JUAREZ

JANE COWLES

TALINE BALIAN

LISA SALERNO

M.A.D. Gallery opens its doors to the Collective Art Exhibition from the 12th to the 29th April 2016 with the aim to testify the innovative, fresh and intense investigations offered by a substantial number of artists.

The originality and the subversive power of those 34 artists, painters or photographs, are not the only fundamental principles to read this exposition. The recall to the classic artistic tradition is strong and decisive: from the baroque still lives to the researches inspired by the post war Action Painting.

The reader of this catalogue, or, we hope, the viewer that will beneficiate of the works directly in the exposition in Milan, will be deeply stimulated for a reflection upon the future of art, the truth of our world, but he’ll assist also to a meditation upon the future of art history.

The historic contribution will not be an heavy and oppressive weight, but a filter to better read the modernity. In this extremely subjective and suggestive study and research of the tradition, it is possible to find the bound and balance of form and color of the Renaissance in M. Miftari, S. Fisher. The baroque hues and flavors of the fruits of the still life of M. Claudino. The romantic shades of M. Bouchard.

A powerful expressionist, emotionally charged, communication can be found differently and originally in each of these artists: B. Delalleau, C. Janisse, C. Nadeau, D. Pasqualini, G. Wilke, Lapazal, L.Werrit, L. Kioutchoukova, M. Otteby, Meno, M. Satryan, P. Zoller. The Fauves inspired: Alejos, T. Stuckens. The precision of oriental art is showed by H. Toba, C. Vio. The first abstract atmospheres of Ellyang, L. Salerno, T. Balian. K. Juarez, M. Gschwind have the energy of the dreamlike worlds brought to life by the Surrealism. Reminds of the solidity of the still lives of Giorgio Morandi, G. Eshuis.

W. Choi reminds of the primitivism, that inspired Picasso, and just V. Fabbri is inspired by the American Action painting. The photographic section is less linked to history, maybe for the peculiarity of the discipline, guided by the logic of stopping the time “here and now”. For this reason, in their own originality, F. Belloni, J. Cowles, J. Gottlieb, M. Minotti and Tana elaborate very personal shoots guided by their feelings.

Bridge between the two techniques found in this catalogue are Garulph’s digital paintings, who doesn't forget the charm of the pure pictorial imagination, without excluding the potentiality of technology.

Elisa Domenichetti

ARTw0rks 0N SH0W

ALEJOS

When a man feels the weight of his duty, his role and the other’s expectations, he breaks down in a gloomy sense of disorientation. This is when art can reveal its beneficial qualities of healer. The visual expression is an essential mean for a human being to recover the meeting point with the Universe and reconnect with his frequencies. Images are able to initiate people towards meditation.

In order to recreate this zen state of mind, Alejos uses solid and primary colours. In his canvas, “Veleros”, light and shade effects are banished, the spaces between profiles are full of pure and lively hues. That mixture of real and unreal colours drives the representation towards a border between Truth and Imagination.

Tanks to the clear transparency of the sea, the rocks keep on their profiles under the water level: this uninterrupted vision transmits a sense of calmness and activates a reflection in our mind.

VELEROS 70x70cm acrylic on canvas

BRIGITTE DELALLEAU

“Dieu est une sphère infinie, dont le centre est partout et la circonférence nulle part.”

Blaise Pascal

The multicolored spiral, generated from a pail green vanishing point, deploys trough pasty brushstrokes juxtaposed in order to recreate a gradual changing of shades.

The artist’s perception of the infinite is a punctiform source where everything starts and where the full-spectrum of shades begins to evolve. Colours are like world existences, the starting point the God’s power of creation.

But there isn’t a proper centre in this green hole, because one brushstroke of a different shade of green, that seems casually inserted, breaks the spiral sense of the all composition, denying the circumference being. This makes the whole canvas inquisitive and charming.

LE REGARD DE L’INFINI 80x40cm oil on canvas

CHARITY JANISSE

Almost as if we were at a meeting point between painting and sculpture, this canvas expresses, with its enthralling energy, a sort of union between these two different artistic forms of expression. Charity Janisse has intervened modelling the acrylic in order to create a corrugated surface, where its flatness is constantly broken by darting tongues of dense colour. It seems like the orographic formation of mountain chains and seas, a geological era of transformation and shocking rearrangements, generated from the depth, that shakes the earth’s crust.

These tips of colour rise from the base of the canvas, simulating the human awakening. In some points it seems slow and harmonious, in some others nervous and sudden. From the chosen shades of this painting, black, pink and white, we easily catch what is the gender of the sleeping being. A feminine essence.

SHE WAKES 40x50cm acrylic on canvas

CHOE VIO

In some moments of our life a short, very short, perception of having understood the secret of existence invades us. The revelation crosses our mind and we are able to realize the true sense of things, the real motive for which everything was created. We have a strong and atavic perception that everything is connected together. The artist has a greater sensibility for these epiphanic moments. He doesn’t have the privilege of hearing and feeling something that is not shown to others, but he is merely vigilant, tense at the listening, and because of that he penetrates and catches meanings. He is able to take the privilege that sometimes, in some specific and unexpected moment, Nature, God or Universe, whatever it is, has conceived to us. Of these epiphanies Choe has made the main reason of his art. His canvases, as “Universe in my mind�, are a clear representation of what he had understood about the secret of life. And he wants to share this knowledge with us, with his tangled twine of golden and silvery arabesques. The outlines never stop. It is like an endless labyrinth. If you are able to traverse all of it, you will arrive at the centre, where everything will be clear. With a style that recalls the ancestral symbolism of rising civilisations, for these emblematic figures hidden among the all texture, Choe builds his own grammar of life. The final result is a written work through which he talks directly to the Universe, which of course is in his head.

UNIVERSE IN MY MIND 30x60cm acrylic on canvas

CHRISTINE NADEAU

Humanity, resignation, deep sense of sadness and empathy spread out of this portrait. The face is almost caged in a confusing texture of lines and viscous brushstrokes. He wants to communicate something, but not a word from his clenched mouth, only his intense gaze is talking, leants upon us. The colours communicate in a very expressive and rebel manner: why would the artist have wanted to put the pail pink on the character’s face? It would have been predictable. On the other hand, the turquoise of the sky invades his chin, the colour of his skin overflows into the background, the white looms over the head like a mane and it is also on the lips. No red, no brown, nor pink in the hair, in the nose, nor in the mouth, they have left space at the negation of colour: the white. The white, as the sum of hues, symbolizes the result, the end, the extreme experience.

“Le vent l’emportera” is a tribute to the autumn of life, a narration of the proximity to death in a figurative but also emotional way: through the lines of a face clearly expressed and the rich palette all around it.

LE VENT L’EMPORTERA 40x50cm acrylic on canvas

DANIELA PASQUALINI

As a passionate traveller, Daniela Pasqualini couldn’t exempt herself from giving voice to her personal attachment to nature. The abstract painting “Ice on fire” is an example of that.

Obviously, it is an artwork hard to interpret without any suggestion from the title, so first of all it is a heart-felt hymn to the power of colour in conveying feelings.

Even if at a first sight, the composition could seem confused, a result of an impulsive gesture of the artist, the balance of space is well calculated, as well as the drafting of colour. It is a speculative representation where the white vertical band at the middle of the canvas (slightly perceivable) represents the axis of symmetry. This bright heart of paint pulsates trying to steal space at the red column of fire.

She decomposes the image in thin and linear brushstrokes of different colour, like a painter of Pointillism, overlapping those with the similar shaded. So all the variations of beige, red and blue are inserted in the canvas. She presents dismantled elements, giving to the viewer the task of mixing them in his mind to recompose a fluid image of nature.

ICE ON FIRE 61x91cm mixed media on canvas

ELLYANG

“Every living person on this planet has their own unique pair eyes. Each their own universe […].”

I Origins (2014)

A quote taken from a recent film, one of the million creative products about the true sense of identity and its inner unconscious bold with the Universe. The word “origins”, in this case, concerns the very first ones, when everything was coagulated together in a unique contracted point. At the very beginning, the parts of a man were conjoint with those of the others and all elements of our world were part of the same being. In Ellyang’s work, this inescapable matter was intensely examined. Her universe, where million dots live together in an indistinct mass, becomes eventually a state of things where each single particle finds its own place in this bright irradiative system. Nevertheless, we need to remember that at the very first moment everything was bent in the same point. So, if we search deeply in our mind we can find a distant memory of this coexistence.

The circle of the Universe, of the Sun, of the elements of nature and of our own irises, remind us about the starting point by which everything was generated. Ellyang’s paintings encourage the viewer to reconnect with his first essence, in communion with all the human beings.

MY UNIVERSE 30x60cm acrylic on canvas

FABIO BELLONI

The low point of view opens the image to the deep vastness of this mountain landscape. The sky, interwoven of converging cloud rows, looms over the deserting lands below it. In the distance, thin silhouettes of men and trees drawing themselves against the brightness, recalling the limit between the sky and the earth with their black profiles.

The floating softness of the clouds contrasts with the glacial stiffness and compactness of the snowsweep.

A sublime sense of freedom crosses the viewer’s mind and awakens his innate reverential love for the uncontaminated nature.

A muffled silence passes through the sight.

CLOUDS ON PRESOLANA 40x50cm digital photography

GARULPH

“Acc form ette rifrat ro pi parte come aspet Man

cesi la luce; sotto i miei occhi cominciò a marsi un’immagine: non una semplice silhoudegli oggetti, ma un’immagine deformata e tta dal vetro, a seconda che gli oggetti fosseiù o meno a contatto con la carta, mentre la e direttamente esposta alla luce spiccava e in rilievo sul fondo nero. […] Avevano un tto straordinariamente nuovo e misterioso.”

Ray

“Elevata ambiguità visiva e semantica” is a digital picture on plexiglass that come out from Garulph’s mind, an Italian artist who, after a first period of training in goldsmith’s ateliers, started exploring the multiple and versatile world of digital creation. The great vanguard of this technique does not prevent him from pursuing the same outcomes of traditional painting: he can transmit his messages with the same elements (straight lines, hues and geometrical shapes) of the visual art tradition. He conceives his complex textures of outlines and colours on the computer display, but the final result is anyway powerful and evocative.

The viewer has two opened ways: the double option of interpreting the pictures like a figurative composition or, on the contrary, to reflect his own inner world of impressions and feelings on it. A crossing and relevant spectrum of possibilities springs out from Garulph’s art.

We can see a sort of weapon in the oblong object on the left side of the picture, leant on the humanoid skull. The fact that the cranium is very compressed could have ambiguous hidden meanings.

With this picture, very similar to a radiograph, the artist winks at Man Ray’s photography. Are we looking at a Rayogram 2.0?

ELEVATA AMBIGUITA’ VISIVA E SEMANTICA 50x50cm on plexiglas

GEERTJE ESHUIS

In a late midsummer afternoon the shades of the objects lengthen themselves almost until the complete distortion, generating a static and almost surreal atmosphere where time seems to have stopped.

This little composition is a poetical representation of a still life made mainly by glass objects.

The transparency of the material leaves the sun rays come in. The unique perception of movement derives from the bright play of light on the glass surface.

The colours are tenuous nuances charged of inspiration. They transmit a welcoming atmosphere that evoke in us past moments of summers spent in the open air, heated by the nostalgic light of a sunset.

TEA PARTY 40x50cm watercolor on paper

GODE WILKE

This abstract composition, recalling a jumble of scrap irons compressed together, is printed on an aluminium surface that spreads out all the brightness “locked” inside the artwork.

As it was in the artist’s purpose, the final result does not seem a digital product: the orography of the different coloured shapes is a very natural simulation of a metallic and liquid substance circulating within the outlines fixed by him.

The innovative means, adopted to compose this relevant arrangement, is the main distinguishing point of Gode’s art.

The sharp foils inspire energy and motivation to the viewer. These seem raising from the metallic base and cutting the real space.

In this overcrowded world of dramatic elements and futuristic colours, we can also reflect our sense of abstraction and inability to communicate with the others.

LOCKED LOVE 80x120cm metal art print on aluminium

HIROSHI TOBA

Despite of the well-known symbolic valence of the Peacock, in this remarkable and elegant graphic work there isn’t any trace of vanity or haughtiness. A vague apprehension crosses the animal gaze. He looks intensively outside the frame, keeping us out from what catches his attention.

The artist has chosen to humanize this magnificent animal, like the entire past oriental and occidental tradition, after all. Perhaps, the weight of its beauty is troubling its soul.

But another consideration must be done: in the Japanese culture the peacock is a positive symbol of transformation and never loses its high dignity. For this reason the artwork is open to countless interpretations.

The picture is characterized by a photographic realism that underlines the fine and advanced technical skills of the artist, Hiroshi Toba. He prefers, like in this case, the coloured pencil instead of the painting, because of his meticulous willing to represent each detail of the subject finely.

PEACOCK 46x37cm coloured pencil

JANE COWLES

With a keen essentiality and ability to synthesize, Jane Cowles revels a strong vocation to communicate with as fewer elements as possible: only the liquid red shape and the white paper. The inner petal-heart shows a contrasting play of light and dark that simulates a painting effect, thus we think to be in front of a fine watercolour even if it is a digital photograph.

This shade effect enlivens the dark red nuance, giving a sense of depth, like a gash into the abyss.

In addition, the segmented outlines of this petal-heart elevate this figure to an abstract level, going beyond reality.

Notwithstanding the very simplicity of the subjects, the petal and the heart, both related with the common idealization of love, Jane Cowles, maybe thanks to her writing skills, “has composed� a touching visual poem, for nothing trivial, for nothing discounted.

PETALED HEART 30x30cm digital photography

JANE GOTTLIEB

With a complex digital process, Jane Gottlieb has produced her astonishing images charged of colours. Her works stand out for an inner elegance and sophistication, despite their pop and contrasting shades, proving that the driving force behind her creation is authentic and well-thought. The artist’s message comes out from the extreme saturation of hues, so as each single object become a meaningful fragment inside the frame. The stunning evolution of editing software, like Photoshop, had helped Jane in the achievement of her artistic aims.

In “Hotel Splendido Portofino”, the artist uses the digital process to emotionally emphasize the anonymous foreshortening of the sea landscape.

This view is originated from a past moment that maybe belongs to her personal experience. As in a colour therapy session, we are captured by the surreal vivacity of the colours, and take benefit from them. If the main feature of her work is the reflection about colours, also the choice of cuts has a relevant role. The peculiar point of view, lateral and inclined downward, decontextualizes the typical elements of a holiday house, revealing them in a new aspect. See live, Jane’s artworks aquire an added value from the surface where the image is printed: the material, aluminium, takes light from the surrounding space, and creates reflecting effects.

HOTEL SPLENDIDO PORTOFINO 50x75cm photography on aluminium

KARLA JUAREZ

This fascinating painting shows a strong bond with the Spanish Surrealism of Miró and Dalí.

The composition is almost completely abstract, even if we can perceive two amusing figures walking as warriors on their path.

The canvas palette is truly intense and comfortable: the viewer is attracted by the warming shades of the pictures. Only two elements are detached from the predominance of red, gold and beige hues: the two shapes in the middle, that recalls the sea creature of Nautilus. These ones attracts the viewer deeper in the perception of the artwork by the visual illusion of their lines.

Looking at Karla Juarez’s painting is like fulfilling a “Journeying” into an optimistic and hopeful universe of shapes and colours. She evokes the solar atmosphere of her Mexican lands, giving to us a little foretaste of what could be living there.

We can basically found a stimulating encounter between the European world, visible in the historic influences of the artwork, and the Latin American roots of the artist. An imaginative mix able to spread good vibes from it.

JOURNEYING 50x60cm mixed media canvas

LAPAZAL

Benvenuti tutti quanti nella bocca del leone benvenuti maledetti pregustatevi la fine maledetti i vostri cuori benedetto il vostro cane maledetti i vostri soldi cos'avete da guardare?

La mangiatrice di uomini, Paola Turci One of the most pop artworks displayed at Mad Gallery in the course of the April collective exhibition, “La mangiatrice di uomini�, is an ironic representation of the commonplace of the woman as a wicked seductress. A row of short and mean men-silhouettes walks toward the alluring mouth of the feminine face.

The shades are eccentric and voluntarily vulgar. It is a media world composed by icons and sarcasm.

The curvy shapes recall the idea of a spiral, sucking in everything around it. However, the artist does not want to express an inescapable destiny for these little men: they are heading toward the black hall wittingly.

LA MANGIATRICE DI UOMINI 60x80cm mixed media on canvas

LEIN WERRIT

The prospective and dark hallway of Lein’s canvas attracts us towards the unknown. As a figurative representation of the hard self-discovery path, this painting is a spiritual reflection on the human destiny. No matter what choices we take alongside the road, since our future, the end of that corridor, is opaque, faraway and alarming anyway.

Nevertheless, the revelation is not only at the end of that path, in the middle passage of the painting, but also under the colour crust of the surface, that seems to be cracking and revealing a mystic light behind it. It is like when the magma comes out from a volcano and, cooling down, bursts showing the vivid red under the solid layer.

Before arriving to the white frame of the starting corridor, the converging lines are less compact, less ordered, and a greater chaos dominates the space as if this white threshold was able to provide some right advices to cross the route in the best way. So, probably a symbol of consciousness or divine intervention.

Not only is there the straight line as geometrical element but the circle as well: visible in the embracing aura that enfolds the vanishing point.

The manichean opposition white-black reveals the eternal struggle between good and evil in the human mind.

FEAR 70x100cm oil, industrial colors on canvas

LILI

KIOUTCHOUKO

OVA

In a Bohemian atmosphere of a Nineteenth century cabaret, a prosperous woman with thinking air is sitead to disclose her great generosity toward mankind.

We can either stop our dissertation at this immediate vision, or we choose to catch the less explicit meanings. The woman’s gaze reveals a passive acceptance of the boredom of life. The sexual act, maybe placed in an imminent future, is not eagerly wished, but not even hated, it is just a daily routine, something that has been done. Capturing the men’s desires with her sensuality is no more a challenge for this experienced woman, she knows for sure that she will have success in her “hunt”.

This huge sense of apathy contrasts with the energetic vivid red of the foreground and the woman’s hair as well. If in the upper part of the little canvas the drafting of the paint is more gestural and intensive, going toward the lower zones the style seems to follow the woman’s mood, becoming softer and calm. A last expression of vital energy comes back in the green and purple brushstrokes of the fauteuil where the woman is laid down.

This decadent feminine figure inspires the ineluctable sense of flatness that at one point will invade our existence. The only escape route remained is the art, that exorcizes this great matter throughout the visualisation.

RENCONTRE 35x27cm acrylic on canvas

LISA SALERNO

This intriguing pattern of circles, composed by identic dolls giving their hand to each other, is the main motive of the American artist Lisa Salerno series, “Paper dolls”. The artwork “Kaleidoscope”, part of that series, reveals the great meaningfulness of seriality. From a simple outcome of repetition, Lisa Salerno makes the viewer reflect on important issues like fraternity, support, integration and solidarity. By contrast, she exteriorizes the problem of isolation developing a creative and extra coloured composition. The childish vivacity of the canvas tint is in contrast with the gravity of the contents evoked.

The multi vision of the same subject, repeated countless times, is like a hammer pounding no stop on the viewer’s head: in a puerile atmosphere you need to think at the deep relevance of sharing.

The circularity is repeated not only in the single stamps but also in their disposition all around the central one. The main geometric figure, the circle, symbolizes union and friendship. Inside the circle there is no possible space for the loneliness, all the elements are connected, part of a bigger reality.

The inquisitive soul of this artist has led her to think about these heavy issues in a concrete but playful way.

KALEIDOSKOPE 30x30cm spray paint on canvas

MARIA CLAUDINO

Maria Claudino always needs to start from reality. It is her imperative, the inner force driving her into artistic expression.

The lenticular vividness of details appears remarkable in her “Cesta de sedução”. In this oil painting nothing is casual, but it is included in the composition in order to create a very balanced result. The sophistication of the weaving wicker is mitigated by the white solidness of the cloth. The polished surface of the base furniture take more brightness from the opacity of the wall. A black ribbon bounded on the fruit basket breaks the sameness of composition.

The positions of the apples are not naturalistic, because each of them has been carefully placed. The artist wants to represent the reality but also take out the spontaneity: she intervenes on the composition with a directorial sense of control.

Traditional techniques and subjects are not sterile and outdated yet. Maria wants to remind us that the dialogue with the art history and the great Master is not necessarily exhausted in the present time. The figurative painting is still alive and could be explored no matter how and when.

ã CESTA DE SEDUçAO 35x35cm oil on linen

MARICA MINOTTI

Beauty is not in the face.

Beauty is a light in the heart

Khalil Gibran

Marica Minotti has properly caught the meaning of these words showing, unconventionally, feminity and woman beauty by the fluctuating folds of a skirt. In the digital photo “Affidando al respiro� she stratifies a multitude of transparent layers showing to us fragments of the woman body: feet, ankles, hands, fingers.

Two specular figures, facing each other, emerge from the bidimensional arabesqued decoration of the background. The artist has created a gestaltic vision, barely perceptible: two eye sockets among the beige folds come out giving a sense of a face that is looking at us.

The presence / absence of this face, denied and displayed at once, provides optic effects which reflect the complex thought of this young Italian artist.

AFFIDANDO AL RESPIRO 20x60cm digital photography

MARIE OTTEBY

The mystic nature of this artwork reveals the authentic and pure soul of its artist, matured by years of meditation about the right way to inspire viewers. “Mystery green”, surrounded by a sacred aurea, reminds us the virtuous importance of asceticism.

The carnality of body is almost banned is this transcendent representation: the slightly drafted faces lose their physical connotation, to assume divine values. A just palpable recall of figuration is already verifiable inside the frame, and drives the viewer on the path toward the absolute contemplation. The girl’s profile and man’s visage, marked by golden symbols, are almost vanished, slightly perceptible. The material paint disintegrates under the look of the viewer to reveal behind it the white, final expression of the peace of senses.

If a correspondence between painting and sound existed, this work might be placed on the very threshold before the absolute silent of a spiritual meditation.

MYSTERY GREEN 70x70cm egg oil tempera, silver, crayons

MELANIE BOUCHARD

This painting “Bourrasque”, by the Canadian artist Mélanie Boucahard, highlights the evident use of the spatula instead of the brush.

The drafting of the paint unfolds in rectangular colour shots. The material consistence of oil conveys in this living artwork the sense of the unceasing change.

The artist has taken up the challenge of recreating in her art the fleeting sense of existence.

Nothing is fixed, nothing has a pure tone, but is the sum of different coloured doughy lumps.

The bourrasque, subject of the canvas, is an allegorical representation of this condition, the continuous becoming of things.

The accentuated verticality of the chosen format reveals a sacral connotation as hidden meaning.

Perhaps, her Canadian roots from a harbour town have made her sensible about the great phenomena of angry nature. Nature, evoked by the abstract grammar of this visual artwork.

Despite the economy of the selected colours, only shades of grey, Melanie has been able to conceive and generate, with her intuitively painting, a very strong emotional impact on the viewer.

BOURRASQUE 50x101cm oil on canvas

MEMO MIFTARI

“Spring greetings”, oil painting from the cycle “Evolution”, is an unconventional tribute to the beauty of this season. I voluntarily decided to present this work by using the word “unconventional”, even if, frankly, the technique and the style could appear completely the opposite, very traditional. This series is, in fact, the more distant one from the other artworks displayed at Mad gallery, because the most part of contemporary artists used to abstract, or, at least, used to choose a style very distant from reality. Memo, on the contrary, is inclined to go beyond the coherent evolution of visual art, approaching more closely the academic past movements. His works are a hyper realistic personal signature of his existence in the contemporary art world. In this way, he appears very recognizable to the viewer, which firstly could be disoriented for his adherence to reality, but then surely attracted.

This oil is, in the same time, a moving and detached representation of a fragment of a magpie’s life. The extreme pleasure for the new upcoming season is not vulgarly expressed but silently implied in the fixed image of the bird’s gaze: clinging proudly to his perch it enjoys the moment among the buds not yet disclosed.

SPRING GREETING 46x37cm coloured pencil

MENO

Sometimes, to stimulate free associations with past feelings and memories, the juxtaposition of colour and the sense of materiality are more meaningful than the figuration. You can recall a night frame of a city street, illuminated by red lampposts, where the light, reflected by the dirty puddles on the asphalt, is mixed with the elements of the town (platforms, buildings, cars).

This is what the artist Meno has created here, a painting where in a confusing view, maybe dull by the pouring rain, the viewer can only distinguish the ambivalence of red and blue colours, expressed in sharped and pointed tongue of acrylic.

Even if the influences of the Abstract Expressionism are evident and pregnant, the artist was able to actualize this heritage in a personal and genuine way: the gestural painting on this canvas became only a means to show his inner world and interweave an intense conversation with the viewer, stimulating his lost perturbations. He talks directly to our past experiences of aimlessly walks trough the streets of the places where we live.

DARK CITY 40x40cm mixed media on canvas

MICHELE GSCHWIND

A livid covering cools the skin tone around the powerful eyes of this girl, underling the quiet puffed circles down below and making the figure more troubled. Despite this aspect, the wide-open gaze of this charming heroine expresses daring, courage and determination.

She has full lips and seductive features, but her eccentric beauty appears anyway pure, almost untouched. Through the feline eyes we could read numerous and admirable plans suspended in her mind. Her spirit is driven by a positive willingness of salvation and redemption. She doesn’t want to charm the spectator. The breast contains the hidden force of her gestures, the heart. The gold frame of the organ cage symbolizes her incorruptibility. All around the visage, the hair is disengaged in a wild and long mane. Its colour, a deep purple, recalls some ancestral bond with the fairy world.

The source of the light, clearly coming from the background, breaks a prospective infinity beyond her. The looming clouds are swept up by a strong wind expiring upon the desert land.

We are probably looking at a futuristic and dystopic vision of the earth, desertified for the disrespectful conduct of mankind.

HEARTBEAT 40x80cm oil on canvas

MIRA SATRYAN

Tri-dimensional volumes emerge from the multitude of short and coloured brushstrokes.

In the upper part of the canvas they are huge and red, they recall the petals of a poppy and seem to embrace the bulb at the very centre of the painting. In the lower part instead, this tri-dimensional shapes are briefer and depicted with different tones, more gentle.

Despite of the lack of landmarks, the artist was able to create not a flat and bi-dimensional representation but a prospective composition: she used transparent brushstrokes in order to stratify numerous layers and give the feeling that the coloured bulbs grow and come out of the canvas closer to the viewer.

Clearly divided in two parts, the top with more warming shades and the bottom with colder ones, the painting sets up a friendly struggle of two worlds. The result might be found at the centre of the canvas: in the cocoon, expression of life and regeneration.

KOMP 2 70x95cm oil on canvas

PATRIZIA ZOLLER

Maura Patrizia Zoller plays with dense and shining colours, composing a joyful mix on the canvas. The material drops of acrylic cross the surface of the painting in opposite directions enveloping the all artwork casually. A harmonic green band surrounds the blue centre of the composition creating a sense of depth.

According to the title of this painting “Akropolis”, we could perceive the columns of a temple up to the top of a hill in the rectangular made by thick and pasty brushstrokes. Nevertheless, being an abstract work, this is only a mirage of the viewer’s imagination.

The calm influence of the chosen colours, the acid green and the brilliant blue emerald, transmits a sense of optimistic encouragement, motivating the viewer towards a positive approach to life. Through her artworks the generous Maura Patrizia Zoller shows us an escape route from the greyness of existence.

AKROPOLIS 80x80cm mixed media on canvas

STEFANY FISCHER

The artistic creation is a huge compromise between the contingent experience and the heritage of the great Master of the past. It is in that exact point that we can place the work of the young Stefany Fisher.

This rapid sketch is clearly related with the most academic drawing tradition, but at the same time with a more contemporary approach of showing the artist’s feelings and restlessness.

More focused on the instant communication with the viewer (visible in the eloquent gaze of the young lady) the sketch puts aside any investigation of the right technique and the correct visage proportion, in order to make the main outcome of the artist stand out: the representation of what is hidden behind our daily and sometimes frustrating life. In fact the woman sketched, like probably Stefany Fisher herself, wants to create a “bridge” with the spectator to be understood from him, but has she been able to do that? Has she been able to raise an emphatic contact with the viewer?

Each of us will surely give a different answer.

We know Stefany feels very close to her Italian roots: that is evident not only looking at the Leonardo da Vinci’s influences of that drawing, but also looking at more later ones, directly from the Nineteenth century.

DONNA 20x30cm sketch on paper

TALINE BALIAN

Two whispering entities moving with tenderness and approach each other in the lower part of this artwork made by Taline Balian, a contemporary artist based in Dubai.

These two essences seem to be slowly emerging from a great depth, like waterlilies into a pond. We can perceive a transparent film, like the water level of a lake, ripped up with difficulty from these two entities. They had lacerated the first layer in some zones (in correspondence of the more vivid pink colour) but in some other ones are still plunged in the weird substance. Substance, that appeared limpid and bright, but anyway disturbing.

Either a remarkable flower or one-celled organism, the viewer can interpret these two essences any way he wants, tending to a positive reading-key or to a more mysterious and anxious one. It is our choice.

Nevertheless, that painting still remains ambiguous and opens to a multitude of interpretations.

DANCE 80x120cm acrylic canvas

TANA

This Canadian photographer recreates, in the digital sophistication of our time, the ancient polish of the 20s photography. It is like seeing a frame of a mute movie, or better, it is like looking at a compressed frame of countless scenes integrated all together in a unique vision. It is a long tale caught in a single artistic product, a unique that contains the multiple.

In some way, it is like a meta-reflection about the deep sense of photography. The photo is a multiple, but in one exemplar can hold the multiplicity of life.

A young dancer, fixed in the middle of a huge space, looks down dearly. But all around her, surrealistic elements are layered with an apparent lack of sense. The young girl is now stable, learning the choreography, but later she will be rapidly spinning. So, if we look very carefully at the picture we can see her dance, of course blurred, like the title says. On both side, two sheer curtains drop on the ground. These recall at one time the theatre curtain and the fabric of the tulle. A gloomy substance threatens over her little body and we don’t know why, is maybe expressing the concern for the imminent performance? Why tell many things in a different time, with different pictures if you can do that in just one? Art is ability to synthesize space and time in order to tell much with less. Isn’t it?

IF IT IS BLURRY COPY 107x71cm photography on plexiglas

TONY STUCKENS

In this painting, “Magenta�, it is possible to distinguish the typical vital style of the Belgian artist Tony Stuckens.

In a futuristic composition of uncountable plans and volumes, Stuckens moves on the representation of an abstract vision made by curving and sharp-cornered corps, knotted together in a complex intrigue. The dominance of pink hues, very relevant in this artwork, contrasts, for its cheerfulness and positivity, with the aggressiveness of the shapes: the masculine connotation of these last ones, that symbolizes strength, boldness and gravity, clashes with the feminine and childish tones of the paint. Thus, an undoubted irony comes out of the canvas and hit the viewer.

In addition, the converging lines involve us in this energetic and turbulent world, a constant of Stuckens’s style.

MAGENTA 100x120cm oil on canvas

VIRGINIA FABBRI

This artwork made by a young Italian artist, Virginia Fabbri, seemed to be a bacteriological dance, seen throughout a microscope’s lens.

Synthesis, essentiality and movement dominate the representation of Virginia.

It could be a dance of love between the black signs and the violet clouds, between a man and a woman.

Some influences of the Abstract expressionism could be tracked down in the vigorous gest used by the young artist to generate the painting from the very beginning.

Accordingly with the title, “Sketches”, the painter has created her artwork in a very short time, in order to express her inner emotions spontaneously.

The composition is a well-balanced mix of full and empty. Virginia doesn’t cover the all canvas surface because of the strong expressivity of the white paper: sometimes the virgin zone of an artwork could say more than the painted ones. Could this visual choice be a way to express the “place” where the black dots and lines (the man) “meet “ the violet essence (the woman)?

SCHIZZI 80x100cm acrylic on canvas

WHOO CHOI

The human figure drawn in the foreground is easily recognizable as a clear reference to the Thinker by August Rodine, the great French sculptor.The trait which draws the human creature is sinuous and uninterrupted: this is clear in the strong and thick indigo boundary as well as in the pail rose traits which harmoniously fill out the internal spaces of the nude and eventually in the green water mane leaning on the neck. Such sinuosity, clear expression of a bold sensuality coming out from this body in meditation, contrasts the broken and nervous traits all around it: like in the base where the nude’s behind is placed on, that is not flat but entirely covered by dark spikes.

Is the artist’s choice of expressing the human figure with sinuosity, sensuality and colours in contrast with the lack of hue and the sourness of the background an implied way to reflect his pessimism? Sometimes people try to think hardly about things and keep on dreaming when all around them is grey and without any positive answers. Perhaps, do the footprints, visible on the lower and the left side of the graphic, is a way to show the hardness of the contemporary world that “step on” our expectations.

WOO’S THINKER 62x82cm drawing on paper

M.A.D. Gallery Art Directors Alessandra Magni & Carlo Greco

Critic Reviews by Jessica Sottile

Graphic Design by Andrea Massucco

Introduction by Elisa Domenichetti

Special thanks to Chiara Saccani