Curated by Art Directors Carlo Greco and Alessandra Magni Critical texts by Art Curators Alessia Perone Cecilia Terenzoni Erika Gravante Federica D’Avanzo Giorgia Massari Giulia Zanesi Guendalina Cilli Lorenza Traina Maria Cristina Bianchi Marta Graziano Silvia Grassi Vanessa Viti Special thanks to Bianca Brigitte Bonomi, Editor in Chief of Harper’s Bazaar Qatar, Grazia Qatar, Esquire Qatar
“One should either be a work of art, or wear a work of art” (Oscar Wilde) “DressME” aims at expressing the idea of designing a journey which combines the worlds of art and fashion, two creative universes that are linked by an indissoluble relationship made of collaborations, dialogue, synergies and fusions: these aspects contributed to thin the traditional boundaries of genre and to create a melting pot of new styles and influences with a significant social and aesthetic impact. The acronym comes from a play on words for an exhibition which investigates the ambition and capability of art in “dressing” our everyday life with tendencies and personality; needless to say, it is clear and immediate the reference to Milan, the capital of fashion and the hotbed for talent, dynamism, innovation and brand new trends. Not by chance the project takes place during the Milan Fashion Week, the main meeting occasion and point of reference for designers from all over the globe. In this context the concept of exhibiting is of key importance and it is seen as a way of showing everybody’s true nature and identity without considering the common preconceptions, prejudice or opinions. It is in someway like being naked in order to be able to wear the universal dress of art and be free to choose the colour, the shape, the material that suits us best and becomes the texture of our character and vision. Nobody can deny the existence of a very close bond between artists and fashion designers where the play of shapes, rhythms, tints and decorations are the common elements of an instinctive research for harmony, for beauty and for a reading key of a reality in which fantasy and dreams are the protagonists of this theatre of emotions. Fashion is inherently a form of art. Each of the two feeds the other in order to give birth to organisms that are somewhere between the tangible and the ephemeral, constructions that manifest the human desire for widening the horizon of our perceptions and show who we are and we want to be, our uniqueness and originality. The paintings, the sculpture, the clothes and any other artistic production have the peculiar capability not only to offer us objects to adorn the exterior appearance of things, but they are first of all invaluable gifts that we can use in order to enrich or baggage in terms of feelings and intimacy and to convey a message. The common denominator resides in the fact of being against the tradition and in finding innovative expressive channels and figurative languages, even new codes and paradigms to interpret the continuous evolution of times. M.A.D.S is the inventor, the promoter and the ideal box to host this project and, for this event, it will become a vibrant and multicultural atelier where “the tailors of ideas” will have the chance of cutting, recomposing, modelling and tailor making their creations for us so we can wear their thoughts and treasure them. With my picture on the cover, in the role of curator and muse, I, Erika, invite you all to a challenge, the one of dressing and colouring us, as if we were blank canvas awaiting to be painted, in order to share with you this magical and captivating atmosphere. Concept by Erika Gravante, Art Curator, graduated in Product Design, Master in Visual Merchandising
Abril Aranda
Abril Aranda is Mexican eclectic artist that, during her education, embraced and challenged herself in different forms of art: drawing, graphic, music and dance. Her artworks “Mama, ya puedo ir a jugar con ellas”, “Abril, draw me like your French girls”, “I could just eat you up! And spit the bones” could be seen as a trilogy, as the artist traces a potential story-line, a fil rouge that evokes a narration among the three paintings: “I was thinking like a little story about an alien girl asking her mother the permission to have fun for a while with a few terrestrial girls, but the mother tells her to wait for it. But the girl, because of her uncontrollable excitement, starts painting the potential girls she dreams to encounter but the unexpected happens: the alien girl ends up being eaten up by one of those girls”. An interesting and bizarre painted story-telling where we could see a poetic analogy between Abril and her alien protagonist: a curious attitude to explore and get viscerally connected with the surrounding and the others, an attitude that becomes an irrepressible impulse. As the alien girl gets eaten up by the terrestrial girl, also Abril gets immersed and swallowed by the act of create, a cathartic practice able to shape the urgency to communicate the artist’s subjectivity. Moreover, the other unifying factor of these three artwork is the technique utilised by the artist: menstrual blood on cotton paper. A choice that recalls performing art: the meaning and the militancy - in this case a feminist discourse - of the pieces exist already in the way in which are created and composed. “I want to leave a trace, or even a scar, to not forget and at the same time honour my own elapse of existence as a female human being on this planet. I consider myself a feminist artist that explores with hers own “ink” (menstrual blood) as a way to print my true self in every trace with the truth that runs through my veins. That ink comes to the world to bring a message to all women: we have always owned our own power of creation and recreation, we die and reborn in that circle. So, of course we have the knowledge about how cycles of life work! We know the moment to hibernate, when to grow and when to blossom! When to die, and when to shine!” The normalisation of the feminine body in the artworks are artistically obtained by dismantling the taboo of the menstruation, often associated with a general sense of repulsion. Hormonal changes and physical pains linked to menstruation foster its attribute of negativity and the social pressure to hide it. Abril instead transforms the menstrual blood into an art tool, as the main colour of her pieces, giving it a transformative and creative connotation. The result is the delivery of a provocative message, both artistic and psychological: what socially causes abjection can become a source of amazement. In the archetypal symbology, menstruation has a spiritual dimension and a pregnant value. They are a source of growth and abundance. They are vital energy that today’s society has taught to hide and exile in the world of the unconscious. Menstrual art is thus a push to acceptance and increases the axiom that art has no taboos. Abril, thanks to her conscious composition and to represent subjects - women painted in red - succeeds in intimately conveying her personality in toto. An artistic revelation which represents a “self-truth” - as she writes - made of political statement and uncensored expression, while wisely maintaining an ironic and visually pleasing element to her audience.
Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni
Abril Aranda
Abril, draw me like your french girls
Abril Aranda
I could just eat you up! And spit the bones
Abril Aranda
Mama, ya puedo ir a jugar con ellas
Achim Saure
Achim Saure is a German artist. He uses mainly two colors: white and gold. These colors make his artworks elegant and sophisticated. They bring the viewer to a peaceful place, a peace that is definable “oriental”. The use of white and gold is in fact visible in the Japanese art, in particular in the Rinpa School of the XVII century. Saure’s works call to mind the elegance of the calligrapher Hon’ami Koetsu, co-founder of the school, who uses white and gold elegance to create the Japanese aesthetic. Saure, through the work called “Afterimage”, brings the viewer among the bamboo forest of Japan where the light filters through the stems, blinding the sight in order to see just white and gold. In the work “Route” a gold line cut horizontally the white canvas. This line is interpretable as a dividing line but also as a symbol of union and reunification. It’s through this second view that emerge an another Japanese reference, in particular to the practice called kintsugi, literally means “repair with gold”, in which the demaged object is not thrown away but on the contrary is treated and embellished pouring into the cracks liquid resin with gold dust. Saure’s work is therefore not intended to express division but union: invites us to leave behind our fears and troubles in favor of peace and serenity. A radical break from these series of gold and white paintings is represented by one of his last works entitled “Concentration” which involves six different colors. It is the only work of the artist made in this style, it’s therefore possible that he has concluded what can be called his “white and gold period” and started to seek expression through a wider colour palette. It’s also possible that this artworks is an exception and it’s the result of different emotions and intuitions. If the earliest works cited above call to mind distant Japan, the work “Concentration” takes us back to Paris, where the Dutch artist Mondrian made his famous “Compositions” during the first years after the war. Saure takes from Mondrian the colors and the perpendicularity of the lines, breaking the geometricity and creating a sort of chaos which calls into question the need for perfection of Western culture.
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Achim Saure
Afterimage
Achim Saure
Concentration
Achim Saure
Route
Akihiro Yoshida
Akihiro Yoshida is a Japanese digital artist based in Sapporo. Admiring his works the comparison with dripping of Jackson Pollock is inevitable but, contrary to Pollock who let a lot of color drip on the canvas, Yoshida digitally does it. His ability lies in digitally reproducing the effect of dripping without using physical color. His work “Flower reborn” is an explosion of warm colors on a purple background. It’s the arrival of spring that breaks into the gloomy and cold winter, radiating the environment of positive vibrations. The contrast of colors contribute to create a strong visual impact, accentuated even more by the black and white “splashes”. These latter underline the contrast between light and shadow and, at once, their coexistence: the fundamental message of the work. Spring in Japan coincides with the Hanami, the festival in which we witness the blossoming of cherry trees, a symbol of rebirth. In this sense Yoshida’s work can be interpreted as a cherry tree at the time of flowering: the delicate pink flowers are surrounded by a shining light, represented by the yellow spots of the work. The art of Akihiro Yoshida is a perfect example of how abstract art can arouse emotions and deep feelings in the viewer, who is steeped with positivity and desire for new beginnings.
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Akihiro Yoshida
Flowers Reborn
Alexandra Köhl Colour is a power which directly influences the soul (Wassily Kandinsky)
Alexandra Köhl is a Polish autodidactic artist emigrated to Germany with her parents at the beginning of the nineties. Daughter of a painter, she has grown experimenting from an early age all sorts of artistic techniques but she could follow her passion only at the turn of the millennium. Since then she has begun to express herself through abstract pictures emerging from the deepest of her soul: without a motif or a name but marked only by a number, her artworks reproduce the variety and multiplicity of the artist’s feelings through vibrant and energetic brushstrokes. Nevertheless, the emotional component is balanced by Alexandra’s choice to mark the paintings with a numerical progression, by approaching thus her vision to that of Max Bill, according to whom art can only be generated by a rational thought able to impose order on emotions. In her painting #013, the undisputed protagonist is colour, sometimes spread with large and scratched strokes, other times through rapid touches. The use of colour defines the space: spread through overlapping layers it prefers the cold tones of purple and light blue with the addition of some warm tones creating a light contrast and immerging the viewer in an elegant and delicate visual experience.
Art Curator Marta Graziano
Alexandra Kรถhl
#013
Alison Aplin
The art of the Australian artist and designer Alison Aplin is an action painting, in which the colors and the artist’s hand come together, giving life to works in which immediate instinct prevails. Her profession as a designer helps her create aesthetic works in which her passion emerges from the emotional charge given by gestures. Her work “Snow on the mountain” is a deeply intimate work, in which the desire to return to the past is evident. A layer of white snow covers the entire painting alluding to memories buried by time and four leafless trees are key players. Bare trees represent the process of growth, the need to drop the leaves to make room for new buds. Aplin’s work is therefore an emotional journey into the past. It’s a desire to return to the moment of childhood in which purity of mind led us to ignore the evil in the world and to avoid external influences. It is therefore a search for pure painting, free from contamination. This concept sounds quite similar to the infantile art of the artist Paul Klee: “I would like to be as just born, ignore poets and fashions, be almost primitive”. The reflection that the work of Aplin allows us to make is dictated by her wise choice of colors: the purity of mind is evoked by the candid white of the snow which, combined with darker colors such as brown and ochre, acquires a nostalgic and melancholic connotation. At the same time, the four blue clouds at the top of the canvas foretell the rain: it will feed the trees allowing them to bloom again. “Snow on the mountain” is like a soul in which past, present and future coexist.
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Alison Aplin
Snow on the mountain
Amanda Stuart
Amanda created a work perfectly adaptable to “DRESS ME”; with it she wanted to pay homage to the beauty and high aesthetic value of fashion. A female icon of class and elegance such as Sophia Loren, represented here by Amanda takes on an important meaning. In fact, she wears a fur coat, but with a tender and loving look she turns to a mink and a rabbit. She becomes a symbol of changing times, of an important path also made in the world of fashion. The flowers on the head are a clear reference to a great woman and artist: Frida Kahlo, the one who more than any other is a symbol of courage and desire for change. Amanda’s work brings to mind the prints of Vladimir Tretchikoff, a figurative art with particular attention to the portrait. The work “Sophia” is figurative, a portrait with pop echoes, bright colors and a great brightness pervade the picture that does not correspond to reality but that makes the work alive and eternal. Definitely, Amanda’s work is a breath of hope and optimism, a positive look towards the future, an invitation to courage and change. As always she is able to give voice to her thoughts and to launch a message, Amanda’s great sensitivity with her artistic skills give the viewer a new point of view on the world.
“The future belongs to those who prepare for it today.” (Malcolm X)
Art Curator Vanessa Viti
Amanda Stuart
Sophia
Amazilia Photography
Amazilia Photography was born from the extraordinary figure of the English photographer Paul Veron, an artist who brings with him a world of visions with the great ability to know how to tell an inner world without ever exasperating. His artistic production is linked to digital photography and the relentless pursuit of beauty and the charm of simplicity which is wisely underlined and visible within his shots. Elaboration of a thought that leads us to reflect on the preciousness and essentiality of life and of every single moment. A meticulous research that turns into a concept, unique shots up to the achievement of that image so strongly desired. Attention and attention to detail. A new visual research that goes beyond reality pushes us a little further by offering us the opportunity to discover something new, almost the illusion of being able to cross the threshold of the unknown. Here in this work “Body Ballet� seems almost a Dionysian invitation to listen and dance that communicates echoes, harmony, inner dissonances on which to reflect. A direction responds to background music, the choreography of the bodies that feel, caress and dance in the moment of the moment. His talent as a photographer intercepts perceptions, solutions, intuitions in every shot that before probably had a hard time emerging like this. His work is extremely interesting, incisive but at the same time poetic with a never predictable approach, a need to remove, clean in order to rediscover the truth and essence of the human figure with a touching and disarming delicacy. A refined synthesis of his artistic career to be discovered and experienced thoroughly to understand the experimental plan investigated by the artist. Photographs that become imperceptible lines that affect each of us, modeling our person. Nothing is lost. It all comes back.
Art Curator Giulia Zanesi
Amazilia Photography
Body Ballet
Ana Sneeringer
Ana Sneeringer makes art a life purpose. An authentic inner search that takes shape and content within itself, creating a spontaneously innovative final result. The great communicativeness of her language reflects her innate creativity in her whole being, letting a new way of painting emerge in which, I believe, her soul as an artist can be expressed by manifesting her deepest thought. An artistic research that focuses on portraits and becomes a continuous variation of contents, processes and forms “Purpose� captures us and strikes our gaze for the delineation of her pictorial path that follows the deep analysis of the dynamism created by the artist consisting of transparencies, color, details aimed at capturing our gaze and making us reflect . A world outlined through its protagonists, especially women, vibrant like a soul in full swing. In almost all the artist’s works, the chromatic meaning plays a lot of importance, the intensity of her work created to conquer, enchant, reflect and involve all of us who are transported, almost by magic, in the reflections that the artist submits to us. An emerging talent and can be seen in her accurate and very witty analysis of the human condition. Ana Sneeringer surprises with her ability to create a space and a time through her works, thus unifying existence and the limit of thought in a kind of constructivism. An interesting conceptual technical construction of the work elaborated in a development of chromatic contrasts and not altered by tradition which makes it look for its meaning in the work itself.
Art Curator Giulia Zanesi
Ana Sneeringer
Purpose
Angela Vanin
Angela is a self-taught Italian painter born in Milan but later on, after her Socio-pedagogical studies, she decided to gradually escape from the claustrophobic environment of the bustling city: at first she travelled across Europe and Italy, looking for new stimuli and an artistic and personal corroboration. Eventually, this personal research and investigation led the artist to settle with her family in Monte Peglia: an uncontaminated and rural area in the centre of Italy. “We feel the custodians of this place, that over time keeps being the same, wild and rich in flora and fauna” says the artist. It is exactly this landscape that often spurs and catalyses Angela’s imagination to paint and create. The intentional distance from urban normativity allows the artist to take on a more spiritual vision, attached to the ground and the land, in an emancipated and carefree way. In fact, as we can notice in her artworks “Madre de Agua”, “Attesa” and “New World” the natural element plays a crucial role, functioning as a mirror of the imaginary and the artist’s life experience. The imaginary represented on canvas displays nature’s value as a magnificent entity that leads the individual to authentically enjoy the enchanting side of the world. Angela, known also as “Art Wild” states: “My art talks about a profound connection with the natural elements: a union that becomes magical fusion, mirror of experiences and paths of life. A union that is space for meditation and appreciation for the beauty of the landscape I live in”. An experience could be the one of “Attesa”, which literally means “Waiting”, maybe a subtle reference and premonition of the lifestyle the artist was about to experience and fantasize with. As we can see in “New World”, the artist places a jay, a blue and black bird that represents the union between sky and earth. Angela depicts him as though a messenger coming from the natural world who creates magic and leads to beauty, a cathartic and purifying element for the soul. The two protagonists on the canvas, characters of an hypothetic fairy-tale, conversely display anger, a possible mirroring of the artist’s discontent towards the society she escaped from. “Madre de Agua” is an explosion of colours - the blue water, the green grass, the rainbow, the warmth of the yellow sunrise - which represent the pure and fantastical celebration of nature’s pervading force. According to the artist, the artworks are dreamy and utopian imaginaries that end up turning real, thanks to the exposure to the experiences and to the research of beauty and of our own authentic subjectivity.
Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni
Angela Vanin
Attesa
Angela Vanin
Madre de Agua
Angela Vanin
New world
Anita Ognjanovska
Anita Ognjanovska’s art undoubtedly approaches the thought of Informal Art developed in the 1940s. Like Informal artists, she also makes art her mission to express feelings and emotions through the rejection of form. Contrary to Informal Art, in the works of Ognjanovska it’s possible to perceive a designed choice of colors, which become the main means for the transmission of emotions to the viewer. In the works “Lightning bolt of Love” and “Diversity” the artist uses bright colors. This choice reflects the message that the works want to give: in the first case, as the title suggests, love is the protagonist. The explosion of red at the center of the work suggests that it’s a sudden love and the light blue background looks like a clear sky, alluding to a love that opens your eyes and makes everything clear. Also in the case of the second work, “Diversity”, the title suggests the message, which is even more strengthened by the colors that the artist uses: the canvas is composed by a multitude of colors, warm and cold, distributed in smudges as if they were a dress made of different fabrics. Ognjanovska’s ability lies precisely in creating harmony between seemingly different colors, which visually blend and become a single entity. The concept of humanity clearly emerges: diversity makes us unique but at the same time we are all part of a greater whole. A radical emotional change is perceived by observing her work “Fortress” in which the bright colors of the previous works leave room for the dark colors. The composition is similar to the work of Piet Mondrian “Tableau I”, in which the verticality gives the work the appearance of an impenetrable wall. This feeling is confirmed by the title, although the spectator’s interpretation is completely free. The “wall” is dotted with spatulates of white, blue, yellow and red that soften the darkness of the work, alluding to a positive message: a wall that protects us. At the same time, the wall is a symbol of division, a barrier to keep away everything that can hurt us. In the art of Ognjanovska the message is fundamental. The artist perfectly combines Abstractionism, Materialism and Abstract Expressionism giving rise to a unique style.
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Anita Ognjanovska
Diversity
Anita Ognjanovska
Fortress
Anita Ognjanovska
Lightning bolt of Love
Anna Pavlova “The more sensitive is the soul of who contemplates, the more one surrenders to the ecstasy arising in him by such natural harmony. A sweet and deep reverie takes possession of one’s senses. All the individual objects can’t be grabbed, and one can just feel the whole” (J. J. Rousseau)
Anna Pavlova is a Russian artist who takes inspiration from the pristine beauty of the natural environment. Whether it is a park full of flowers or a mysterious forest, Anna extracts what strikes her the most, capturing all sorts of shades, from the pastel colors of the sky to the intense green of a thick tree crown. Every gift of nature gives a positive energy, lifeblood that originates light and radiates the surrounding atmosphere. Just as in Path in the Forest, the artist has the interest and the willingness to renew landscape painting by moving increasingly more to a realistic representation. For this reason, she uses a round canvas: it is the absence of sharp edges that makes his environment boundless, evoking the suggestions of nature in an exceptional way. As in the works of the Impressionists artists, such as Corot and Courbet, the artist immerses herself in the freshness and liveliness of her palette, giving a wide space to the light and expressive effects. The realistic treatment of light, together with the solid plastic construction and the authenticity of the composition reflect the intention to represent the reality as it presents itself to the viewer’s gaze. The enchantment exerted by this nature evokes memory and re-elaborates the artist’s imagination: in this context reason and heart come together, as well as the representation of each element and its interpretation. The rocky aspect of the road is linked to the wooded one, made up by a rich variety of green and brown shades that outline the secular trees and shrubs profiles. The forest reserves impervious and unexplored traits and it has the task of creating an intimate and deep emotional flow in the observer’s soul. Each brushstroke grows exponentially and binds itself together with the contact with nature. Anna Pavlova’s painting reflects positive feelings and emotions, healing the viewer from a world full of aggression and pain. By expressing what she feels, the artist gives emphasis to her feelings through a personal aesthetic to be shared.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Anna Pavlova
Path in the Forest
Anna Sophia Rydgren ARYART “Art is silent poetry” (Anna Sophia Rydgren)
The Swedish artist Anna Sophia Rydgren is inspired by bodies and faces as well as simple organic forms from nature.Color and form have always been part of her life. She paints mainly with acrylic and liquid ink, but also uses other techniques such as watercolors and oil pastels, using brushes, spatulas and sponges. One example is Blue Evolution: these abstract and minimalist figures glide imperceptibly on the canvas, emanating brightness and intensity by accentuating the different shades of color. The latter is fundamental within the artwork: blue is the noblest and it is a metaphor of spirituality, transcendence and contemplation. It is a “metaphysical” shade and is linked to relaxation and reflective states: it therefore refers to unconscious depths and introspection. The strength of this color pushes the structures to free themselves in the immense surrounding space, with a totally neutral nuance, almost to the point to reach something divine. The center of these floating structures is immersed in gold, creating a surreal and fascinating atmosphere. Recalling the Art Nouveau and the great works of Gustav Klimt, Anna Sophia creates a link between the physicality of the forms and the rest of the composition. A great golden light radiates and blends with blue, creating an expressive atmosphere pervaded by abstraction beyond time and space. The artist aims to give the viewer a sense of calm and harmony, through both the use of tones that penetrate the human nature and the simplicity of the figures from which a slight dynamism emerges.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Anna Sophia Rydgren ARYART
Blue Evolution
Annette Hertenberger “I am not sick. I am broken. But I am happy as long as I can paint.” (Frida Kahlo)
Annette Hertenberger (Hertenberger-art) was born and raised in Luxembourg. She studied textile design in Germany and still lives there. She loves to work with strong colors, focusing her attention on nature and hers creatures. Expressive personalities and colorful animal images are her favorite topics. Her subjects present a strong expressive charge, capable of transmitting to the viewer sensations, emotions and moods. Animals have always had a primary role for man, so much so that this is also reflected in the works that have characterized the history of art. From prehistoric times to the modern age, despite the evolution of thoughts, philosophies and interests, the importance played by animals in the works of artists of all times has never failed. In the centuries between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in particular, animals in the history of art are depicted to represent the concerns of man. This attitude strongly characterizes the romantic, expressionistic and futuristic art of those periods.In these centuries, animals symbolize the very interiority of man. In fact, the artist seeks, through their representation, a contact with nature to recall the purity and instinct of primitive art: in this regard, you can not fail to mention the different versions of the “Oxen” by Pablo Picasso. In the twentieth century important is the vision of Frida Kahlo, for which through the study of the relationship between man and animal you can find interesting food for thought to reflect on modern society. “Stopp” symbolizes an animal that lets you guess the tension and excitement that characterized the moment of his creation, giving the impression of being able to feel the spasm and fear of the danger that hangs behind his claws. The white and its greyish shades place the subject in a cold, winter, snowy environment probably, in which the blood red impacts in an impetuous way, telling a story. I am seeking. I am striving.
“I am in it with all my heart.” (Vincent van Gogh)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Annette Hertenberger
Stopp‌
Annette Mahoney
Annette Mahoney is a Copenhagen-based artist. She works mainly with acrylic paint, using strong colours and patterns to create enigmatic images. In her painting, in particular through flat colors and geometric shapes, a graphic imprint is evident as well as a clear reference to cubism. Her works reveal her artisic thought , very similar to that of the Bauhaus, a school that preferred the use of primary colors, simple and essential forms with the aim of satisfying the aesthetic side. Her series called “Granitbandit” or “Fashionista”, consisting of four works, is a great example of how art must, first of all, satisfy an aesthetic needs. Through these works we can deduce the sensitivity of the artist who, through geometric shapes and psychedelic effects, recreates human figures and faces, that are not immediately recognizable but are deduced thanks to the path that the lines allow the eye to follow. Particularly interesting is the number 2, in which an eye, an open mouth and two circles dominate the composition. The eye of the beholder is captured by the circles (positioned in the center) and automatically the mind is lost between colors and lines: it seems to be bewitched and to make an introspective journey that, once returned to reality, leaves you speechless. In this sense she approached the psychedelic artists of the 1960s, from which she resumed the repetition of contrasting motifs and colours, with the intention of using art as a way of escaping reality for a while.
“Art is the cornerstone of everything. Expendable, yet nescessary. Same with the fashion scene. Dress me so I can be who I aspire to be.” (Annette Mahoney)
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Annette Mahoney
Chi-chi, fashionista #2
Antonio Bagia The job of the artist is always to deepen the mystery (Francesco Bacone)
Antonio Bagia was born in Romania, approaching the art very young.His artistic research moves towards a world unknown to many, the astronomical one. His intent, through painting, is to invite the viewer to take a step towards unknown and distant solar systems, unexplored planets and places. An imaginary world that blooms from the artist’s mind on the canvas. Since ancient times man has observed the firmament with wonder and desire to penetrate its darkest mysteries. Equally ancient is the need to reproduce its beauty in artistic form, not only to enhance its charm, but also to research and express deeper meanings. Beautiful spatial scenarios, rich in star necklaces, colorful nebulae and boundless galaxies, have been able, over time, to accompany the rigorous scientific content of the canvases, of which they are the expression, allegory and personal interpretation. In America, Arthur Dove and Georgia O’Keeffe deepen their research, spiritual and stylistic at the same time, working the clouds up to abstraction with colors that evoke space. Munch detonates the sun like the last star that lights up Earth before merging with the cosmos. Such a spatial exploration, seen as a metaphor of a journey of man towards knowledge and progress, is at the basis of the artistic research of Antonio Bagia, whose technique is based on different styles of landscaping to give the viewer a feeling of wonder. “Celestial” is an explosion of colors on multiple layers, in which chaos there is still a veiled idea of order, just as in the Universe itself.
“Nature is not only all that is visible to the eye… it also includes the inner pictures of the soul.” (Edvard Munch)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Antonio Bagia
Celeste
Arbella Sawyer Colours, like features, follow the changes of the emotions (Pablo Picasso)
Arbella Sawyer, young contemporary American artist based in the south of France, researches harmony between the realistic world we live in and the subjective emotional world we individually experience. “I am most fascinated by the unique charme of people, which is why I focus on cropped portraits and captivating eyes” – she says. Her style is a fusion between portraiture and abstractionism. In fact, transcending the concept of race, Arbella replaces the skin tones with a more eccentric palette of colours that she feels reflecting more accurately the colouring of our hearts and personalities. The portrait URBAN shows a female face depicted through warm yellow and red tones. The hyper-realistic details, as the penetrating gaze, the long lashes and the full lips are softened by this subjective use of colour that causes in the viewer a strong emotional reaction, leading him to feel a deep empathy for the represented woman.
Art Curator Marta Graziano
Arbella Sawyer
Urban
Asma Bachir
Asma Bachir el bouhali is a Moroccan artist who draws inspiration from historical facts to express on canvas all the emotions and energetic charge drawn from them. Her pictorial technique, combined with the skilful use of acrylic, allows her to create amazing effects. A perfect example is the canvas “Samourai”, previously prepared with a layer of plaster and then painted with acrylic. This work is inspired by women warriors and the forgotten of history: the emotional charge is transmitted by the red at the top of the canvas which, thanks to the large amounts of acrylic used, results in relief and brings to mind the blood and suffering spilled. The emotion is even more accentuated by the contrast of red with the white titanium at the center of the canvas, as if it were a flash, a glow that asks man to remember and learn from history. Bachir’s pictorial technique is astonishing: through the use of acrylic, laid out roughly without being flattened on the support, it manages to recreate material effects that recall the Informal art of the ‘40s, in particular the material art of Alberto Burri with his “Sacchi” and even more the French artist Jean Fautrier with his works such as: “Oradour-sur-Glane” and “It’s how you feel”. Just like these artists of the ‘50s, the Bachir leaves dry the color spread in large quantities on the canvas, tending to the progressive dissolution of the form in favor of a material abstraction in which color comes to life, drawing energy from the past.
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Asma Bachir
Samourai
Astrid Hutengs “Great things are done by a series of small things brought together” (Vincent Van Gogh)
Astrid Hutengs is an illustrator who has chosen to dedicate her entire life to art. Her works are inspired by music and poetry and are born from the encounter with people and from trips to wonderful places. Her favorite techniques are watercolor, pastel, ink drawings. One of the topics covered by the artist is the diversity of the world of women’s feelings. In her illustrations she represents feelings such as fear, love and tenderness. All as children we were enchanted by the colorful figures that illustrated the few words written on our first books. We can start our journey from the nineteenth century, since the concept of illustration in previous centuries had different meanings from the current one and included, for example, miniatures. But the illustration takes on its mature forms only between the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. Thus, images are spread that refer to the colorful proposals of pop art of the fifties and sixties of the twentieth century; others that take up the sign of expressionism, informal abstract painting and underground graphics; illustrations that reuse the collage techniques invented by cubists at the beginning of the twentieth century; others that reproduce the funny games of surrealist painting. In short, it is a very broad language. Astrid chooses to take only some aspects of this culture, adapting its images to the reality that surrounds it. She transforms her intuitions into impressions and then immediately into emotions. Her subjects are romantic, nostalgic, in love with life, feelings accentuated by the choice of pastel colors such as yellow and orange. The faces of the women painted by the artist are dreamy, the looks deep, the poses composed. Their eyes collide directly with those of those who observe them empathically.It is a clean, simple and elegant art that conquers the observer.
“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist” (Pablo Picasso)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Astrid Hutengs
Breathe
Astrid Hutengs
Eagerly Awaiting
Astrid Hutengs
What?
Audrey Kao
Audrey walks on an artistic path that starts from philosophy, in particular for what concerns aesthetics and it is in this field that she meets Lyotard’s thought and makes it her own, taking a particular interest in the sublime. Quoting Edmund Burke “The sublime is what produces the strongest emotion the soul is able to feel”, what Audrey wants to create through her works is just that, she intended to arouse strong emotions. For the artist, producing art means being able to dialogue with the user, it is the way to express herself and her interiority without setting limits. Audrey, through the production of her works, she wants to grow, mature both personally and artistically, her artistic work is therefore the means to improve, and why not, improve all of us who come into contact with it. Audrey’s works for “Dress me” are intimate and imbued with moving value, they can be described as symbolist works, somehow referring to the artistic current that was born in France. Kao’s work penetrates beyond appearance and as for the symbolists, the essence of reality is not in what we see but in what we perceive with the soul. Ultimately, Audrey gives us the opportunity to take a journey within ourselves, diging into the most intimate memories and emotions, giving us the flavor of discovery and wonder.
Art Curator Vanessa Viti
Audrey Kao
La Femme
Audrey Kao
Reborn
Audrey Kao
Untitled2
Bana Moureiden
Bana is the artist of dynamism, she manages to shape works that move and that recall the elements of nature. In the work “Broken water” it is easy to see the rippling of the water and it is equally simple to listen to the sound of the lapping of the waves. All the materials used by Bana move in an almost whirlwind way, the resin pieces find space next to each other, everything looks like a huge puzzle. Dowels that fit together and stand out strongly, they contain the immense power of water: life, magic, impossible to stop, however much people can pollute and deface it, it still flows and always will. Bana is a researcher, painter, sculptor, her works include different and wisely used techniques. Her art is abstract, Bana’s drawing is a reproduction of a reality, the one that inspired the artist. Her work refers to the material works of the famous Italian artist Paola Romano. Bana’s artistic work is a true aesthetic experience, beauty and strength that move feelings, as if it has no boundaries, her work protrudes from the edges, so the viewer feels touched by his emotional power.
“If there is magic on this planet, it is contained in water” (Loren Eiseley)
Art Curator Vanessa Viti
Bana Moureiden
Broken Water
Bill Santelli “Making art is a way to possess destiny.” (Marvin Gaye)
Bill Santelli is an American artist who during the period of isolation, made of social distances, felt the need to unbalance inner peace and connect creatively with others through works of art. He initiated a series of drawings titled “Mindstream” after reading the concept of the mental flow of Buddhist philosophy, which is literally described as “the flow of mind”. It provides a personality continuity that Buddhism denies, a continuity from one life to another, similar to the flame of a candle. As psychologist Argenton argues, “art is the solution of problems, creation of worlds, invention, use of intelligence and feeling. It is an aesthetic need, an educational means, historical memory, research, fantasy and many other things that make it a place of privilege, exercise and manifestation of human cognition.” Artists experience that creative activity has the power to draw from a space of true consciousness of being, devoid of interpretation. In this space it makes sense not to have physical parameters, body, or form that separates one thing from the other. For Bill, the process of making art takes precedence over the need for verbal communication. Creativity is itself a language and allows the artist to connect with the world - and to himself - on a nonverbal level. As with all his work, drawing is an introspective process that invites him to reflect on the inner journey, on letting go of the old forms and opening up to new ones, on the balance of the path inwards and outwards. The choreography of shapes and colors creates a movement on paper, a fluid but gently turbulent “mental flow” that is born and disappears at all times. So for Bill the art itself- tangible manifestation of the creative interpretation of reality - does not respond to the imperatives of sight but rather to the needs of vision, as it embodies the need to discover and tell what is beyond what we can achieve with our eyes. Bill, espousing the theory postulated by Paul Klee that “Art does not reproduce the visible but makes it visible”, gives with these series of drawings, the opportunity to stop for a moment and reflect beyond what the viewer’s eye perceives at first glance.
“There is only one thing in art that can’t be explained.” (Georges Braque)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Bill Santelli
Mindstream #13
Bodil Fossheim-Bugge
“In to the depth” is the powerful result of the Norwegian artist Bodil Fossheim-Bugge, whose mixed media art style allows her to always create unique and intimate pieces keeping at the same time that universal influence and mission, inviting the viewers to challenge their intuition and to dig into an enriching and introspective experience. In fact, by contemplating the painting, the audience is brought to a profound and almost oniric journey, opening up a dialogue with his inner soul and with the visceral suggestions the artwork evokes. The quality of Bodil’s poetics is exactly her mastery in blending the different art’s layers, keeping strongly her subjectivity and personal touch while representing on canvas the strength of her biggest inspirations and creative catalysts: the magnificence of nature and the immensity of universe. The light blue background of the painting - linked to a sense of infinity - functions as a soft frame for the gold explosion placed at the canvas’s centre, which recalls pureness and eternity. The practice of creating intuitive artwork involves the process of letting go expectations and looking for the artist’s inner voice while embracing the stimuli of the surrounding. This introspective and spontaneous approach is what is left on canvas by Bodil, able to encourage the viewer to go through to same investigation.
“Intuition is a method of feeling one’s way intellectually into the inner heart of a thing to locate what is unique and inexpressible in it” (Henri Bergson)
Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni
Bodil Fossheim-Bugge
In To The Depth
Bora Aydintug
Bora lives in Brooklyn, it’s here that he researches, experiments and creates innovative works. Quoting Bruno Munari “Art is continuous research, assimilation of past experiences, addition of new experiences, in form, content, material, technique, means”. The artist Bora perfectly embodies Munari’s idea, he is first of all a researcher, his art is the result of the connection between technology and creative genius. After all, in the 21st century we cannot think of talking about art without including new techniques. Bora implements a method of artistic expression, not only new, but also of great impact. The artist works with the brain, in the true sense of the word, his artistic work is the result of EEG. His works are an expression of brain impulses, he digitally imprints a trace of himself, it is appropriate to say that his work is a true description of the interiority of Bora. Clearly we can speak of abstractionism, there is no presence of real forms, if his work is totally innovative, at the same time his works remind us of great masters of the past. The lines outlined in a fast and repeated way makes think to Balla’s works, or the bright and lively colors seem to belong to precious oriental fabrics. Without doubt the art of Bora refers to digital art and in particular to electronic art, where art and technology find the perfect combination.
Art Curator Vanessa Viti
Bora Aydintug
Expressive EEG series 1
Bora Aydintug
Expressive EEG series 2
Bora Aydintug
Expressive EEG series 3
Carolina Polara
Carolina Polara is a self-taught Italian painter and fashion designer. Born and raised in Florence, she currently lives by the sea, in Viareggio. Her piece “Protect” is the painting reproduction of the famous picture taken by American fashion photographer Steven Meisel. The picture, and also the painting faithfully, portraits an intimate embrace between American singer Madonna and Italian actress Isabella Rossellini, daughter of the Neorealist director Roberto Rossellini. What stands out the most in “Protect” is the intensity of Isabella’s look, extremely confident, almost defying the viewer. On the contrary, the “pop queen” seems to be aware of the external gaze and we simply see her letting go in the reassuring and comfortable arms of the actress. The painting immortalizes a moment of affection and tenderness but, at the same time, it also conveys an empowering message: the women are not portrayed as objects of desire, but instead it is highlighted their independence from the external. When I look at my artworks again after a while I see a kind of magic and I ask my insecure self: “Did I really do this? How was the process?” writes Carolina. Very often insecurity and an act of creating free from analytical schema, allow that “magic trick” to happen. Perhaps the performance anxiety is what sometimes catalyses the creative act and it is a symptom of the artist’s authentic involvement in what she does. “To me painting and sketching is a way to free my mind and to pour on canvas all my struggles and feelings” states the painter. The painting is an artistic homage to Steven Meisel, but it also represents an urgency to reproduce and to offer to a broader audience the same intensity and emotional fruition Carolina herself experienced in contemplating that picture.
Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni
Carolina Polara
Protect
Catherine Heaney
Catherine Heaney is from the North of Ireland. She grew up watching her father painting from which she was mesmerised. Later on, she decided to go to Art College, where she realized her potential. Her inspiration is taken from the magic of the Irish sky, in particular from the sunset, since for her symbolises the completion of the day and shows the passing of time and a kind of alarm that reminds us to leave the world of work mentally and to relax. As she herself says: “We all live in a fast paced world and I want to take Mother Nature’s powerful healing into our homes to remind us all to slow down, be present, see the beauty that constantly surrounds us and breathe”. In the work of Heaney is evident the approach to Impressionism and Expressionism but, if the last is the evolution of the first, the Heaney makes an extra leap: combines the two styles to create one of its own in which impressions dominate the work and expressiveness is the key to understanding them. On the one hand she uses the teachings of Impressionism, by exploiting the sea as a mirror of the sky and by applying the color to spots; on the other hand, expressionism is used by Heaney to abandon objectivity and focus on the feelings that the work wants to convey. All this emerges admiring the great oil canvas “Irish dusk”. Here the sun, creator of evocative light effects, becomes the secondary character of the scene, leaving the protagonist role to the magic that surrounds the sky, just like in Monet’s work “Impression, sunrise” where the real protagonist is the mist that floods the port of Le Havre. Another analogy that emerges from the comparison between the work of Monet and Heaney is the realization of the sun: both made following a single brush stroke. The colors contribute to create a mixture of sensations: the warm colors evoke peace, calm, tranquility, sensations broken by cold and dark colors that trigger in the human soul deeper and disorienting questions.
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Catherine Heaney
Irish Dusk
Chair House “Painting is the grandchild of nature. It is related to God” (Rembrandt)
Chair house was born in Tokyo, Japan. Today he is a multimedia artist who experiments and puts into practice all his knowledge in the field. In the early 1990s, while working as a corporate electrical engineer, he began his creative career as an artist. After retiring from the company has resumed creative activity. Currently, he is engaged in digital art and music activities. In the last few months he started using 3D software, using Photoshop and creating more than 500 abstract images. The reading of his digital work is very interesting especially in a technological era like this. Like two-dimensional art, three-dimensional creation is as old as man himself. In prehistory, he has, in fact, modeled art objects with magical-religious purposes, such as tools of work and defense. The most representative expression to understand this phenomenon is painting, with the birth of the perspective discovered by Italian artists Duccio and Giotto, and thanks to which art entered its three-dimensional phase. Painting has thus acquired a new dimension: depth, through the management of light and shadows. This technique was perfected throughout the Renaissance and continued to this day. In the modern and contemporary age many have been the artistic techniques experimented and the 3D Art is one of this. Chair house, who has approached this new form of art recently, in his works experiments, thoroughly examining the picture, studying the scenic and perspective composition and providing the viewer with a real collection. “Dea Autumn” and “Dea Reverie” seem in fact the continuous representation of a series, whose subjects are often deified female characters. In the first, the artist chooses to adorn the woman with warm colors such as orange and yellow, which bring out the pink complexion; in the second opts for blue and green. The same palette is also chosen for “Dea Zodiac”, which however is different from the first two. It is a zoomed close-up of the face in which every detail, contrary to the first two, appears abstract and poorly defined. A complex art of our artist Chair house, which enchants the viewer in a distant and dreamy universe, in a suspended space.
“The main thing is to be moved, to love, to hope, to tremble, to live” (Auguste Rodin)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Chair House
Dea Autumn
Chair House
Dea Reverie
Chair House
Dea Zodiac
Charlie Rodrigues (Cheeky chicken art) “Creativity requires courage” (Henri Matisse) Charlie Rodrigues - Cheeky chicken art - is a self-taught artist from the UK who now lives and works in central Portugal. Her artistic research is based on the careful celebration of the uniqueness and complexity of people. For the artist, moments, experiences, relationships and individual choices shape life. Its starting point comes from the idea that all people are different. No one is really the same as no one else. Every human being has a body, a soul, a mind, an idea. The body, in particular, is a fascinating and partly mysterious organic system whose representation has played, since prehistoric times, a determining role in the development of art history. The reproduction of the human figure makes it necessary for the artist to consider a series of elements such as the variety of its forms and proportions, somatic features and physiognomy, attitudes and gestures, in addition to the expressive and symbolic value of the represented subject. Throughout history, the human body has been, from time to time, reproduced with extreme synthesis or richness of detail, with a scientific approach and a realistic intent. In the twentieth century there is a predominant tendency of expression that, through the representation of elongated, distorted, broken down and altered proportions, communicates contents and symbolic meanings of the body and human condition. The Cubist avantgarde, for example, presents almost indecipherable human figures obtained through the decomposition of the image and the subsequent combination of linear, geometric and coloristic elements. In this context it is interesting to note that the phenomenon of colors has always fascinated man and has been exploited since prehistoric times. In visual communication, humanity has made wide use of it, especially by searching for and identifying over time the best shades and shades of color. The intent of Charlie, although obviously in a diversified way, is to arouse emotions, to reach the goal using and exploiting the eye of the viewer through the power of color. For this reason, her human, feminine and masculine figures evoke chromatic shades that can visually communicate various sensations. For the artist, colors become an integral part of human life, regardless of their warm and bright or cold and dark tones. Each of them tells a story and makes each individual unique. One color is immediately added to another with the passing of time in that process called life. And what color would you be?
“Art must be an expression of love or it is nothing” (Marc Chagall)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Charlie Rodrigues (Cheeky chicken art)
The colours of life 1
Charlie Rodrigues (Cheeky chicken art)
The colours of life 2
Charlie Rodrigues (Cheeky chicken art)
The colours of life 3
Chica de la Luna
Chica de la Luna is a mediumistic French art painter led by angels in the realization of her works. Each work contains a message of spiritual elevation. The pictorial gestures, fundamental in the art of Chica de la Luna, are integrated by adding semi-precious stones that act as protectors.The work “Cœur d’émeraude” best represents her spiritual art. The work is an inner journey to rediscover feelings. The spatula and instinctive brushstrokes fill the canvas with an emerald green that can only instill positivity and hope in the viewers. The lines, given by the brushstrokes, all converge in the center, the focal point of the composition, which hypnotizes the viewers and makes them burrow into their own souls. The chromatic rhythm of the green is broken by magenta, yellow and white brushstrokes that radiate the work of brightness. They create pauses necessary for the viewers to stop and reflect. The work is a vortex resonating in unison with the chakra of the heart “Anahata” that combined with the stones chosen by the artist (aventurine, amazonite and fluorite) urge the viewers to reconnect with their feelings without any fear.The spiritual art of Elodie evokes the teachings of Italian spatialist artists who are interested in the problem of the all-embracing perception of Space as the sum of the absolute categories of Time, Direction, Sound, Light. In the footsteps of these artists, Vayssière researches energy in art and creates works that go beyond the reality we know, opening portals to the spiritual world.
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Chica de la Luna
Cœur d’émeraude
Chris Glatie
Chris Glatie is a German artist, who lives in Hannover. In 2017 he approached Fluid art and in 2019 he knew the Shelee art technique, but right from the start it is evident his mastery in using it. Shelee art is a laborious technique that involves several stages of work: first of all it is essential to mix the colors with certain materials in order to obtain a fluid compound and secondly it’s really important the sensitivity of the artist, who must be able to stratify the colors and create the composition. Chris Glatie is a perfect example of great mastery of technique: in his work “Mystical flower”, made on a circular support, he perfectly blends six layers of color recreating what to the human eye looks like a flower. With this work Chris stands out within the world of Shelee art, as it’s evident his intent to create a precise form that, through abstraction, wishes to stimulate the viewer’s imagination. His style is in fact to be framed in the sphere of abstractionism, as a reinterpretation in a contemporary key of Abstract Expressionism, born in the second post-war period with Jackson Pollock. The work of Chris Glatie is an ethereal evocation, it’s almost alien; the bright and shiny colors give the work the appearance of a magical portal to another dimension. It is a journey through the galaxies, contained in a flower. It is interesting to note how the ends of the petals become black, as if to show the dark side of the universe, the unknown side to man. Because what you don’t know always arouses a sense of fear.
“Art goes beyond the limits within which time would like to compress it, and indicates the content of the future” (Vasilij Kandinskij)
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Chris Glatie
Mystical flower
Christopher Rozitis “Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures” (Henry Ward Beecher)
Christopher Rozitis, is an English artist and psychotherapist. He loves to create works of art that are bold in color and structure, combining the various artistic techniques with technology. His artistic analysis reflects on the duality of the contemporary world, which encloses the synthesis between traditional and modern art providing the viewer with a new interpretation of today’s art. His current pictorial collection is born on paper. On the latter the artist works on the computer in order to create depth, patterns and texture. His works are marked by intense and strong signs, alternating with geometric shapes.”Heavenly Bodies”, in particular, is strongly marked by a black stroke that impacts in an impetuous way on the basis of pastel colors chosen by the artist.Christopher, however, not only chooses to dedicate his art to pastel color but his palette also opens to dark tones as in “Night”. This strong use of chromaticism over the centuries has been experimented by artists becoming one of the most effective tools for making impact works. Among the theories most widely attributed to the use of color in art, we find that of spiritual meaning. For several artists, including Kandinskij or Annie Besant, colors influence our ways of being and convey spiritual meanings, as well as having a strong evocative value. Often, as in the case of Christopher, a single color is used in a complementary way to others in a wide field of painting. For those who adhered to this current of thought, commonly defined as Theosophy, color played a fundamental role, as it could move the soul.
“The true work of art is but a shadow of the divine perfection” (Michelangelo Buonarroti)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Christopher Rozitis
Heavenly Bodies
Christopher Rozitis
Night
Christopher Rozitis
Reality Realised
Claudia Werth “If the world were clear, art would not exist” (Albert Camus)
Claudia Werth is a German artist who has approached painting since childhood, dedicating herself to art, experimenting with styles and combining different materials. For the artist it is fascinating how it is possible to put on paper something that really exists and that strikes the human eye. Claudia creates abstract and well-defined works. A pictorial orientation visible in “silhouette 1,2,3”, whose images, of a bright color on a light background, seem the projection of the shadow of a solid figure. The absolute contrast of the colors, in a chromatic inconciliability, a violent delineation of the route, the wide formats, give this artist a remarkable power.The word silhouette comes from the name of Étienne de Silhouette (1709-1767), French finance minister under Louis XV who, according to some, cut portraits from the shadows as a pastime. The term indicates a portrait technique, executed by reproducing only the contours of the face, like a shadow, called profil à la silhouette.The roots of this method go back to Greek culture, but today it is mainly used to indicate black profiles on a white background, or vice versa. The silhouettes represented the fastest and cheapest method of making portraits and their purity and simplicity were particularly in vogue during neoclassicism.Throughout the nineteenth century, the century in which silhouettes reached the highest popularity, there were hundreds of artists who used this technique. Claudia, inspired by this method, reinterpreted through abstract culture, creates her works. The colors chosen for each subject are purple, green, red, softened by shades that outline the details such as eyes and mouth.
“Art attracts us only by what it reveals of our most secret self” (Jean-Luc Godard)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Claudia Werth
Silhouette 1
Claudia Werth
Silhouette 2
Claudia Werth
Silhouette 3
D.Q. Nguyen “Now nature, for us human beings, is deeper than on the surface, and hence the need to introduce into our bright vibrations, represented by reds and yellows, a sufficient amount of bluish colors to make us feel the air” (Paul Cézanne)
D.Q. Nguyen is an artist with Vietnamese roots capable of emphasizing his experiences, knowledge and emotions through creativity. After having learnt the main principles of art, from the use of proportions to the figurative representation of a picture, his aim is to capture every type of sign, shape, color and other elements that gradually emerge during the making of a work. A striking example is Vietnam’s Fields of Rice: his love for his native country is very vivid. What attracts the most the observer’s attention is the harmonious use of color and the respect for this immense nature. Just as in the artistic movement of Impressionism and especially in the work Mont Sainte-Victoire as seen in Bellevue by Paul Cézanne, D.Q. Nguyen plays with the use of different shades and light, merging these aspects with pure naturalism. Trying to capture the first impression of a given moment, the harvesting of rice, the artist creates a calibrated image of an immense panorama completely surrounded by silence and quietness. Moreover, he focuses on creating a sense of depth and solidity through extremely delicate tonal variations, achieving a pictorial balance. The framing of the painting has a horizontal format and underlines the extension of the landscape in front of the mountain, placed on the horizon. In the foreground appears the inhabitants of the place as they deal with their work; a thick vegetation is placed on the picture’s borders till to leave the space for the large valley rich of delicate nuances. Regardless of any element present, in this artwork the artist wanted to capture the link between perception, representation and knowledge, spreading a feeling of well-being and serenity.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
D.Q. Nguyen
Vietnam’s Fields Of Rice
Danette Landry
The theme of lines is a crucial point in the works of artist Danette Landry. These decisive and well-defined lines overlap one another, and they materialize on the canvas. Following the principles of geometry, each segment begins and ends at a certain point, crossing the entire painting vertically or horizontally the entire painting, expressing in this way her feelings, her past and her present life. The abstract and minimalist figurative language adopted by the artist recalls the works of previous artists such as Mark Rothko and Kazimir Malevič. Danette expresses herself through a relationship between color creations, characterized by shaded color compositions, involving the viewer to the extent that one is captured and bewitched by the painting. Her painting raises immaterial atmospheres through the use of color and light. This does not mean that the artist has managed to go beyond three-dimensionality, shaping a tonalism no longer linked to the naturalistic representation of the elements. In this way, there is a great force that comes from color, capable of arousing visual and sensorial perceptions. As in Aucune Psychologie, where the multitude of lines intertwine among them. Blue and azure merge together and alternate as in a dynamic and continuous sequence. At the center of the work there is a single line which, like a horizon, has the task of separating the sky and the earth, as well as the celestial and spiritual world from the material one. While in Cinglée, the visual density burns with deep light. This luminous energy recreates a succession of dashes that amplify along the lower and upper edges of the canvas. The simultaneous vibrations give rise to a reality that shakes the observer’s soul and frees his moods. Finally, in Les Voisins this red color materializes, which has deeply marked the artist since her childhood, leaving an indelible mark. So mysterious and explosive, this shade is distributed on the canvas like a plain and endlessly sinks into unknown depths. There is a chromaticism capable of creating a passage from the inside to the outside, a visual and emotional path. The public is captured by the immensity of these artworks, as well as by the geometry of the image and the homogeneity of the color, which induce the human mind to take a spiritual journey in Danette’s art.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Danette Landry
Aucune Psychologie
Danette Landry
CinglĂŠe
Danette Landry
Les Voisins
Daniela Volpi “The aim of art is to represent not the outward appearance of things, but their inward significance” (Aristotele)
Daniela Volpi, is an Italian artist who has transformed her passion for art, learned from an early age in the atelier of her uncle, in work. Her continuous artistic research leads her to investigate the different facets of femininity, including sensuality. As a primordial archetype and abstract concept, the female figure is one of the first signs traced by human hands. Since then, the transposition into effigy of the woman has characterized every historical period. Goddess and Madonna, mother and queen, lover and object of pleasure, naked or dressed in high fashion. In each of these manifold aspects it has given body to the canons of beauty, seductive reflections of earthly and otherworldly harmonies and pleasures. It must therefore be recognized that, painted and sculpted, female images have accompanied all the phases of our civilization. Direct are the consequences in art: the artistic movements of the beginning of the century that embrace this unprecedented field of exploration treasure it. For centuries women-artists have been very few, although individually authors of extraordinary testimonies, not surprisingly often engaged in painting female subjects. Lavinia Fontana, Artemisia Gentileschi, Frida Kahlo. Among the extremes in which the inspiration that revolves around the woman continuously oscillates, Sofia, created by Daniela Volpi, is a deep work, whose look represents a material osmosis with light and color. The intensity with which she approaches the “truth” of the face, the delicacy of the incarnation make Sofia almost real, as if she emerged from the canvas to dialogue with the observer. A work that represents the result of the continuous interaction between what the artist feels inside and what is revealed on the canvas. In a continuous dialogue, which makes an emotion grow and evolve, giving it shape and color.
“To be an artist is to believe in life” (Henry Moore)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Daniela Volpi
Sofia
David Jason Mendoza “A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art” (Paul Cezanne)
David Jason Mendoza is a Filipino artist, who during the lockdown period undertook his own journey in the world of painting. He began painting from scratch, learning techniques, experimenting with different materials and styles. Today, painting represents his way of expressing what he feels, his emotions, his passion and his joy of living. “Fredo”, “Portrait of African women” and “Flower world”, symbolize an instinctive, intense and vibrant art of colors, through which the artist with a strong and strong personality, external his freedom of expression. His love for bright and vivid colors is evident in his paintings. Warm, enveloping, violent and excessive colors, including red, intended as a hymn to joy and life, blue, used to indicate the depth of the artist as in “Portrait of African women”. A choice no doubt indicative to grasp its great originality. Tones of a less intense blue maneuver on Fredo’s face and almost disappear in “Flower world” to be replaced by colorful flowers. Three works with a touching tone that identify the versatility and dynamism of the artist. A varied palette, the one proposed by Mendoza who in the definition of his portraits is vaguely inspired by the somatic traits of the Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, one of the most beloved painters of the ‘900. In “Portrait of African Women” in particular, the protagonist woman of the work, is adorned with an abstract crown that is so reminiscent of the typical floral headdress worn by Frida. The artist, in the same work, also intends to emphasize the interest in African culture, so much so as to mention the symbols of ancient tribal communities on the face. A combination of different colors and cultures make David a curious artist, able to experiment and know, without ever stopping to look.
“The longer you look at an object, the more abstract it becomes, and, ironically, the more real” (Lucian Freud)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
David Jason Mendoza
Flower world
David Jason Mendoza
Fredo
David Jason Mendoza
Portrait of African women
David Ortiz Fuertes “Cities are like people. They have a name that distinguishes them and merits, defects and peculiarities that give them a precise character. But there is always something that escapes, fleeting and indefinable, so as to make them always new and unexpected every time you see them again” (Fabrizio Caramagna) Discovering and visiting a city is always a unique adventure and completely different from the others. Cities are the people you meet, the places you visit, the streets you walk along, the buildings you see along the way, the smells you smell but also the scents that delight you, the city is the lights that come on at night, but especially the colors that animate it. The Spanish artist David Ortiz Fuertes has dedicated this new collection of works to the cities, in fact each work has as its title the name of the city that inspired him to create it. And so, we have “Paris” in which the predominant color is red, because Paris is the city of love par excellence. The reliefs on the canvas, created with plaster paste, and the very dense color in some points give dynamism to the canvas. The strong colors also emphasize the strength and passion that characterize this city with a very long history as the epicenter of culture and art. In the work entitled “New York”, however, with the color David manages to convey the majesty, multiculturalism and energy of the city. In the work we can grasp the thousand colors and the thousand lights of Times Square, we see the strength and power of the skyscrapers of New York and above all we hear the thousands of people from the most varied cultures walking at their feet. This same multiculturalism, given by the countless shades of color on the canvas, is also seen in the work “London”. Here, however, David was able to render, through the choice of darker colors and more intense shades, that darker and duller atmosphere of London, but still full of vitality and energy. The magic of London is inexplicable. For the work “Milan” David was able to grasp how Milan really has a thousand shades. Milan is the city of opportunities and progress in Italy. In this work we see intense colors juxtaposed with more pale colors, in fact Milan is the city that puts all its energy into aiming for the future, but with its roots firmly in the millennial Italian culture and tradition. David dedicates perhaps the most impactful work in the collection to his city, “Madrid”. In this work, the vitality, energy and frenzy of this city literally explode on the canvas. Mediterranean colors with extremely intense shades invade the canvas and then explode with light in the center. This painting is able to represent, only through the colors, really Spain and especially the Spanish.
Art Curator Silvia Grassi
David Ortiz Fuertes
London
David Ortiz Fuertes
Madrid
David Ortiz Fuertes
Milan
David Ortiz Fuertes
New York
David Ortiz Fuertes
Paris
Diane English
The artist Diane lets herself be guided by her personal instinct and creativity, taking the path that leads to the discovery of the most intimate self. Giving life to artworks means expressing yourself, but above all it is an opportunity to discover yourself and bring out your skills and emotions. Diane succeeds well in this work, her work appears as a great intersection, where colors, shades, lights and shadows meet and sometimes collide. The viewer looks through those streets traced by colors, letting himself be carried away by a continuous succession of sensations: now calm, now passion, or even joy, but also melancholy. Diane’s artistic work is abstract, it brings to mind the great artistic genius of Pollock, so her style can be considered an abstract expressionism. In fact, Diane is inspired by impulse and instinct, just like the American painter Pollock. Definitely, Diane’s work becomes for the viewer a walk in the long colored paths of emotions.
The modern artist, it seems to me, works to express an inner world, in other words he expresses movement, energy and other inner forces (Jackson Pollock)
Art Curator Vanessa Viti
Diane English
Gridlock
Diane V. Radel
A deep link exists between people and nature, often forgotten, but when the people rediscover it they are pervaded by great wonder and strong emotion. Diane met the magic that resides in nature, treasuring this experience she created a series of works dedicated to it. “Solivagant” is a real journey, the viewer is there, together with the artist, with her he makes this experience. Traces of turtles on the sand become artworks, imprinted forever and made immortal by Diane’s sensitivity. Diane’s work is an explosion of life, vivid colors take up space and totally invade it, from the cold tones of blue to the warm ones of red. The artist’s work seems to be a zoom of a detail of an impressionist painting, colors that ripple and mix as in a work by Monet. At the same time it has abstract references as it is the spots of color that prevail, there is no representation of real forms, there are no signs that outline figures. Diane offers us the opportunity to get excited in front of the spectacle of nature, to get in touch with the magic that resides in it, to discover beauty.
Art Curator Vanessa Viti
Diane V. Radel
Solivagant
Dorothy Fagan
Dorothy Fagan resides in rural Virginia, in the United States of America. Her art is powerful. She uses painting to release energy, imprint feelings and emotions on canvas. She uses chakra–aligned palette that she applies on large canvases. After visiting France and Italy, she starts to follow intuitive nudges and dreams to explore the intersection between mankind and divine. Her art comes from her soul. Each canvas captures her emotions which she translates into art. All the more, as in the case of the Diptych “Blooming dream” in which she “feels pink”, she has the extraordinary sensation of embodying the color she is using. Fagan says she does not want to use the word “Diptych” to define this work, but prefers to interpret the two canvases as if they were twin souls which can be separated. Although the work can be defined as abstract, it is clear the artist’s intention to represent flowers. As “Blooming dream” suggests, they are moonflowers with the particular characteristic of blooming during the night and therefore, they symbolize the power of dreams in reality. Fagan’s art comes very close to the concept of the MADS “Dressme” exhibition as she interprets art as a “way of wrapping ourselves in the colors of light”. This light of which the artist speaks is visible in all her creations; a light that generates a mystical glow perceptible only by the most sensitive soul. In the “Garden of Graces” the goddess Iris guides us towards pure bliss, leading our gaze along the stream to the water lilies, a symbol of beauty arising from muddy waters. The theme of water lilies inevitably brings to mind the impressionist artist Monet, with whom Fagan shares the theme as well as the way and the style to reproduce it. Just like Monet Fagan paints the aquatic and vegetal setting relying on instinct and spontaneity with fluid and vibrant brushstrokes, apparently abstract, but that in their totality assume a well defined form. Fagan’s uniqueness is evident in the work composed of eight panels entitled “Coming to the river”, in which the artist, during its realization, often steps back from the canvases to admire them in their totality and to reconstruct reality on canvas, color by color. The entirety of the work is certainly important, but so is the singularity of each panel, nonetheless individually complete: the concept that Fagan wants to express is that even though we belong to something bigger, being alone does not mean not being complete. For this reason Fagan wants to divide “Coming to the River” into eight single panels and sell them as individual paintings to eight different buyers. Each of them will then become part of the “movement of crossing into this new world we are creating together”. The art of Fagan is therefore a form of art that comes from dreams, that enlightens our brightness and encourages viewers to second emotions and turn them into art.
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Dorothy Fagan
Blooming Dream
Dorothy Fagan
Coming to the River
Dorothy Fagan
Garden of Graces
Dragos Bagia “Art is an eternal dream, not only mine, but also of humanity. Without its participation, art would remain only a hidden dream. Art is an individual message destined to humanity�. (Sabin Balasa)
The Romanian artist Dragos Bagia places, within his works, an expressive necessity of a purely spiritualistic imprint, which leads him to a look for colors, lines and shapes as an external manifestation of inner contents and repeatedly involving the observer inside the paintings. He does not describe what he has seen but what he has felt, that is, he expresses his emotions by freeing himself from the need to reproduce objective reality, thus looking at the world with different eyes; moreover, through his creations, he represents what people avoid seeing only because they are invisible, such as fantasy, religion and esotericism. Recalling works by artists such as Kandinskij, Sabin Balasa and Frieda Harris, in Dragos every suggestion and inner thought takes shape on the canvas and gives life to an alchemy between colors that could be compared to a high-sounding encounter between different universes. Between the harmony of the lines and the predominant use of vivid colors, the paintings of this artist turn into a spiritual experience that address the emotionality of each individual. As if struck by a musical rhythm, the formal and chromatic relationships, as much as free at the extent to appear casual, seem to dance in unison with the observer’s emotions.
Dragos Bagia
Just as in Alessia, the individual details connect to the center of the work, which in turn relates to each element. All the colors are well defined and present, as if they emerged from that vivid core and they released all the vitality and essence of the painting. It is a hymn to the Art Curator’s work, representing the different tasks that are elaborated and carried out simultaneously. Moreover, it is an experience of visual and sensory perception, in which imagination, inspiration and intuition extend beyond the limits of nature, in order to merge it with the heart of art itself. While in Musafir, this typically Egyptian profile of a woman, the artist reproduces geometric and graphic elements, as he tries to free the soul of those who admire the artwork, and he invites him to discover what is beyond his limits. Through the combination of the color blue, Dragos wants to infuse quietness and serenity, illuminating the mind of the observer. In this way one comes into contact with an absolutely personal vision, not subjected to common stereotypes, where the individuality of one’s soul emerges.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Dragos Bagia
Alessia
Dragos Bagia
Musafir
Elena Chukhlebova “A photo is not taken, it is created” (Ansel Adams)
Elena’s work is a real creation, her photography is not just a shot, ideas, thoughts and feelings come to life in her work. “Twists and Turns” is the result of research and the expression of an opinion that has to do with life. If contemporary people have the need to spend most of their time making plans, the best moments of life, however, remain the twists, be they positive or negative, undoubtedly give us the ability to grow. Elena with her work wants to remind us of the beauty of the unexpected. Vortex, like small tornadoes, mix colors, like a stone thrown into the water creates textures and ripples, this is how Elena’s work appears, the gathering of energies. The viewer feels submerged, if on the one hand those colors wrapped around themselves create a moment of disturbance and gasp, on the other hand the warm tones reassure and those who find themselves in front of the work feel protected. An abstract work but with surreal echoes that refers to psychedelic art, both for the colors and for the deformation that has been applied to them, appears as the scenario of a dream, a true aesthetic of the unconscious. Elena’s artistic work is an opportunity for the viewer to get lost in the meander of memories, dreams and to be amazed and welcome the twists and turns in life.
Art Curator Vanessa Viti
Elena Chukhlebova
Twist and turns
Elisabete Monteiro
“Mandacaru” is painter’s Elisabete Monteiro artistic homage to Brazil, her home. Her abstract and figurative style is always attached to the materiality of her roots and life experiences, but also to her values and vision of the world. In fact, the artwork highlights her attitude to represents on canvas the precious encounter between body and spirit, materiality and immateriality, by deconstructing the shapes and composition of the real in order to convey a more universal meaning. “Mandacuru” is thus an intimate and creative interpretation of the real that, thanks to a predominant use of primary colors, offers multiple layers of joyful fruition to the viewers and feelings of primordial vitality, positivity and hope. Mandacuru symbolizes Elisabete’s attachment to Brazil: “a symbol of rebirth and resilience in the arid sertão, in Brazil. It grows in very high temperatures and does not depend on rain to flourish, which according to a local legend, will come with the so desired rain”. The rainbow, coming after a regenerating rain, symbolizes a message of hope that looks at the beauty and aesthetic side of life and chromatically for the palette of that natural landscape: the yellow desert, the green plant, the blue sky, the red warmth. Elisabete’s work is a poetic investigation, faithful mirror of her existence, made of travels, provenience and affinity with the lands, reflection and freedom as a propulsive force for shaping and communicating her messages.
Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni
Elisabete Monteiro
Mandacaru
Francesca Rottmann “Fine art is that in which the hand, the head, and the heart of man go together” (John Ruskin)
Francesca Rottmann is an artist of Italian origin, who lives and works in Eastern Switzerland. Today, as a mature and independent woman, she dedicates herself to her free spirit and brings in her works the emotions experienced. Her artistic vein, decidedly expressionistic, makes her works very interesting from a stylistic point of view. Expressionism is a form of direct art that uses the use of sign and color to make the emotional and spiritual experience of reality. In doing so, the artist paints what she feels, defining this as a more “spiritual” technique. In this form of art, born in France around 1905, the deformation of some aspects of reality prevails, so as to accentuate its emotional and expressive values. “Inside Out”, created by Francesca Rottmann, is a stylistically complex work, characterized by a strong chromatic violence and caricatural deformation. Warm colors prevail on this canvas, especially yellow and its shades. Generally this color represents light. Goethe himself said: «yellow is the color closest to light». For this reason, it has become the shade that indicates the sun, its rays and even its heat. All this has led yellow to be a notoriously positive shade, with its brightness in stark contrast to the darkness of other colors. Widening the psychological analysis, yellow is not only a symbol of light “concretely understood”, but also the color of the soul”. On the mind, it also infuses security and energy, showing itself able to stimulate inner capacities. Color, therefore, is considered a fundamental element in order to read a work of art in its deepest interiority. A means through which the artist communicates her ego to the viewer, exposing her soul and entering into close connection with him.
“Colour is my day-long obsession, joy and torment” (Claude Monet)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Francesca Rottmann
Inside out
Francisco Pla Martos “Life beats down and crushes the soul and art reminds you that you have one” (Stella Adler)
Francisco Pla Martos is an artist and a mathematician. He was born in Madrid and carries on his activity self-taught. He has a very active artistic life and is always in contact with artists from all over the world. He is very interested in geometry and perspective, but loves to experiment with different styles to reinterpret in a contemporary way. Its goal is to provide the viewer with fantastic atmospheres, of strong visual impact. Among contemporary artists, the idea of explicitly using numbers to build their own works has become widespread. The relationship between art and mathematics does not appear at first glance evident, but the interweaving and the convergences between these two spheres of human culture have been numerous, profound and fruitful throughout history, so much so as to define the latter as an art motivated by beauty. In ancient Greece the model of the human figure was the God Apollo, who represented the ideal beauty. It was beautiful because his body conformed to certain laws of mathematics. Little by little, in the sixth century , the first canon was developed dictated by true geometric laws, the Doríforo of Policleto, which is still taken as an ideal model by most artists. Ideas about the perfect proportions of the human body have been studied and reinterpreted since the Renaissance to the present day. Looking at Francisco’s “Adan,” one cannot fail to pay attention to the perfect bodily delineation of the subject. Sculptural buttocks and biceps that embody a new hope for humanity, capable of giving life to a new future, where men and women can live without prejudice, free and full of love. In this work it is evident that the artist needs to represent the origin of human existence and the world that surrounds it. A more decisive theme in “Within the origin” and later in “Destination on course”; two stylistically different works, one abstract and one more figurative, that conceptually deepen the theme of connections, according to which nothing is random and each action unconditionally writes the destiny of every human being. His contemporary, figurative and abstract style is therefore intended to convey passion and love for life, in which everything has a meaning and each of us a precise destination.
“To send light into the darkness of men’s hearts – such is the duty of the artist” (Robert Schumann)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Francisco Pla Martos
Adan 2.0
Francisco Pla Martos
Destination on course
Francisco Pla Martos
Within the origin
Frédérique Samama
Frédérique Samama is a French painter based in Paris. Her dedication to drawings and paintings was consecrated by her studies in applied arts and by a key encounter with an artist who gave her boost and motivation to deepen, challenge and explore her skills and sensibility in the creative world. The artistic dimension of the painter is always connected to a reflection with her surrounding reality, always attached to a social and moral terrain. In fact, the nerve centre of Frédérique’s work is the human figure, the individual in all its spectrum and social facets: politicians, beggars, elderly, always conveying to the audience messages dear to the artist. “Amana”, “Idian” and “Untitled” represent together a triptych of gazes, from different old men and women living in the streets of Paris. “Protégeons-les!” writes the artist, aiming at raising awareness on those fragile lives, the most vulnerable of the COVID-19 pandemic, often neglected because of their social status. In all these three artworks, the element of efficacy and empathy is technically obtained by the black and marked contour of the gazes, almost looking for an eye-contact with the viewer. The eyes per se evoke an immediate connection with the soul, as they can mirror the inner dynamics thanks to their intensity. “Frédérique strives to transcribe the soul through expression rather than morphological resemblance. And uses intense black, heavily traced or deposited more lightly to bring out the essential that characterizes us without ever making the outline of the whole.
Frédérique Samama
Thus, without limit, everyone has a different perception and finds there their level of emotional reading”. Even “Granny Puretta” is the representation of an old woman, but here the meaning is different: Granny Puretta is an iconic woman living in the streets of Havana, often fetishized by the tourist’s gaze for her look and endurance to live an unconventional life-style. Frédérique instead decided to paint an artistic homage to the woman, this time extending the focus on all her figures framed by a soft puzzle of green leaves, which highlights even more the pose and the integrity of the woman, who seems to be not looking for empathy with her viewers. “Bubble Trump” represents another artistic provocation as the American politician is painted while chewing a bubble gum. The gum serves as an expedient to humanize the man, making Trump even more an “everyday man” and attributing him a childish connotation. The artistic invective against the politician aims at deconstructing his “serious wannabe figure” through a colourful portrait able to give him a silly and ironic connotation. “The Scream” is perhaps a self-portrait of the artist and overall the fil rouge of her poetics: an urgency to scream on canvas all her artistic impulses, recalling both the cathartic quality of art and the potential of art itself, as a powerful means to spread, while create, a personal vision of the world.
Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni
Frédérique Samama
Amana
Frédérique Samama
Bubble Trump
Frédérique Samama
Granny Puretta
Frédérique Samama
Idian
Frédérique Samama
The Scream
Frédérique Samama
Untitled
Gabriele Gracine
Gabriele Gracine is an artist who uses the digital means to extract her visions from her imagination. Her artworks are defined as “freeform digital art�: using a touch-screen device and different digital editing applications, Gabriele materializes authentic artworks on the screen, which are the result of a convergence of her internal and external influences. She is constantly looking for tools that can best express a perceptive process that aims at infinity. She emphasizes and connects numerous elements, such as form, movement, light, color and energy that all communicate to the observer. In her visual language she extrapolates her feelings with the aim of sharing it to the world and in order to trigger a sensory and personal development to the observer. As in Blue Flows, the artist represents figures and dynamic lines in constant movement. Their continuous swaying gives rise to other new forms that connect with each other. Fundamental is the use of colors, which transmit a sense of calm and serenity. Those who admire this artwork, after a moment of disorientation, can let themselves go completely and join the energetic flow released by all these colors, including blue and azure. While in Duo the research on color is much more intense. The artwork radiates enveloping light, succeeding in highlighting a harmonious dynamism. The beam of light emanates every type of figure and gives life to the numerous nuances that, in a rich and complete chromatism, allow to grasp even the areas of shadow in a suggestive atmosphere that leads inside the work. Finally, in Repartee, this vital image breaks itself up in every direction, playing on the visual superimposition of changing surfaces, both in shades and shapes, creating a three-dimensional optical effect. The whole captures the viewer’s gaze in this continuous perspective illusion, which derives from a vision projected and multiplied in depth, until it reaches a dimension floating in space and time. Gabriele Gracine offers the opportunity to immerse and contemplate a new dimensional reality, helping the viewer to internalize a new ideology of imagination.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Gabriele Gracine
Blue Flows
Gabriele Gracine
Duo
Gabriele Gracine
Repartee
Gerrit Hodemacher “Art does not reproduce what we see. It makes us see.” (Paul Klee)
Gerrit Hodemacher is a German artist who was born in Hanover. His work concentrates on gestural freedom and it is characterised by an immediate and instinctive form of interaction with both canvas and the paint, in order to move the viewer’s eye away from preconceived notions on what art should be. Gerrit is able to create a deep connection between an internal and external dimension, between the self and the artworks where this dimension is becoming real and he’s investigating feelings and senses. His works are very powerful because they are able to give the exact same idea the artist had in his mind. We see a woman in a white dress. In the artist’s imagination she stands on the beach with a view of the vast sea with her thoughts lost on the horizon. She is so immersed in the hope of a positive future that her body no longer appears to be present.
Gerrit Hodemacher
That is why she has no obvious arms and legs. Only covered by her innocence (white dress) and her negative experiences (black hat) she is alone on the beautiful shore. A sudden gust of wind could make the black hat fly away but she keeps hold of it, she doesn’t let it go. In the second painting “Mailand Thug� the artist says that every beautiful story has a bad start. These evil beginnings have often left a terrible end before. It could be that something was taken away, someone lied to, someone illegally enriched, struck someone. Many things that are also assigned to gangsters. With this approach the artist is able to achieve a more immediate meaning of creating art, something that is similar to an unorganised powerful explosion of energy, a moment of liberation from the aesthetic moral and norm.
Art Curator Erika Gravante
Gerrit Hodemacher
Thug
Gerrit Hodemacher
White Dress
Giada Lanz “The emotions are sometimes so strong that I work without knowing it. The strokes come like speech” (Vincent Van Gogh)
Giada Lanz, has Finnish origins and was born in Locarno, Switzerland. She attended the Academy of Art and Design in Finland and after returning to Switzerland, began to carry out restoration work on historical monuments. The passion for painting had a strong impact in her life, since that time she began to express her moods through art. Through the use of fluid painting, in particular acrylic and its various facets, each of her works reflects emotions and feelings in every detail. For her, art is not only a way of life but a real therapy for the soul and the heart. Fluid Art is a new contemporary art current that is spreading more and more in Italy. In practice, it is an innovative painting method that uses casting acrylic paint to create free forms of organic painting with rich and vibrant colors. Every mixed tone has its density. This causes the colors to move towards each other and to create models of cells of different sizes when they meet. They are unpredictable and give every work of art its charm. Giada, far from the preset patterns of figurative painting, gives herself completely to the art of the senses, listening to the gestures of painting. This, conceptually, could be called abstract art, but it is not so. It is an art without net signs, as its instability is nourished by changing and variable lines. A psychedelic masterpiece, made of a thousand reddish shades dampened by a decided black and white, in which the observer could get lost for hours. The combination of cold colors, chosen by the artist for the realization of her works, conveys uncontrollable emotions. Calm, rest, contemplation and a veil of melancholy are hidden behind these spots of color. Even the viola is very used by the artist and indicates a strong sense of royalty and decorum.
“There are painters who transform the sun into a yellow spot, but there are others who, thanks to their art and intelligence, transform a yellow spot into the sun” (Pablo Picasso)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Giada Lanz
Heart Beats Slow
Giada Lanz
Let The Wind Touch My Soul
Giada Lanz
My Mind Spinning Around
Gro Heining
The Norwegian artist Gro Heining works with many artistic techniques, from acrylic to oil pastels, watercolors to collages, both on paper and on canvas. All this unleashes her imagination, managing to forge a close bond with anyone who admires her artwork. Other than her native country, other fundamental places for her artistic experience are Santa Fe (New Mexico) and Andalusia (Spain): through different and colorful cultural scenarios, the artist returns to the principles of her own creativity, dealing with different light shades and landscapes. Nature is her first source of inspiration and meditation: painting connects to the elements and to the rhythm of nature, weaving hopes, dreams and visions into a picture. Exactly as in Tree of Life, where the immense tree and all the birds symbolize and emphasize at best the natural environment, which is pure and delicate. Elegant, majestic, luxuriant: this tree is a recurring symbol from ancient mythology: considered as a source of life, a place from which every living being originates. The three elements that make it up represent a different aspect of existence itself: the roots, firmly rooted, reach the soul of each individual; the trunk, solid and resistant, is supported by numerous branches; finally, the leaves and the precious fruits embody the people who accompany us on our journey. All this is replaced by the artist through the birds and their continuous flight, thus covering every single part of the tree, as it feeds all forms of life on the Earth. These birds, symbols of elevation and peace, represent our souls, motivating us to rise above daily life’s concerns, until we get to know the beauty of a spiritual kingdom. Crucial is the use of the color blue in all its nuances: it enhances the religious aspect of the subject, as well as designating a sense of royalty and sacredness. Moreover, the artwork reveals a sense of inner security, trust and relaxation, both physical and mental, where calm and order bring the observer’s journey through his own introspection.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Gro Heining
Tree of life
Harrison C. Ernst
Harrison C. Ernst is a young Finnish American artist who draws inspiration from two main themes: respect for the “process”, which is a concept based on a therapeutic flow of ideas, and the faculty of having a sense of rooted knowledge, namely the impression that a context must exist beyond the images presented. He manages to create a miscellany of ideas, between what he has learned during his course of studies in art history, cultural and religious subjects: in this way, he gives rise to a cohesion of languages, till to reach a personal artistic style. Imagination is crucial, through which concepts and inspirations are developed, to be recalled completing a work of art in the best possible way. One example is undoubtedly Pursuit of Sample Size: through a grey and totally neutral background, a series of mannequins emerge in the distance that perfectly blend themselves with the surrounding atmosphere. The only source of light and color is given by the red heart sewn onto each character. As if they were in a factory, the mannequins follow one another, until the one placed in the foreground loses its only source of life, before it finally turns into a finished object. With these subjects, which can be traced back to Giorgio De Chirico’s metaphysical painting, the so-called “loneliness of the mannequin” is emphasized, considered as a figure beyond human. Their nature is always suspended between time, being and not being. They are recognized as characters in human history and, for this reason, they are composed of matter as they were solid and polished statues immersed in an imaginary space. And just as in De Chirico’s concept of metaphysics, this subject returns as a dumb and disoriented, as a shadow without body. In their figures we can find the basic notions of the academic design of the human body, when we trace the shapes which will later serve as guidelines, before adding an individual characterization. The mannequin would therefore be the materialization of a sketch, the human figure reduced to its original form, to its essence, stripped of the inner identity. Through this work the artist re-elaborates in an original way the previous metaphysical painting and gives a very particular symbolic meaning to these objects, including them in a dreamlike and surreal space.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Harrison C. Ernst
Pursuit of Sample Size
Harry T. Burleigh
The figure of the naked (or of a veiled woman) has always had a prominent place in the history of art, a privileged treasure chest full of feelings and emotions from which representing new suggestions. Every work of art made by previous artists (such as Botticelli, Titian or Courbet) has allowed the observer to enter into the magical world of women, reversing and interpreting its reality, by emphasizing, through chromatic skills, carefree and youthful beauty, just as in the oil on canvas A Fetching Breeze of Harry T. Burleigh. In this painting shines the willingness of this contemporary artist to start painting without imagining the final result of an artwork, a process which results to be stimulating and relaxing. After having carefully selected the pigments and shades, he starts drawing some strokes on the canvas. Before continuing, the artist feels the need to pause himself to admire the work at its best, before it can materialize to his eyes. In this way, he understands where to apply the next brushstroke, until the image begins to take shape. The woman depicted, who is standing and in profile, seems to be in movement: she is about to turn towards the viewer to make him observe her veiled and so harmonious body, while a light spring breeze touches her, and it slightly waives and delicate hair. The delicacy of the skin can be painted with any shade; it is remarkable to note the representation of the young woman partially dressed, because through this detail, those who admire the work can remain more attracted by the transparency of the dress rather than by the very idea of nudity. To modestly mask the girl’s movements the artist uses the synergy of these warm and neutral nuances, the draping of the dress, up to the thick hair. The observer remains bewitched and intrigued by the graceful movements of the woman, triggering a multidimensional and sensorial effect.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Harry T. Burleigh
A Fetching Breeze
Helena Kaeris “All my paintings have a story to tell and when they are all placed together they tell a full story involving the workings of my heart” (Helena Kaeris)
This is how Helena Kaeris, a self-taught artist from Colorado (USA), defines her art. Her ability to involve the observer is incredibly unique, she captures the eyes and soul of the beholder. The work we see is like a painted poem. Her colorful abstraction accompanies us in the dreams that the artist wanted to represent. An intense unconscious journey that embraces the viewer. In the work “Perfectly Imperfect”, the artist manages to express the concept of perfection in the imperfection of life, opening the door in a natural way to her most hidden self, giving access to the deepest and highest part of herself. Through an acrylic painting she manages to create a “landscape of the heart”, real panoramas but painted as dreamlike, representing a real act of love for her land.
“Painting is stronger than me; it forces me to paint as it wants” (Pablo Picasso)
Art Curator Maria Cristina Bianchi
Helena Kaeris
Perfectly Imperfect
Henna Pajulammi “To draw, you must close your eyes and sing” (Pablo Picasso)
Henna Pajulammi is a self-taught Finnish artist. Painting remains one of her greatest passions even if in life she is a lawyer. Her work helps Henna think outside the box and the law gives her the inspiration and thrust she needs as an artist. During motherhood, the artistic energy, which she always knew she had, was freed. The colors exploded with an uncontrollable force and found an incredible joy when she finally had the time and space to let her creativity flow. So she started painting and hasn’t stopped since. Her inspiration comes from the contrasts she faces in everyday life. She paints abstract paintings with acrylics and mixed techniques. This gives her freedom and enough material to allow her imagination to emerge. She often begins her work with an idea that gradually changes according to the colors she chooses and that create energy, playing together and outside of each other. Henna’s creativity lies in the tones, voices and contrasts. Her paintings propose a cheerful palette that radiates the viewer transmitting positivity and love. “We are all connected” is a work of a disarming chromatic intensity. Each box has its own reason to be and perfectly joins with others, providing a homogenous vision. The geometric patterns designed by the artist are the subject of each panel that ideally refer to an experience, a moment, an important person for Henna. Each of it as a puzzle fits perfectly with the next piece and with the next one again and forms the picture. There’s always a story behind the painting and every color or geometry communicates something. Henna as an artist is, in fact, able to bring the different shades of humanity in her works from a completely unexpected perspective and to be discovered.
“It is not the language of painters but the language of nature which one should listen to, the feeling for the things themselves, for reality, is more important than the feeling for pictures” (Vincent Van Gogh)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Henna Pajulammi
We all are connected
Ilya Savelyev “What is now proved was once only imagined” (William Blake)
Ilya “why me?” Savelyev has shown interest in art since childhood. At the age of 14 he started working in the field of street art, but over time his passion became contemporary art, especially abstract art. In the figurative arts the concept of abstract takes on the meaning of «not real». Abstract art is therefore what does not represent reality, creating images that do not belong to the common visual experience. It seeks to express its contents in the free composition of lines, shapes and colours. The abstract, in this sense, was born at the beginning of this century. But it was already present on the oldest Greek vessels, or on medieval miniatures, just to give a few examples. In these cases, however, this figure had only one precise aesthetic purpose: that of decoration. The abstract art of this century, that is the one born with Kandinskij, has, instead, a completely different end: that of communication. He wants to express contents and meanings, without borrowing anything from existing images. From this moment on, the birth of abstractionism has the strength to unleash the imagination of many artists, who feel totally disconnected from the rules and conventions hitherto imposed on artistic work, like Ilya himself. The artist in the realization of his work focuses in particular on harmonious research. It is a work that stylistically is divided into two parts, whose sharp cut is rendered by the two colors in perfect contrast. The red at the top and the black at the bottom. The artist in the work “Zaragoza” chooses to proceed in a totally autonomous way with respect to the real forms, to search and find forms and images entirely unpublished, different from those that already exist and to give the viewer the task of freely interpreting what he is looking at.
“Vision is the art of seeing things invisible” (Jonathan Swift)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Ilya Savelyev
Zaragoza
Inesa Antanauskiene “The unconscious is a very important side of modern art and I think the unconscious drives do mean a lot in looking at paintings” (Jackson Pollock)
When art merges with poetry, the figure of Inesa Antanauskiene emerges. Lithuanian artist, Inesa, focuses on the use of acrylic colors, creating through decisive brushstrokes and strong moving shapes that seem to come out of the painting itself. The viewer is involved in the explosions of color that the artist manages to create through vertical and horizontal lines that pierce the canvas. In the work “Charmante”, Inesa represents an elegant bird with its head bowed that seems to be about to begin a sublime dance, a sinuous movement that sees its head stand out represented by the bright red color against the gray background. For Inesa, birds are true ambassadors of human feelings and these messages will be transported to other people in need of love and hope. Her paintings are nothing more than the transfer onto the canvas of what she sees: the beauty, the unique shapes and colors of nature. Nature is at the center of Inesa’s attention, which re-elaborates it in a completely personalized symbolist key.
“So then my brush goes between my fingers as if it were a bow on the violin, and absolutely for my pleasure” (Vincent Van Gogh)
Art Curator Maria Cristina Bianchi
Inesa Antanauskiene
Charmante
Jane Gottlieb
With her vibrant works, Jane Gottlieb introduces us to a Technicolor world of craziness and falsehood. Women with perfect and toothy grin and eyeless mannequins populate her works, both screaming emptiness under their surface. A world of vacuity, of no substance under the appearance. Gottlieb offers us a distorted reality, an artificial model of perfection and carefully crafted happiness. Nothing in her works could exist if not on paper. The colours shine with a saturation brought to the extreme, so vivid and fake in brightness that only digital can achieve. Capturing with force our attention, they end up confusing us with their excess. This is where otherwise normal poodles assume coloration they would never have in nature. As such, this fashion cut all its ties with anything that may still be natural. Taking from the psychedelic of the late Sixties and Seventies, it throws us into a crazy wonderland filled with tens of faceless copies. If fashion can give the chance to truly express the self, it can also force to hide to fit into the mass of thousands fashion-victims that by following the same model believe to satisfy a desperate need for acceptance and self-worth. Everyone obeys to the same rule and thus everyone is the same, a constant copy of the original idea. Far from enhancing the personality of each, different person, this fashion rules everyone into the same category, so much nothing else matters if not the dresses the mannequins are wearing. Eventually, even the dresses blend with an unreal background of geometric shape, underlying once more the inevitable end of absolute blend into a single mass. Impossible then to ignore the clear homage to Andy Warhol style, with Gottlieb’s painted dogs that we can easily imagine having just jumped out from one of Warhol’s serigraphy.
Art Curator Guendalina Cilli
Jane Gottlieb
Doris Makes My Day
Jane Gottlieb
Mannequins with Blue
Jane Gottlieb
Mannequins with Orange
Janin Walter “Without atmosphere a painting is nothing“ (Rembrandt)
Janin Walter is an artist who lives and works in Berlin. After graduating in Architecture at TU Berlin, she has worked for several years as an urban designer in Holland and Switzerland, focusing especially on the research for new artistic methods to visualise spaces. In parallel she has also cultivated and developed her passion for painting and she is now part of the artist collective STUDIO BAUSTELLE. Janin’s creative investigation involves the impact that urban spaces and architecture have on humans and their perception of places. Every site, being it a narrow street or a wide ocean, a meadow or a particular structure, affects us and makes us feel in a certain way. The artist, through her glowing and vibrant canvases, explores the relationship between the external appearance and atmosphere belonging to a space and how each one of us perceives those, according to the peculiar experiences and feelings stored in our memory system. In other terms, the idea is to evaluate and express the influence that the external has on the internal dynamics.
Janin Walter
As a part of this process, Janin uses her own body by exposing herself to various locations and spots and by using meditation and intuition in order to connect with the spirit and the essence of them. This allows her to spontaneously interact with the things that surround her and to transfer these impressions and body reactions on a painting. The result, which often comes after months of adding new layers and elements, are dreamy and captivating abstract compositions made of instinctive and extemporary brush strokes, where the emotional and epidermic sensations become the key aspect. The intuitive painting action represents a criticism towards this rationally driven society in which every decision has to be made analytically to guarantee an effective outcome. The message that Janin’s works deliver is that our everyday challenge, as human beings, is to trust rather than trying to control everything and that life is a complex multifaceted universe determined by forces that sometimes cannot be dominated.
Art Curator Erika Gravante
Janin Walter
Immunity
Janin Walter
You deserve it
Jessica D Perez Visual artist Jessica D Perez, throughout her cosmopolitan upbringing and academic formation, keeps the constant of reflecting on her surroundings through her artistic nuance. This time, she dives into her work for a disciplinary project, choosing to canalize her creative flow into an ethical reflection and social homage. The ongoing pandemic from which the world has been challenging and shaking is the nerve centre of her new piece “Through Their Eyes”. “This composition is dedicated to all of the frontline, essential workers and witnesses of the COVID-19 Global pandemic. It is a tribute to The Mask Project, Art book being designed and built to honor everyone who does their part to keep each other safe. Images of real people in their masks, everyday lives or at work, showing the vibrancy of their eyes and documenting their stories, this project highlights the efforts of everyone” stated Jessica. A real artistic product often comes from an urgency to “say something”, and as the health urgency is occurring, Jessica, through her creative means and sensibility, feels the need to state something about it. Her artwork corroborates the primordial role of art in representing one of the most impactful mirrors for the human being’s social and historical context. “Through Their Eyes” is an honourable artistic piece that has the strength to sensibilize its spectators and to prompt a reflection on the current human condition. And this reflection is viscerally strengthened by those faces from different ethnic groups and ages, signifying the extensiveness of the same battle that synergically has been fighting worldwide. All the health workers at the same front, facing the same giant, invisible enemy. Moreover, the way in which gazes are composed could be compared to the cinematic technique of “camera look”, an almost interactive expedient that functions as a sympathetic element to involve viewers in the painting’s meaning. An unavoidable “eye contact” able to penetrate into our consciousnesses and that allow fantasizing about the stories and the daily efforts of the represented subjects. Chromatically, the choice of the light blue background serves precisely to stimulate a semiotics of meditation, receptive listening and introspective reflection. A light blue that at the same time is melted up with delicate shades of colours: green, pink, violet, reinforcing the multicultural and global aspect of our pandemic battle. “Dress me” with a mask states Jessica’s painting, a mask as the most precious protection we can use, symbol of a dystopian era we are all living in. “The world has witnessed deaths and the numbers keep going up, wearing a mask is a way to limit the spread of the virus”. The project made by Jessica is not merely a piece of art but it goes courageously further, going beyond the canvas dimension: “The project aims to provide an additional stream of financial encouragement to covid relief funds, starting with the pricing of this piece. As each death is counted, one cent is added to the price of the original artwork. With the sale of the artwork, 50% will go toward covid relief fund donations”.
Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni
Jessica D Perez
Through Their Eyes
Johann Neumayer
Johann Neumayer is an Austrian artist who realizes his works through the software Rhino 5: his projects fully follow contemporary vision of art. Digitally made, its three-dimensional models lend themselves to be 3D printed and become real sculptures. His projects start from cubes and then the emotions and intuitions allow the artist to create stunning images. Human figure is central to Neumayer’s work, in particular the artist focuses on the woman’s figure. His series “The space and dream imaging machine” features the female image: in the number 1 “Black” and in the number 3 “Blue”, the same two women meet and, for this reason, the two works can be interpreted as one the continuation of the other. In “N1-Black” the silhouettes of two women back to back blending together into one entity. This is evident in observing the rendering of the project, in which clearly distinguish two figures that will then unite in one form, merging with each other and thus remaining forever. This work is particularly suitable for 3D printing as the feeling of immobility is immediate, despite the two-dimensional view given by the screenshot. In “N3Blue” the same two women meet in a kiss. A set of lines and dots make up the two faces, made of a metallic blue that alludes to a smooth and cold material, on which any liquid would slip away without difficulty, just as they would with external judgments and criticism. The message of love and freedom of these two works is evident. A kind of love that knows no genre. They want to tell us that “Love is love”. In work “N2-Red” the subject and the framing are totally different. Human figures walk in the clouds. They seem to be floating in the air thanks to the shot set by the artist below their feet. The undisputed protagonists are red boots with heels. The choice of red color accentuates the message of sensuality that is perceived by observing the work and the men on their backs bring out the man’s feeling of powerlessness in the face of female strength. Neumayer’s works are the result of a collaboration between the artist, the designer, the software and the printer that become part of a single system, indispensable for the realization of the work.
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Johann Neumayer
N1 black - The space and dream imaging machine
Johann Neumayer
N2 red - The space and dream imaging machine
Johann Neumayer
N3 blue - The space and dream imaging machine
John Bacon
Abstract art is able to give a concrete representation of human emotions and feelings. The American artist John Bacon has found precisely in abstract expression the means to communicate himself and what he wants to convey through his unique art. In fact, he creates works of art in which colors, lines and shapes interact with the viewer. The works chosen for this event almost seem to tell a story. In the work entitled “Getting Together” the chromatic choice of colors with soft shades and the sinuosity of the shapes, that characterize John’s works, tells the sense of serenity and joy of being in the company of the person you love. That love and well-being that almost lead to melting completely in the other person, as we see in the work entitled “Loving You”. Here the two faces and the two bodies of the lovers really seem to merge in colors and lines. However, the faces just mentioned are able, especially through smiling eyes and lips, to express the joy of loving each other. Then the two works “That Which Connects Us” and “That Which Separates Us”, as the titles themselves suggest, contrast significantly in the choice of colors and composition. In the first we can observe numerous lines that intersect with each other, very intense and sometimes even dark colors, because what connects two people is what unites them more and more and makes their relationship more and more intense. Instead the second work has much brighter colors but clearly separated from each other in large forms, because often what separates people is what stands out most at first glance and that divides them inexorably. The last work is instead a truly immediate representation of a state of mind of restlessness and disorientation, “Distraught”. John manages to depict on the canvas the state of chaos and disturbance that being upset by a situation or event causes within each of us. The observer cannot help but identify with what he sees, he also is shocked by the relevance to the reality of the emotion.
“The abstract has always been more impressive to me than the concrete” (Fernando Pessoa)
Art Curator Silvia Grassi
John Bacon
Distraught
John Bacon
Getting Together
John Bacon
Loving You
John Bacon
That Which Connects Us
John Bacon
That Which Separates Us
John Moro “The Mediator Between the Head and the Hands Must Be the Heart.” (from the film Metropolis)
Maschinenmensch is a pictorial version of the female android from the film Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang. German expressionist drama dated 1927, Metropolis is set in a futuristic urban dystopia and follows the attempts of the main characters Freder and Maria to free the working-class confined underground thanks to the invention of a human-looking android. Just like the android of the film, Maschinenmensch by John Moro contains in itself the two natures, the masculine one (as it implies the title, literally “man-machine”) and the feminine one, expressed by a warm and bright palette. This original work on paper takes possession of the minimalist design of film, combining it with a use of the colour intentionally reminding the artistic Avantgarde, one of the main inspirational sources of the artist. Inspired by the film message, John invites us to better understand ourselves and our wish of freedom, making us aware of the importance of life and especially of art in our lives.
Art Curator Marta Graziano
John Moro
Maschinenmensch
Kamonpoi “Everything you can imagine is real” (Pablo Picasso)
Kamonpoi, is a Japanese artist whose name comes from a nickname of when he was a student. His artistic research comes to life from a technique widely used in art, collage. The term comes from the French coller, gluing, and consists in producing works on different supports -, with materials such as paper, first of all - of all types. This possible material multitude is, in fact, glued. The process gives body to compositions of various nature and unplugged, to use a term dear to musicians that makes the concept perfectly. The rendering of the final image can be both figurative and abstract. The genesis of the collage has distant origins but they were the protagonists of visual experimentation that, at the beginning of the twentieth century, resumed the collage inserting it in its expressive language: Braque and Picasso, the Futurists, Dada, Bauhaus, the Russian Avant-garde. Some, also welcomed Photography as a weapon not only creative but also social denunciation. Kamonpoi, perfectly in line with this thought, draws on notebooks, notebooks, envelopes, food boxes, paper bags, post-it. Use ballpoint pens, fluorescent markers, colored pencils. His collage works are characterized by stain, gluing, detaching parts, drawing and painting images. Its main theme is “Bure” (in English, “Shake”). “Bure” indicates a subject, whose initial idea changes along the way. The choice of the theme has a logical enough purpose for the artist and that is to demonstrate how every human being in front of the creative act is inconsistent with his thoughts. “Pastel puke” is abstraction and figuration with a strong taste of life that remains entangled in cards and cut cards. A work with a vintage appearance that also has to do with time.
“When inspiration does not come to me, I go halfway to meet it” (Sigmund Freud)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Kamonpoi
Pastel puke
Kana Hawa “Art is, now, mainly a form of thiniking” (Susan Sontag)
Kana Hawa is a young Japanese artist who expresses his creativity through the use of an app that allows him to reflect his imaginary world and to amplify it. This artist is the proof of how technology changed radically a subject such as painting and drawing and how his works become a virtual reality. We could consider him the pixel painter. He found a way to discover a new wave of surrealism, metaphysics, of a fantasy realm. Painting implies the addition of textures and colours to create the painting, with digital art it is possible to add or eliminate images entirely or partially. For every digital painting software everything starts with a blank canvas and a vaste color palette where the key ingredient, like in every other art form, is creativity. Art nowadays can be considered the same as in the past years, the only thing that changes is the means of communication; it reflects a degree of continuity with futurisms, constructivism and cinetic art. This is an exclusive language that the artist is using in order to create “virtual” works where those artworks are within the reach of all, not just exclusive to the artist, where intentions are created based on the artist’s thoughts. Kana’ s artworks allow us to explore new horizons with a different perception and vision.
Art Curator Erika Gravante
Kana Hawa
8:16
Kana Hawa
Garbage
Kana Hawa
Old tale
Karianne Hamel
Karianne Hamel is a Canadian artist who combines pouring technique with geometry. The artist wisely combines these two opposite worlds: the dynamism of fluid color and the staticity of geometric lines. The most striking example is the work entitled “Crossroad” in which the encounter between these two different worlds creates a strong contrast that defies the rules of visual coherence. The viewers’ eyes continue to move between the fluid subject in the center and the geometric lines surround it, creating a feeling of disorientation. This feeling is confirmed by the title of the work that tells us that we are in the presence of an emotional crossroad. The life of each one of us is based on choices that will lead to consequences, positive or not. Faced with a choice, the human mind begins to work intensely with the aim of arriving at a final decision. The same thing happens in observing the work of Hamel, we ask ourselves: “Should I look at the lines or the fluid colors?”. But, after a prolonged view of the work, our mind begins to calm down and to let itself be guided by heart and by the feelings that the work infuses in us. The feeling of calm that the work transmits is given by the clever combination of colors that Hamel makes: red, gold, blue and green perfectly blend into an abstract figure that recreates the shape of the human heart. Hamel, therefore, through an interplay of contrasts and abstract forms, manages to convey the message in which she believes strongly: “Listen to your heart because it will always know which is the right direction”.
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Karianne Hamel
Crossroad
Kasey Simmons
Miss Simmons’ piece breaks conventions. With her digital skills, she presents two faceless figures sitting on a wall she calls “The wall that defines us”. From a Westerner point of view it is easy to understand the wall and its significance. For the last two centuries society has come to teach us some types of clothing are meant for men, others - for women. It claims it is a universal and eternal truth, ignoring how it is not only geographically limited but also relatively recent. The social norm is indeed nothing but a construct and fashion has always been the place where constructs are meant to be broken. It is the unexpected, the choices that cause ruckus. This is how Miss Simmons’ male figure embraces traditional femininity, just as her female figure acts in a stereotypically mannish way. It is the artist to tell us who the man and who the woman are supposed to be, but the anonymity of their faces, along with their similar built, leaves the viewer to see in the painting what they feel most is the closest to the story they want to create. Still, in our interpretation, it is hard to not return to the simplest answer: a man decided to wear a gown. Shedding all imposition of toxic masculinity, he sits prettily with hands folded in his lap like we would imagine a girl wellraised. Almost mirroring him, in the fiction of art, the woman demands the same space the world often denies her. No more sitting properly, no more need to close her legs to avoid unpleasant consequences, she male-spreads and she fully challenges the viewer with her overpowering presence. The juxtaposition is in their poses as well as their colours: the aggressive and serious blacks and grey for the woman, and soft pastels for the man. Art reveals what we really are and switches the roles in the fairy tale. It has to be noted our characters are sitting on the wall covered in roses and thorns. It must still be uncomfortable, just as the wall is still there. Conquered, but not completely surpassed. We have taken the first step, we made our first attempt to change the perspective but the wall reminds us the road to complete freedom is still long.
Art Curator Guendalina Cilli
Kasey Simmons
Sitting on the Walls That Define Us
Ketil Eriksen
Ketil Eriksen is a Danish artist who draws inspiration from colors, shapes and nature. Admiring his works we are faced with splashes of color resulting from an energy charge. Eriksen’s technique undoubtedly refers to dripping, a pictorial technique of action painting, used mainly by Jackson Pollock in the 1950s. Unlike Pollock, who uses a large amount of colors and fills the entire canvas, Eriksen uses in small quantities only two colors, leaving plenty of white space on the canvas. The use of the white background creates a sharp contrast with the black, the color preferred by Eriksen, which combines a second color, often primary. In the case of the canvas “Fluctuations” black splashes are accompanied by small red flows. It’s interesting to note that through an abstract canvas, the human mind starts to race between the lines and trying somehow to find a sense, a form that comes close to reality. Here, what strikes the eye is a woman’s face in the center of the canvas: her eyes are closed and a drop of red creates her lips, she wears a high pointy hat and she seems to be thinking. Eriksen therefore creates a canvas that can make the viewer reflect, especially thanks to the wise choice of the white background: it creates a void that the human mind unintentionally wants to fill. His art is meditation, not surprisingly the white background and black features refer to the Zen calligraphic art practiced by Japanese Buddhist monks who used art as a tool to seek the awakening and the true nature of reality.
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Ketil Eriksen
Fluctuations
Ksenia Kotova
Ksenia Kotova is a Russian artist with a solid background in Design, a field in which she has the opportunity to study in different Institutes: Moscow, Rome, Milan. Throughout her upbringing and education she left her hometown (Moscow) to travel, looking for a human and cultural corroboration and, more in general, for the ideal urban environment that would spark lively her creativity. After an experience across the ocean and in Northern Europe, she decided to settle in Italy between Rome and Milan, capitals of cultural heritage, history but also design and fashion. Milano is the city that consecrated Ksenia’s curiosity for fashion, in its research and study of beauty, colours and shapes. Besides the constant artistic stimuli, Ksenia embraced the Italian lifestyle, being able to bring on her virtual canvas (as she often creates digital drawings) this encounter and synthesis of her biggest passions: fashion, Italian lifestyle and, of course, art. “Oh Positano” is exactly the artist’s conscious result and creative culmination. In the artwork we see a graceful young woman enjoying her lunch and glass of white wine surrounded by the breath-taking view of Positano - a village on the Amalfi Coast. The use of colours is balanced and faithful to reality, while being at the same time very bright and captivating. French director Jean-Luc Godard talked about how creativity is the ability to connect things we love and to synthesise them in a personal way: “It’s not where you take things from, it’s where you take them to”. Ksenia’s poetics is exactly her capability to have melt in a unique style, elegant and immediate, what she loves and investigates the most: all her life experience, cultural enthusiasm and dedication for fashion and design.
Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni
Ksenia Kotova
Oh Positano!
Lena Snow
A layer of crisp, wavy and transparent plastic covers Lena Snow’s multi-technique piece. Plastic thus creates a barrier between us and the painting underneath, preventing the viewer from touching it directly. It is a protection meant to immortalise the art from the dirty, imperfect human world. Plastic also represents eternity. Most of all, in Snow’s work, the material is everything artificial, a fabricated world that does not exist if it is not created. It is indeed a divide between what is human, limited, flawed, and the unattainable idea of eternal beauty and youth. Outside there are roughness and struggles, inside the smooth and crystallized perfection. Plastic is like the frosted glass of a pastry shop and we are the kids who can only take a glimpse through the dream without reaching it, as the barrier prevents us from ever finding a way to the other side. It is a dream and as such it cannot exist in the realm of reality. In Miss Snow’s words, the piece is to represent a specific dream, one that thousands of little girls have had at least once. It is the dream of being the beautiful princess, the centre of all attention, and to dance till the next morning amidst the glitz and glamour. The flowing, floor-length gown speaks of richness, with its golds and bronzes and the metres upon metres of fabric. It is a beautiful, perfect fantasy and yet something feels off. On closer inspection, it begins to become almost a nightmare. The woman is living her dream but there is no one with her with whom to share it, no one to take her hand to lead her to the dance floor. She wears an expensive gown and yet her forced pose suggests insecurity, like the dress is only a mask to hide her true and fragile self. It is curious how the figure has no face or a striking form, as she turns her back on us. Similarly to the fashion industry, where often the models’ identity loses importance in respect to the dresses they wear. Then, not only the woman is alone, but she is in an almost barren landscape, her against a background of concrete, lifeless grey. The chandelier suggests we are inside a building, a palace probably but it feels like a prison. It is a splendid isolation, a gilded cage. Finally, the colour of the dress also reminds of fire, a sparkling Phoenix rising from the ashes. The fire can be warm as much as it can be dangerous, burning and consuming, rather than giving life.
Art Curator Guendalina Cilli
Lena Snow
Plastic Princess
Leni Acosta Knight “Fear is nowhere more evident than in the aisle of bathroom supplies” (Leni Acosta Knight)
Leni Acosta Knight is a symbolist artist based in Honolulu. Just like a symbolist poet, rather than directly showing, she offers to the viewer the necessary silence to indulge in his own imagination and emotion. Her artwork Are We There yet? is part of the “Lockdown Series” and faces with irony one of the psychosis that has marked these dark times: the rush to compulsive accumulation of essential goods. In this funny but at the same time revealing painting, the toilet paper becomes the symbol of a need, the need to hold on to something that gives us a sense of security, a kind of symbolic safety blanket. In spite of the use of a so personal object, the presence of elements like the flowers all around the mirror or the woman in evening dress who elegantly unfurls one of the toilet paper rolls give to the composition a refined tone and reveal Leni’s ability to combine perfectly classical realism and abstract expressionism.
Art Curator Marta Graziano
Leni Acosta Knight
Are We There Yet?
Lika Ramati
Lika Ramati presents us a plethora of young women through an intense variety of mediums, each with their own story. From paint so thick it accumulates on the canvas to photography to collage and mixed-media, we are presented each time with a woman dominating her own space. They are the absolute protagonists and every other presence is banned from their dominion. Transported into a reality of their own volition, they exist outside of the world, extrapolated from their own original setting to be inserted into a new space. There are hints of Orthodox iconography in some of her works, her women with a halo of divinity in them. To try and find a file-rouge would almost mean detracting from their individuality. With her vast experience, Ramati does not shy from experimenting, pushing the limits of banality, finding new voices and refusing the constant repetition of the same model. There a woman takes life in old-fashion paint, watching directly the viewer, she challenges us with a shadow of enigmatic smile on her perfectly painted lips. A beauty from another era, she seems to have a secret she will never share. The vase of red flowers balances the space and calls back to a classic femininity while threads of pearls signifies her power and richness. Another prefers to shy away, blending with the gold and black of her background, a spirit of Spring, a new nymph of Art Nouveau. Some women pose with pride, emerging from a wall of gold like a new iconography, a modern Saint completed with a jewelled crown and halo. Old and modern find a new union in a figure accepting and expecting the veneration we see represented by the two hands raised in prayer. Some others instead retract from the viewer, arms crossed in protection and eyes glancing aside in indifference, mysterious as the night they wear. Ramati challenges the definition of woman, mixing her into a new hybrid, a modern Black Swan with wings spread and open to fly. There is indeed a constant duality in Ramati womanhood, how empowerment can be found by various means. For some is modesty and embracing their natural beauty, for others is enhancing it with makeup. Some ask for privacy, others are at ease as the centre of attention. Thus showing or hiding are not an opposition of a right and a wrong way, but simply possibilities, both equally important, women are offered to find their own freedom and self-realization. Ramati shows us the lie of the single road and invites us to explore, to experiment and to find the answer that better fits our own needs.
Art Curator Guendalina Cilli
Lika Ramati
Exotic Bird
Lika Ramati
Fashion Democracy
Lika Ramati
Gabrielle
Lika Ramati
Head of Roses
Lika Ramati
Transparency in Gold
Lucinda Bryan “Life is the art of drawing without an eraser” (John W. Gardner)
Lucinda Bryan, after a long career in fashion, chose to devote herself to art. She is a self-taught artist who mainly works with acrylics. She attended the Gage Academy of Art and specialized in drawing, painting and sculpture. Her current work has focused on the very special historical period of the pandemic. A difficult period that has put people and things to the test. A parenthesis of extreme loneliness, melancholy and sadness. These are the themes on which the artist investigated and experimented with her painting, working with her imagination. Her works of intense blue are inspired by Toulouse Lautrec, Jean Cocteau, Matisse, Richard Diebenkorn and Helen Frankenthaler and many other European cultures. The blue color, with all its variations and shades, continues today to be one of the most favorite on the color wheel. Blue is considered the most noble of all and is a metaphor for spirituality and transcendence. This is considered the color of silence and tranquility, tenderness and contemplation. In wall painting blue was generally used for backgrounds, with the same symbolic value that gold had on the table. Marc Chagall managed to make blue a boundless color through his enigmatic paintings, Yves Klein, patented his own pigment, Pablo Picasso had his “blue period”. Contemporary artists continue, even today, to experience the uses of color, adding a rich history of vibrant blues to those that already exist. In her works Lucinda, through the choice and use of this colour, so important for the history of art, intends to provide the viewer with a sentimental dimension, that looks in the face of reality and suffering. Her images are full of sadness, accentuated by cold tones and abstract brushstrokes. For the artist this represents a metaphysical color, which unlike red, of which it is the antithesis, is linked to the reflective and meditative states of the human being. For Lucinda dreaming of the color blue, then refers to the unconscious depths and inner contact, through which you can soar to the sky and think of the immensity, eternity, infinity.
“Freely exercise one’s genius, here is the real happiness” (Aristotele)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Lucinda Bryan
Shelter in place 1
Lucinda Bryan
Shelter in place 2
Lucinda Bryan
Shelter in place 3
Luigi Carriero
An exploration of identity and duality abounds in the work of Italian artist Luigi Carriero. In Dunce Hat, the artist draws inspiration from Francisco de Goya’s The Inquisition Tribunal in which individuals accused of heresy are forced to wear a tall, pointed coroza, popularly known as a dunce hat, and stand in front of a tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition. In Carriero’s contemporary work, the accused becomes a shadowy female figure donning the same style of hat. Whilst the contextual cultural, societal, and political norms have shifted from the early nineteenth century to the present day, the dunce hat remains synonymous with shame, exclusion, and otherness. Juxtaposed against a sea of black and the ephemeral white of the female’s face, the lucid green dunce hat holds the viewer’s gaze and takes on the competing role of accessory and label, becoming both a way of adorning, and branding, the nameless figure. This duality extends to the viewer, simultaneously an observer and an inquisitor, intruding on the personal world of the woman - eyes closed and pensive - making the private public, and forcing us to confront our own notions of judgement, guilt, and perception.
Bianca Brigitte Bonomi, Editor in Chief of Harper’s Bazaar Qatar, Grazia Qatar, Esquire Qatar
Luigi Carriero
Dunce hat
Luigi Marsero “Our imagination flies – we are its shadow on the earth” (Vladimir Nabokov) Luigi Marsero, is a young Italian artist from Piedmont. At only 14 years old he presents himself with a curious and determined personality. He loves abstract and baroque art, photography and all that is creative. His artistic nature prefers in a decisive form abstract art. An art free from preset patterns, capable of transmitting a strong emotion. Each abstract work is, in fact, the inner mirror of each artist, presenting different peculiarities. Modern abstractism is based on the liberation of lines, shapes and colours, and no longer on a real representation of objects, figures and landscapes. In a certain sense, abstract artists use an approach similar to scientific: they break down perceptual experience into its essential elements, allowing us to better understand it. In other words, with the development of abstract art, artists have, in a sense, allied themselves with scientists. On the other hand, as Mark Rothko said: “A painting is not the image of an experience. It is an experience”. Vasily Kandinskij was interested in the analogy between art and music influenced by Arnold Schönberg, who had introduced a new conception of harmony. The Russian artist had guessed that it was not necessary to represent exactly what he saw, but what he felt, since the observer would associate these signs, symbols and colors to images, ideas, events and emotions evoked by memory. Luigi Marsero studied the arts of the past, in particular inspired by Kandinskij and Mondrian; taking from the first the dynamism and three-dimensionality, from the second his ability to fill the picture with lines and colors. The Dutch painter Piet Mondrian, influenced by Cezanne and analytical cubism, came to the idea that all natural forms could be reduced to cube, cone and sphere. He developed a new language of art based on simple geometric shapes, reducing color to the minimum terms (red, yellow and blue), building the essence of the image and freeing it from the content without affecting the viewer, Instead, he was free to build his own perception of the image. “Galà Surrealistico” synthesizes the emotions, imagination and creativity of abstract art. A work that deserves not only to be looked at but also to be perceived. An action that requires the spectator to participate actively in the post-creative phase. The work tells a moment of popular life, depicting a Sunday dance, in which the various figures that populate the scene are cheerful, carefree, and are completely overwhelmed by the emotions and joie de vivre, enjoying the sun of a spring afternoon, and the suspended time of being together.
“Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked, why not?” (Pablo Picasso)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Luigi Marsero
GalĂ Â surrealistico
Luisa Barba
Luisa Barba is a Spanish artist, born in Barcelona, with a strong passion for art in all its forms. Her first steps as a painter are rooted in her childhood. Indeed, she began to paint with her father José Mª Barba Albiñana who was also an excellent artist. In her paintings, through the use of different shades of the same color, the artist represents a single subject managing to convey all the hidden spirituality apparently undetectable to the spectator eye. In order to do so, the painter tries to direct the viewer’s gaze towards a certain element of the painting that represents the “studium” of the work itself. Recognizing the “studium”, as Barthes suggests, basically means to coincide with the intentions of the artist, to enter into harmony with them, approve them, disapprove of them, but always understand them.
Luisa Barba
In Barba’s artwork “The”, the energy of the painting is embedded in the eyes of the depicted subject. In order to do so, the artist uses a color which is in contrast but at the same time in perfect harmony with all the other several shades of the predominant color of the painting. This particular attention of the artist towards this element seems to support the quote by Paulo Coelho according to which “the eyes are the mirror of the soul and reflect everything that seems to be hidden; and like a mirror, they also reflect the person looking into them”. Thus, the artist then finds in the painting and in the details the most sublime form of communication and the best way to create empathy with anyone who is observing her art.
Art Curator Lorenza Traina
Luisa Barba
Abstract name
Luisa Barba
The
Luz Sanchez “A work of art which did not begin in emotion is not art.” (Paul Cezanne)
The artist Luz Sanchez was born in Montevideo, Uruguay, in 1950. Her passion towards art began to manifest at a really young age. Through the use of different colors and, especially, through the representation of the feminine body movements and facial expressions, the artist manages to convey to the viewer different solid and specific emotions. Every brushstroke, therefore, is intended to deepen that specific feeling that the artist is intended to represent. In “Exoticas”, the bright colors used by the painter automatically surround the painting with a positive aura and emphasize the feeling of serenity radiating from the portrayed subjects.
Luz Sanchez
In “Recuerdo” and “Vestida para soñar”, conversely, the atmosphere is darkened by warmer colors and lonesome settings. In both paintings, the represented women are in a state of emotional overwhelm, being completely alienated and submerged by their thoughts. Their body becomes the natural representation of their inner self and every movement is in perfect harmony with th eir flow of consciousness. In this way, the artist wishes to start a mechanism that gives life to an intimate dialogue between the subject and the viewer, bringing him to relive that specific feeling that dominated the creative process and, therefore, inspired the singularity of each technical and stylistic choice.
Art Curator Lorenza Traina
Luz Sanchez
Exoticas
Luz Sanchez
Recuerdo
Luz Sanchez
Vestida para soĂąar
Luz Sanchez
Vistiendo la primavera
Maaria Rinta-aho “One must still have chaos in oneself to be able to give birth to a dancing star” (Friedrich Nietzsche)
Maaria Rinta-Aho is a self-taught Finnish abstract artist. She is an emotional art, whose most intimate feelings emerge on the canvas. She loves the absence of rules and the feeling of freedom. An almost childish excitement she feels every time she starts painting a new work. Vasily Kandinskij, in his first watercolor, voluntarily decides to eliminate any reference to the physical world. The lines, the spots and the marks represent only themselves. This artistic genre is called non-figurative or abstract and was born in 1910. Kandinskij himself created his own language by writing essays on his creative poetics. From then on, the artist begins his search for abstract figuration. An investigation not exclusively linked to a formal intention of linguistic renewal. His intent is, in fact, more to communicate moods and emotions using colors, lines, points and spots, organized in a harmonious way and according to a musical principle. Maaria Rinta-Aho, on the study of the Russian artist, brings on the canvas of “Dive right into the Depths of your Mind” feeling and inner strength and urges the observer to literally dive into their own mind. The surface of the work is entirely occupied by blue and pink spots. Some of them are more full-bodied and attract attention, anchoring the composition to itself. The most intense blue spots integrate with lighter marks and spots to form an agglomerate of color. Since no figurative element of the real world is verifiable, it is the arrangement of the signs that gives meaning to the composition, where the harmonization of the shades of colors creates on the two-dimensional plane the work.
“The power of imagination makes us infinite” (John Muir)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Maaria Rinta-aho
Dive right into the Dephts of your Mind
Madlen Wróbel “Being a woman is so fascinating. It is an adventure that requires such courage, a challenge that is never boring.” (Oriana Fallaci)
The woman is perhaps one of the most represented subjects in the history of art. In fact, portraits of women are present in every era and artistic current. Every artist of the past has portrayed the face of a woman for commission or for pleasure. A young woman is also the protagonist of the work entitled “Modern Rusalka” by the artist Madlen Wrobel. The artist presents a photographic shot with a very modern cut, with an aesthetic with attention to the smallest detail. Black and white predominate throughout the composition, making the atmosphere melancholy, but at the same time immersive. It is the light itself that emphasizes this chromatic choice, because there are surfaces completely in shadow and surfaces completely illuminated. The shadows stand long and dark on the floor. Even the choice of inserting the figure of the dog is very evocative of numerous portraits created throughout the history of art, because it has always been seen as a symbol of fidelity. The leading figure “Rusalka” captures all the attention thanks to the only touch of bright color in the shot, the fuchsia of the lips. The extremely minimalist environment in which it is inserted, the collected position and the closed eyes suggest an idea of peace, as if Rusalka had estranged herself from everything to enter a dream world, which the painting behind her can suggest. As the actors alone on a stage, with very few props, with an important meaning for the character, expose their inner soliloquy to the audience, illuminated by a faint light, so Rusalka reflects within herself and closing her eyes speaks to her “I” more intimate. We can only be admired for observing it.
Art Curator Silvia Grassi
Madlen Wrรณbel
Modern Rusalka
Malgorzata Palczewska “Action is the foundational key to all success” (Pablo Picasso)
Malgorzata Palczewska is a Polish artist and architect, who since childhood has shown love for drawing and painting. Through art she expresses everything that contains beauty, experiments colors, lines and different pictorial techniques. For the artist the elegance of the object is noticed at first glance, but a closer look reveals a weave of thin lines and details. Malgorzata is a versatile artist and one of her most used techniques is painting by combining different lines and colors. Her poetics are based on abstract art, through which she elaborates images and forms. In “Please dress me” she combines feeling, seduction and elegance. The artist, inspired by the theme of the exhibition, paints a naked body, from behind. Nudity in art is the only theme that has accompanied us since the very beginning, since the dawn of civilization. With the twentieth century we think of Helmut Newton, with his particular style characterized by glossy eroticism, or David la Chapelle photographer of the dream, the bizarre if not the excess. After all, the nude is the image we have of ourselves, the experience of our body projected to the outside, so it is certainly very immediate and natural. The nude is definitively affirmed in the nineteenth century, when it no longer needs a moral or historical-mythological justification. Paintings such as Manet’s Olympia, Courbet’s Origin du Monde, and the birth of photography and Eadweard Muybridge’s various nude experiments opened up new horizons. In this contest the painting “Please dress me” in which we can see how the woman’s body appears linear, covering the entire width of the canvas, from left to right. The figure is of shoulders, stretched on one side, in a sort of ordinary but elegant pose, wrapped in a veil of mystery. The woman’s face is not depicted, as if to affirm that the same is not a fundamental element in the painting. The shapes of the figure are wide, soft, delicate and sinuous, especially on the back and in the area of the pelvis, intentionally highlighted as evidence of femininity and sensuality. This gives the image a strong vibrant character. The light seems fragmented in a thousand flashes that on the skin of the woman are rendered through infinite filaments of pure color, approached one to the other in line with the abstract pictorial technique.
“If I could say it in words there would be no reason to paint” (Edward Hopper)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Malgorzata Palczewska
Please Dress Me
Manuela Moldovan
The artist Manuela Moldovan explores new artistic techniques by inspiring herself to nature. She unites materials as the oil painting, the cold cere, the alcoholic ink and the acrylic, or even elements as the sand and the carbon, by using the originality of the photos’ collage technique or of the tissues based on supports, which are every time always different. The surrounding environment’s beauty attracts the artist to such an extent that she creates new compositions based on a flower and naturalist theme, through those the life and the energy emerge inside the artwork itself. As in My Fantasy Forest, the artist intertwines her vivid passion with the color emphasis and the picture verticality. This artwork opens up the door to a new ideal world, where the forest could represent a place for leisure and adventure or being the center of the supernatural. Through these so bright tones, made possible by using the green as the main color on the canvas, the artist invites the observer to leave aside all the concerns, in the search for a flourishing and prosperous life where the imagination becomes the so-called “turning point”, that essential element which triggers the dreams, capable of making them endless. The background remains neutral, by linking this nuance to the central forest, emphasizing it even more. For this reason, by simulating long, substantial and swirling brushstrokes overlapped one another, the artist gives an extreme strength and dynamism to the whole picture. Their movement originates from the bottom up, as if they are eager to reach and connect with the divine and the supernatural.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Manuela Moldovan
My Fantasy Forest
Mar de Color
The Spanish artist Mar has translated her desire to change the world into artworks, her work is born from research, both artistic and personal. In the work, a large triptych makes the strong elements of nature protagonists, one the opposite of the other: fire and water. A real genesis, it seems to be enveloped by nothing and to witness the exact moment in which water and fire meet, only them hanging in the void. Her work is silence, it is waiting, the elements that move emit a sound but appear suspended and distant, Mar has created a balance and harmony that touch the sublime. In all ages, men have turned their thoughts and attention to natural elements, often artists have given a face and human characteristics, Brueghel was a master. In the case of the Spanish artist, her work is of abstract origin, where color is the undisputed protagonist, it becomes the means to express the energy released by the power of water and fire, a color that finds no boundaries since it is not delimited by lines of outline just as the great abstract masters teach. After all, the first completed work is a watercolor by the artistic genius Kandinsky. Mar’s work is the condensation of forces of nature and essential ties, although different and opposite, certain elements cannot do without each other.
Art Curator Vanessa Viti
Mar de Color
Fuego
Mar de Color
Fuego y Agua
Mar de Color
Agua
Maria Adorelle “Love is not just a feeling, it is an art. And, like any art, inspiration is not enough, it also takes a lot of effort” (Paulo Coelho)
In the works of Maria Adorelle, an artist originally from Stockholm, acrylic colors are a conscious and successful choice; she vents all her creativity by testing and combining every possible technique, creating images with bright colors, which represent a sense of denunciation towards society. In the work “Dress me out of love”, Maria represents on a fiery red background, a symbol of passionate love, a bed of busts of mannequins abandoned here and there and on one side of the painting a sweet female figure in a seated profile. The scene is dominated by a phrase “Dress me out of love”, a predominant yellow writing that stands out throughout the painting. Maria’s work has an evident symbolic message; for Maria in fact every woman does not need any type of high fashion, precious dress, or any kind of accessory beyond the love that one needs to face the world. The acrylics in this case give a strong and violent aspect, the figures are characterized by simple, clean and well-defined lines, but at the same time an explicit message goes straight to the heart of the viewer. The artist remains minimal in the representation of the images but offering a message full of emotions of positive values.
“Dress me with a kiss, it’s the only thing I need to face the world. Your love, an armor: only you and me will know it” (Saša Pavček)
Art Curator Maria Cristina Bianchi
Maria Adorelle
Dress Me Out Of Love
Maria Burberry
Through this artwork entitled Magic, the artist Maria Burberry captures all the seductive spontaneity of a young woman, fascinating and mysterious. It is interesting that, during the making of the painting, a little bird got into from the window of the artist’s studio: one can admire several lines on her collar, and these are the marks drawn by its wings on the surface still wet. Maria Burberry did not modify those marks, and this is also a significant and gripping element within the work. As far as this representation is concerned, the artist decides to capture a fleeting young woman as if she was a snapshot: this is a quick moment in the scene which encompasses both elegance and a sense of female independence and emancipation, elements that emerge from the painting. This portrait focuses both on the attention for every decorative detail, from the large hat to the long cloak, and on the choice of shades to be used: black and purple that turn into pink recall that halo of mystery in which the canvas is enclosed. Even if the eyes are not visible, the observer can admire a penetrating gaze, strengthened by the red lips that stand out despite the wide hat, enabling the character to be depicted in a close-up and half bust. The figure is predominant with respect to the background, which is perfectly linked to the young woman’s nuances. Through her stylistic research, Maria Burberry manages to harmonize the combination of rounded lines with a daring symphony of colors. The exciting and intimate humanity of this mysterious face is pervaded by an inner light that makes the painting even more intense. By interpreting the Belle Époque period at its best, the attention to one’s image emphasizes the beauty of being a woman, where art and fashion are closely linked.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Maria Burberry
Magic
Maria Bychkova
The works of Maria Bychkova, a Russian artist living in Sweden, exude mystery. Her choice to use black backgrounds amplify this first feeling and intrigue viewers, prompting them to investigate the drama that emerges from her works. The figure of the woman is central to the art of Maria. Each of her paintings has a female protagonist and in each of them is exalted a different aspect of the female world. In the case of the work “Here comes Alice” a woman in profile occupies almost all the canvas. She lays the weight of her head on her hand, in a position of thought. The melancholy of the woman is evident and is even more accentuated by the far-out look in her eye. The woman’s white skin makes her look like a ghost trapped in limbo where evil, represented by black on the right, and good, represented by light on the left, coexist. The choice to use pearl white for the faces is repeated in the paintings of Bychkova, fueling the aura of mystery that her works instil. “Into the unknown” is another example of how the woman seems to belong to the spirit world but at the same time exalts the feminine sensuality, placing the subject of shoulders with the face turned upwards and the mouth ajar. The most interesting work is “Lilith”, consisting of eight panels in which the central one shows the face of a woman. The black background, which once again dominates the work, is dotted with delicate colorful flowers and small fish, alluding to an aquatic environment. The water is also evoked by the delicate and sinuous blue brushstrokes that surround the subjects and the black of the background indicates that we are in the presence of deep waters. From the latter emerges Lilith, almost trapped by the darkness of the magical waters. The title clearly informs us about the identity of the subject: she is the first wife of Adam who escaped from Eden because she pretended to have the same privileges as her spouse. Lilith represents the desire for equality between man and woman and the desire for freedom and free will. She then became a demon and mother of all demons. The personality of this biblical character is best represented by the artist: the gaze is decisive and obscure, it embodies the determination of women, their power and freedom. Artis’s figurative ability combined with the impressionistic instinctive brushstrokes that surround the work, give life to unique paintings with a strong dramatic charge. Each work through pathos tells a mystery that has yet to be revealed.
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Maria Bychkova
Here comes Alice
Maria Bychkova
Into the unknown
Maria Bychkova
Lilith
Maria Redrick “A person is a collage of people warring to become a portrait” (Jenim Dibie)
Maria Redrick is an American painter and designer. She studied fine arts and graphic design at the Columbus college of art and design. She’s currently working in communication in New York but she’s keeping her love for fine arts alive by using for her works, oil on canvas. When she paints her soul is as if it was overwhelmed by this force and it translates itself. Characterized by a natural greed, the artist expresses herself through art that feels like a necessity of her own soul. This way of expressing herself gives Maria to get close to certain subjects which otherwise it would be difficult to explain. It’s a therapeutic process which aims to capture human emotions, a desire to transmit different points of view to be able to portray subjects. The aim is to be able to describe - by representing a silhouette - an emotion, in order to get the audience to feel the same emotions that are represented in the artwork itself. Each of us has a story to tell and Maria, by traveling the south east Asia, finds the inspiration from people, their own stories, from places that she uses by portraying this reality. The ultimate goal for Maria is to give the opportunity to individuals to convey a message and to make it accessible to everyone because we all know that a picture can be more powerful than words. With Maria we find this ability to express emotions, memories, feelings in a very simple but direct way.
Art Curator Erika Gravante
Maria Redrick
Lady Boy Blue
Maria Redrick
Lady Boy Red
Maria Redrick
Lady Boy Yellow
Marie Ange Van Meyel “Photographs can reach eternity through the moment” (Henri Cartier-Bresson)
Mysterious and eclectic artist of French nationality that approached the world of photography by creating a parallelism with the real world through her shots: this is the fantastic and imaginary world of Marie Ange. The subjects and the games of light present in her works seem to come from utopian universes. Marie Ange loves to experiment and come across new artistic techniques as the one named “Fuhsing”: an innovative shooting technique that allows to mix colors and lights - fundamental elements of her art - in a unique way. The image of the works is extremely engaging for the observer who is captured by the movement of shapes and colors created with elegance and harmony. Over the years, photography has become the support of her oniric world, in which the artist takes refuge and finds herself.
“For sure there will always be those who will only look at the technique and wonder how, while others of a more curious nature will ask why” (Man Ray)
Art Curator Maria Cristina Bianchi
Marie Ange Van Meyel
Light and shadow
Maryanne Chisholm “An infinity of passion can be contained in one minute, like a crowd in a small space”(Gustave Flaubert)
Maryanne Chisholm is an acclaimed American painter whose artistic poetry is inspired by surrealism. The artist, painting explores her mind in search of a personal concept of beauty, she discovers having many points in common with this current. Surrealism is a French literary, artistic and ideological movement, born in the First World War that practices figurative art and not abstract. Its figuration is in strong dialogue with the naturalistic world. The theorist of this movement was the writer Andrè Breton who in 1924, published the Manifesto of Surrealism. Inspired by the theories of Freud, he theorized the need to reach a higher reality, in which to reconcile the two fundamental moments of human thought: that of the wake and that of the dream. Maryanne’s art is a fascinating example of forms combined with a surreal landscape that becomes realistic through beautiful colors and light. A contemporary reinterpretation with which she transforms reality into her personal vision. Her favorite theme seems to be that of the relationship between woman and nature that explodes in all its forms. Flowers that make their way into the surrounding space, through the face, as if to remind the viewer of the great strength present in nature and women, despite an appearance of delicate beauty. An illustration that sways between naturalistic poetry and female greatness. “Rhapsodic” enchants for its surreal and poetic atmosphere. What makes it so special is the care for hyper-realistic details that nothing is left to chance.
“Only passions, great passions, can elevate the soul to great things” (Denis Diderot)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Maryanne Chisholm
Rhapsodic
Matia Santini
Geometry, shapes and bright colors: this is the art of the Italian artist Matia Santini. His works dazzle the eyes like a flash and when everything comes back clear, the mind is lost between colors and lines. Santini with his works looks to the early years of the XX century, when the Futurist movement was born in Italy. In particular, it’s evident the reference to the artist Giacomo Balla that synthesizes the movement, turning the visual aspect of the action into geometric shapes. The visual comparison between Balla’s work “Pessimism and optimism” and Santini’s works is immediate. On the other hand, Santini’s works approach another movement that was born in parallel: Cubism. The work “River Euphrates” especially takes the same colors as “Les demoiselles d’Avignon” by Pablo Picasso: orange lobster and blue invade the composition. This works seems to be the “decomposition” of Picasso’s work, as if it had “exploded” and the geometric components were distributed on Santini’s canvas. Circles, segments and polygons make up the work, in particular the artist uses pyramidal figures as the main geometric shape. The inspiration comes from Ancient Egypt, which also takes the traditional colors of the nemes of the Pharaoh. In this regard, he still follows the teachings of Picasso who, in “Les demoiselles d’Avignon”, looked at African cultures. Santini’s art does not aim to convey a precise message. He mainly focuses on the fragmentation of reality, creating a world made of two-dimensional overlapping planes and scattered with elementary figures, the foundation of visual materiality.
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Matia Santini
River Euphrates
Max Cherman
Max Cherman is a Russian self-taught photographer, whose strong passion for visual composition and light experimentation succeeds in being his major poetic quality. In “Ambivalence” the subject is a girl shot with a slow shutter speed: the face - partially covered by her hands - is in fact delicately blurry, creating an effect that almost doubles her mysterious facial expression. The picture, which sees its protagonist completely decontextualized from her surroundings, has its primary focus on the charming dialogue between the red and green lights. Chromatically, red and green are two complementary colours, in their being opposed to each other. The light flashes, reds and greens chase and fight each other while maintaining an harmonic dance. They are able to evoke, by simply existing together, a narration about rules of desire, of both opposition and attraction. With their brightness they evoke the passions throbbing under the appearance and that “ambivalence” emerges precisely in its complexity to read the inner dynamics and feelings of the girl.
Max Cherman
As the photographer John Berger states, the quality of photography is that “its primary raw materials are light and time”. And this is what Max does in creating his photographic stories and atmosphere. Even in his picture Любование (Lubovanie), the light is once again the protagonist, which highlights the girl’s gaze in the dark background. The girl is placed in front of a beamer that projects light blue waves. The photographer explains the poetic coincidence about how “Lubov” is both the name of the model and also a Russian word that means “Love”, and from there “Lubovanie” is the derived verb that means to watch, to admire, to enjoy. And maybe is what Max, through his light composition, wants to encourage the viewer’s eyes to do: a contemplation that leads the viewer to wonder what the girl, with her loving and ecstatic expression, is looking at.
“Where light and shadow fall on your subject that is the essence of expression and art through photography.” (Scott Bourne)
Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni
Max Cherman
Ambivalence
Max Cherman
Любование (Lubovanie)
Maya Beck
Nonconformist artist Maya Beck manages to develop an unmistakable style by creating paintings depicting close-ups of stylized female faces embellished with details that she superimposes on the face of these female figures. Her profound stylistic research manages to harmonize in an excellent way the combination of rounded and sinuous lines and often monochromatic colors to balance the design itself; Maya loves to alternate the use of different techniques: from drawing, to watercolors, from felt-tip pens, to ink. The transfiguration of the faces seems to proceed towards a melodious sequence of movements, curves that reveal, in that refined deformation of the figures, not only the stubborn peculiarity of her research but above all an emotional and intimate humanity of those mysterious faces (es. “I´M IN LOVE” and “I´M NOT SHY”). Maya loves to experiment, loves mixing techniques and venturing into new worlds, giving life to new works that go beyond tradition, as for example in the work “LITTLE CHINA GIRL” where she uses a newspaper page as a support for the representation of the face; the drawing becomes one with the newspaper and Maya gives life to a unique and impactful work.
“Drawing is like making an expressive gesture, with the advantage of permanence” (Henri Matisse)
Art Curator Maria Cristina Bianchi
Maya Beck
I’M IN LOVE
Maya Beck
I’M NOT SHY
Maya Beck
LITTLE CHINA GIRL
Mehak Mittal “If you have even a little mastery over the five elements within you, life will happen the way you want it to” (Sadhguru Jaggi Vasuder)
Mehak Mittal is a self-taught Indian artist who lives and works in London. The use of watercolours as her primary medium is functional to catching the essence of movement and the cosmic mystery of life. As the concept of this exhibition is Fashion meets Art, this series of artwork is a play on elements of life meets fashion. Her artworks derive inspiration from all these elements and infuses them into the world of fashion. Our entire universe is made up of 5 basic elements, “The Elements Of Life” Earth, Water, Air, Fire and Space. These five energies are different among each other for density and vibration. The element earth represents all the visible and solid matter, understood as stably and rigidity. Earth, so maternal and so nourishing it has the qualities of being patient and strong (grow and connect). Water, purifying and receptive, therapeutic and creator of life. The fire is a dynamic element as it creates transformations. It tends to purify everyone by elevating them of another level of perfection. The air is the wind. It’s dynamic controls all the movements internally and externally. And last, the ether, which is the space where all these things can happen. A path of transformation and harmonious communication describes Mehka’s artworks. In nature those elements balance the energies and in this exhibition we find a path of extraordinary beauty that emphasizes all these elements, meeting with the wild of fashion.
Art Curator Erika Gravante
Mehak Mittal
Agni - Fire
Mehak Mittal
Antariksh - Space
Mehak Mittal
Bhoomi - Earth
Mehak Mittal
Jal - Water
Mehak Mittal
Vayu - Air
Michael Ryan “My partner stood in the shadow near a well-lit Kees van Dongen portrait of a woman at the TEFAF in Maastricht in 2012. That’s how long this one has been simmering on the back burner of my mind. There was something deeply feminine about the moment and I quickly captured the image and hopefully the feeling on my iPhone” states the American artist Michael Ryan on the conception of his piece and, more in general, on his affective approach to painting. In fact the artwork, mostly dominated by different shades of blue, contains multiple layers of fruition for its viewers. The most evident layer is precisely the semiotics of colours emerging from the choices made by the artist to dress and paint his memory, connected to an intimate moment with his partner. In fact, blue, as the most intense primary colour, often connects to an inner dimension and functions almost as an aesthetic urgency to set an emotional environment. At the same time, blue is also the colour of eternity and infinity, and it is exactly this character of permanency that justifies blue as the colour for bonding and intimacy, perhaps even “risking” to evoke a nostalgic suggestion as well. Maybe the immortalization on canvas is that practice that leads to a catharsis of the experienced that would never return. A feeling that invokes the philosophical topos Sehnsucht: a German term linked to a sense of desire and nostalgia for something physically far from us. Nevertheless, the blue pattern of the painting is also abruptly placed together with orange: the colours of the woman’s elegant pants. Orange is blue’s complementary colour, and it is that chromatic opposition that brings us inside the mood and the story, offering to the viewer’s eyes an ecstatic and impactful dialogue between cold and warm. Besides the chromatic suggestions it is also significant to the painter’s artistic approach and his tendency to give an emotional and affective response to a moment in reality: “In my paintings I attempt to translate the emotion aroused in me by the impact of my visual observations using colour relationships, light, form and composition” (Michael Ryan). This attitude recalls what the film critic Bazin coined as “ontological realism”, referring to cinema as the artistic reproduction of the real, where the artist’s task is to create that relationship between form and content, leaving to the represented subject its dimension of reality and its existence even outside the film (the canvas in this case). In fact Michael Ryan documenting instinctually his partner standing near another painting in the museum, created an artwork whose connection with the real is strong, though maintaining his artistic filter of chromatic sensibility and of delicate composition of forms.
Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni
Michael Ryan
Lili and Kees van Dongen at the TEFAF 2012
Michelle Monaghan “Love is the most selfish of all the passions” (Alexandre Dumas)
Michelle Monaghan is a Scottish artist who has always had a strong affinity for artistic activities as a child. Her research focuses on intimate scenes and lovers. Love, a mysterious, immense, complicated, uncontrollable feeling. There are different types and forms of love and Michelle with her work “Awakening Theodora” intends to urge the observer to romance, without uttering a word, observing those with mute and colorful traits has been able to impress on the canvas a bit of that emotion that makes us feel closer to something magical, incomprehensible to our minds. Symbolism and Expressionism merge in the brushes of Michelle who creates a powerful and passionate picture, showing us a love far from the kind and gentle, but earthly and disruptive, which is consumed in a sensual and erotic research. Carnality, then, is indeed a facet of love, but our minds still struggle to separate sex from the concept of the forbidden, yet love is also blood and not only soul, it is spirit and flesh, and this picture besides evoking the alleged sinfulness of the body, reminds us of its instinctive and primordial nature, opposed to the ideality of a certain type of feeling, so dear to the human mind more refined and sensitive. But the union of these opposites creates perfection. Her oil and acrylic paintings are a fusion of feminine and masculine; darkness and light; pleasure and passion. Each piece challenges the viewer to immerse themselves beyond the dogmas of society. Whether carnal or platonic, private or observed, lived, love shakes us and amazes us, confuses us and clarifies us, casts darkness and light on our lives. But it also makes us really understand who we are and what we want: we see ourselves through the eyes of the other in a new perspective.
“A great fire burns within me, but no one stops to warm themselves at it, and passers-by only see a wisp of smoke” (Vincent Van Gogh)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Michelle Monaghan
Awakening Theodora
Minna Pärttö
Minna’s artistic work comes from intuition, from a creative moment that leaves no space for expressive limits. The artist throws colors and strength on the canvas, her work is pure energy and creative power. There is a deep connection between man and natural elements, Minna was able to manifest it through her work. The viewer in front of the work “Primordial” is pervaded by a sense of amazement, almost fear, it seems to witness the moment in which heaven and earth meet and give rise to everything. Colors that become body, living material that pervades the canvas almost in a continuous motion, an amorphous style that has a certain similarity with the abstract, spontaneous and emotional expressionist art. In particular, Minna’s work brings to mind some works by Rothko and Agnes Martin. In her work there is something mystical and unique, as always Minna gives us a moment of energy and magic. Feelings that become tangible, live inside the work and come out, the artist gives us a true sensorial experience.
Art Curator Vanessa Viti
Minna PärttÜ
Primordial
Miroslava “Up is infinite. Downing infinite. Pantheism, dualism, pluralism!” (John Cowper Powys)
Miroslava Is an artist born in 1993 in Chiclayo, Peru. She graduated in architecture at Universidad Católica Santo Toribio of Mogrovejo but she always loved art and visual graphic. By breaking down faces, mixing them with vivid colours and vibrant and energetic brush strokes, Miroslava manages to achieve her intention which is to pull apart traditional values redefining in a personal, lively and original way, how women are portrayed. With vivid colours, miroslava’s paintings emanate emotions, they produce portraits full of energy and sensuality. By doing this mixing, we can notice a very exuberant trait thanks to which creates true masterpieces. These abstractions of human beings try to reflect the beauty of human architecture through different kinds of colorful brushstrokes.
Miroslava
These artworks have two natures for the day and night, different kinds of brushstrokes, an eternal duality, good and bad, light and dark. The day doesn’t exist without night and neither life without death but most of the time we only focus on one of the two things. There are two opposites but at the same time they’re never against each other but rather complementary and they depend on one another. One is not overimposing itself into the other but is trying to coexist in harmony and with balance and this is what emerges with this artist. When one disappears it actually transforms itself into the other, they don’t create two different realities, they coexist. For this reason, if one disappears, it’s only temporary because it leaves room for the other.
Art Curator Erika Gravante
Miroslava
Eternal duality No. 2 - Serie
Miroslava
Eternal duality No.1- Serie
Mirva Hamdi
Mirva’s art is lively, curious and full of verve, a breath of fresh air. Bright colors stand out on a white background, come to life, it seems that the brushstrokes are about to take flight, or like fish swimming in water. Mirva lets herself be carried away by emotions, sensations and often it is nature itself that inspires her. The artist thinks that chaos is certainly more interesting than order, but her works that also arise from chaos are of a unique harmony. The viewer finds almost comfort in the observer, the speed of the brush strokes and the bright colors make the works dynamic, they move in space with balance. Mirva’s art is undoubtedly abstract, free from real and well-defined forms, the colors find life within the work without the need for contour lines. Somehow her artistic work refers to the technique of Japanese writing, or rather to the art of calligraphy, the Shodo. The brush strokes can be decisive or uncertain, fast or slow, thin or thick, in the same way Mirna acts, her brush strokes change, from thin they thicken and from insecure strokes decisive marks develop. Mirva’s artistic work becomes a path that arises from the interior, the composition is based on rhythms, balances, full and empty. The brushstrokes dance harmoniously in the space.
Art Curator Vanessa Viti
Mirva Hamdi
Are you ready
Mirva Hamdi
It is what it is
Mirva Hamdi
The revolution
Montse Zuñiga
“Mexican jaguar” is the title of Montse’s work, in fact it seems to roar. A work full of energy and strength, the meeting of clarion and bright colors that are part of Mexican culture, make the work lively and dynamic. Montse through her work shows great character, the colors are given with decision, there is no afterthought, it is fast and of great impact. A composition of color, open spots without contour lines, joined to each other, tones that mix or overlap. The colors are the focal point of the work, they seem to breathe in space, they give life to an expressive abstract structure. Montse uses the spray can to create her work, this inevitably refers to the mind, to the works of Street Art, but her tile is to be found in abstract art. Montse’s work has the expressive capacity of great abstract works that find strength through color. In particular there is similarity with the early works of Kandinsky and Pollock. Ultimately, Montse’s work gives the viewer a moment of wild emotion, observing the work means running with the soul together with the jaguar, being transported into unknown dimensions.
Art Curator Vanessa Viti
Montse ZuĂąiga
Mexican Jaguar
Motoo Saito
Thanks to new technologies, new scenarios are opening up. The contemporary artist’s activity now has even wider and more extraordinary expressive possibilities: the use of digital. New techniques of photo processing, image generation, pictorial effects that can also be applied freehand, renew the potential of painting and photography of the past. And so it happens for the Japanese artist Motoo Saito that through the search for a personal identity led him on this incredible journey: the media. His work has evolved becoming unique and stylistically recognizable. His artistic maturity led him to translate a fantasy, an idea or a sensation into something sensitive: the artist who confronts an audience in search of meaning and emotions, of symbolic and sometimes even pragmatic values, manages to catapult the observer inside the work being overwhelmed by the whirlwind of shapes and colors that Motoo represents with great harmony and elegance. The real artistic innovation in the digital age lies precisely in the ability to generate forms capable of conveying content to be shared, leaving - in the same way - space for the intuition and personal growth of the individual. Motoo Saito is a master of creativity in this.
“Creativity is contagious. Pass it on “ (Albert Einstein)
Art Curator Maria Cristina Bianchi
Motoo Saito
Harmonized Moonlight Night
Motoo Saito
Harmonized Morning
Motoo Saito
Hellish Storm
Motoo Saito
Peaceful Paradise
Motoo Saito
Venetian Fashion
Nacho Peinado “White. A blank page or canvas. So many possibilities“ (Stephen Sondheim)
Nacho Peinado is a self-taught Spanish artist who was born in A Coruña. He is a painter, a sculptor, a ceramist and also a photographer. Nacho’s multifaceted and multidisciplinary creative journey starts from the idea that every blank piece of paper is nothing more than a path towards new discoveries; a process in which it is not important to desperately seek for new things, but the essential element is to always have new eyes and to keep an open mind. In his instinctive, colorful and sometimes voluntarily primitive compositions, the depicted figures and characters seem to come out of the artist’s dreams and nightmares, by representing and expressing his deepest fears and strengths, lights and shadows in a continuous game of opposites. The result is a melting pot of styles and techniques, used and combined in order to transcend the expressive limitations and to open the doors of perception and emotions in a psychic universe which is not dominated by logic and reason. In Nacho’s powerful and fascinating artworks, the aim is to liberate the need to create and to establish a deep connection and a profound dialogue between art and the inner self: drawing becomes the key that unlocks the box of imagination and lets the feelings fly high. He continuously experiments with various media and techniques because, in his vision,the world pragmatically often ends where our language ends, but creativity is an endless river in which everything flows and nothing is unthinkable. This approach establishes an infinite cycle where the actions of imagining and painting become the two spokes of a wheel which never stops turning.
“The world is but a canvas to our imagination“ (Henry David Thoreau)
Art Curator Erika Gravante
Nacho Peinado
Not logical or reasonable
Nacho Peinado
Queen
Nacho Peinado
Wild
Naomi Scala aka eN.aart “When art has changed, it’s because the world was changing” (Corita Kent)
eN, was born as Naomi Scala, and she’s a photographer of Italo-American origins, although she calls herself a gipsy for her DNA composed of migrants, travelers and artists, whose footsteps will follow soon. She decides not to use her real name, like every photographer, she wants to be invisible during her shoots, showing the modern society that she witnesses constantly. Her degree in art let her discover different artistic techniques but at the end she chooses to use paint where she will incorporate images made out of flowers. Eager to learn, she graduated in environmental Architecture and she will gain a master at Politecnico di Milano. After this, She will understand that her true passion is photography and after having worked for national geographic she continues to perfect her photos. In her works are hidden important messages that are based on social issues such as feminism, noticeable as well in this series that are representing iconic women followed by deep and important thoughts. In her works we can find a minimal contemporary pop style which marries the strengths of the message with the freedom of her creativity. Her works represent different aspects of the art world where there are no boundaries between old and contemporary. We can define Naomi like a creator of images where the protagonists are caught in a moment of transformation.
Art Curator Erika Gravante
Naomi Scala aka eN.aart
Cheeeeeze
Naomi Scala aka eN.aart
She comes in colors ev’rywhere
Naomi Scala aka eN.aart
The hole
Naomi Scala aka eN.aart
Trust me! NO!
Naomi Scala aka eN.aart
Why not?
Nathalie Gribinski
Through her artworks, the Franco-American artist Nathalie Gribinski highlights emotions, bright colors and expressions belonging to the existence of the human being. She does not look for precise themes, but extrapolates different symbols and ideas from what surrounds her, inserting these into her paintings, emphasizing in this way her love for art. By inviting the viewer to immerse himself/herself in her artworks and open the imagination, the artist wants that one can benefit from that vibrant and abstract dream world that is hidden in the soul. As in Dancing Butterflies, contrasts, light and darkness create a dynamic tension full of strength and determination. This sense of movement flows into every corner of the canvas, emphasizing the constructive beauty of the individual figures and generating a halo of mystery through the use of black as in the background. The butterflies dance rhythmically in an attempt to free themselves and emerge from the work itself, floating in a fourth space-time dimension, understood as an aesthetic, expressive and compositional variable. While in Dream Park, where there is a similarity to Alexander Calder’s graphic artworks, Nathalie prefers to focus on the purity of form, by enhancing the grace and beauty of this great constellation of two-dimensional figures, united by fine and wavy lines that create a symphonic harmony. The whole is captured by an imperceptible movement: everything is pure poetry that is closely linked to abstract art. The attention is not focused on the objectivity of the design, but it aims to capture a great symbolic value: the ability of every single stroke to come alive, unleashing fantasy and imagination in the observer. Finally, in Glory of the Bird the use of color, which reflects the changing emotional experiences of the artist, gives rise to a painting rich of vibrations, fleeting emotions and spiritual energy. From all of that intensity, a strong dynamism comes back into play: inside the canvas everything seems moving vertically, as to recall the continuous flapping of the birds’ wings, creating an atmosphere so alive, at the limit of the surreal.
“Just as you can compose colors or shapes, you can compose movements” (Alexander Calder)
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Nathalie Gribinski
Dancing Butterflies
Nathalie Gribinski
Dream Park
Nathalie Gribinski
Glory of the Bird
Nic.kda “Nothing great in the world has ever been accomplished without passion” (Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel)
Nic.kda is a German artist with an interest in art and architecture. She began to paint and experiment abstract practices, using acrylic colors. Her art, surpassing the figure, represents a continuous experimentation with a thousand shades. This artistic avant-garde has characterized the entire twentieth century, with works of art “pure”, abstract, not figurative. The roots of contemporary abstraction can already be found in Romanticism, Impressionism and Expressionism, where artists place a greater emphasis on the visual sensation of things and not on the representation of them. This search for perceptions of reality in the representation of images, leads directly to the construction of the artistic language of abstract art. The neoplasticism of the group Destijl, and in particular Piet Mondrian, and Paul Klee, are the example of an avant-garde geometric abstraction with the background of the search for something that is both mystical and scientific. Mondrian, in particular, was interested in the new abstract language that combined art and architecture. After a period spent among the ranks of post impressionists, he began to take an interest in geometric abstraction and the use of primary colors and their complex relationships with geometric shapes and lines. This gradual transition has affected artists of all kinds who have begun to experience impressions, forms and feelings. Nic.kda in her work brings to the extreme the process of reduction and decomposition of the cubist image, creating an art in which the structural elements are limited to vertical and horizontal lines, to primary colors such as yellow, blue, white and black. A radically simplified world that of “Strandgut” made by Nic.kda, with fundamental elements reduced to two or three; so essentialized as to leave the viewer a feeling of meditation on values that have nothing material but just spiritual.
“True happiness comes from the joy of deeds well done, the zest of creating things new” (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Nic.kda
Strandgut // Floatsam
Patrícia Patylene The paintings of the artist Patrícia Patylene are the result of a strong union between her passion for painting and 3D modelling. They are real sculptures on canvas: they are dense, full-bodied and have different textures, as if they were sculptures. To emphasize the sense of depth, the artist uses different materials to compose the various textures of her artworks, such as sand, sawdust, mud, ash and much more. She always looks for new materials to represent different and unusual shapes. Patrícia finds inspiration in every element of everyday life, even for everything that can be unnoticed or ruined by time. Moreover, nature is fundamental: through her artworks, in fact, one can see unknown territories and the great beauty of the surrounding environment. One example is Black Hole: it would seem an enormous hydrographic basin framed from space. The observer’s gaze looks at every single inlet and penetrates into an indefinite and mysterious universe. Everything that ends up inside disappears totally from sight, arriving in another unknown dimension, from which every element can reborn. One has the curiosity to enter that darkness, to look inside it and discover places never seen before, to venture into the abysses, until reaching the core, the primary component of the work. The painting turns out to be a project open to perceptions and interpretations, aiming at the user’s subconscious and succeeding in stimulating optical-sensorial sensations. While in Ocean the essence of the material emerges from the canvas: an immense expanse opens up that follows the shades and the swaying of the sea almost in storm. From all these ripples one can admire a coral reef that turns from red to orange. Even a large ocean can be a parallel universe, made up of an infinite galaxy of marine and plant species. Every tonality is so vivid and penetrating that it involves anyone who observes the work. As in the constellations, this three-dimensional space is made by numerous details, a multitude of hidden cracks from which one cannot escape. Finally, in Shadows a beam of light, surrounded by various shadows, penetrates the canvas radiating the surrounding atmosphere. In this case one can see the presence of a high level of penetration of the matter, since it is the matter itself that, melting on itself, creates a miscellany with different cavities. The bound between the cohesion of matter and the transformative power of the forces of nature finds representation in this chromatic expanse. The user feels the need to immerse himself/herself completely in the artworks of Patrícia Patylene and to let himself/herself go, in order to begin a journey into his/her own introspection and deepest emotions.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
PatrĂcia Patylene
Black Hole
PatrĂcia Patylene
Ocean
PatrĂcia Patylene
Shadows
Pauline Schulze
The German artist and designer Pauline Shulze fully embraces the concept of the MADS exhibition “Dressme” literally dressing her works. Her art best exemplifies how the concept should prevail over aesthetics. In today’s world based on the outward appearance of things, superficiality and a strong desire to appear, Shulze makes a statement of simplicity and naturalism. In her work the artist literally pastes fabrics on canvas, combining them with flat color backgrounds. In the case of the work “Connected” a soft background with delicate colors receives a cut of white raw cotton painted with light blue and three more pieces of fabric. Nowadays the reality that surrounds us prevents us from dreaming. We are constantly bombarded by images such as advertising and television that cloud our judgment and turn off our imagination. Fashion is inspired by colorful fabrics and textures. This prompts the artist’s choice to use raw cotton: it is a challenge launched by the artist to her viewers in order to simulate their imagination. Faced with an almost white work, contemporary viewers are somewhat baffled and feel deprived of what they have been accustomed to: colors, sounds, quick flashes. This drives them to use their imagination to fill the void left by the artist. Conversely, viewers may decide to distance themselves from their first impression and to concentrate instead on the calming image of white and light blue. They have the opportunity to stop for a moment and, once again, take a deep breath distancing themselves from the chaotic world. Shulze’s work is certainly a conceptual art. It draws lessons from Dadaism and it approaches Arte povera through the choice to use raw and natural materials, rejecting the idea of mass production. “Connected” is proof that a strong emotional charge can be transmitted even by the simplest material, just like a piece of white cloth.
Art Curator Giorgia Massari
Pauline Schulze
Connected
Peach Pair Peach Pair is a digital artist who, after a degree in music and the study of the Buddhist religious concepts, decided to deepen her passion for art. For this reason, a lyrical value and an intense symphony emerge from her works. Through Digital Art, traditional disciplines such as painting, drawing and sculpture have radically developed: this helps the artist to imagine and visualise her work. The detail that excites her the most is the desire to produce ever-changing visual effects, combined with a great adventurous spirit. The artist draws with the mouse and each movement is highly expressive, almost as if it was a pictorial brushstroke on a painting. Peach Pair achieves an excellent link between technology and art, creating a positive and pleasant influence for the viewer. In Bleeding Hearts, a vase of flowers winds towards the sun. There is a juxtaposition between the axes of the work: the vertical one corresponds to the sun, crossing and dividing the painting into two sections until it reaches the vase; moreover, this verticality is recalled by the protraction of the branches with their bright green leaves. Instead, the horizontal axis coincides both with the horizon line, beyond the mountain, and with the other stems branching out from the vase with those rich magenta-colored flowers. As for the background, there is a series of shades that perfectly connect with the elements of the work. The artist was inspired by the music of Norah Jones and the art of David Hockney, one of the main exponents of Pop Art. While in It Takes a World, Peach Pair invites the viewer to take part in a “declaration of resistance”, that emerged with the US elections in 2016. In the first part of the work, which has been placed in the background, there is the American Constitution, to recall the commitment and all the motivation to have in the “resistance”, as well as to observe and respect the fundamental principles of the nation. Above it is written “We the People - E Pluribus Unum”, another reminder for all those who profess respect for the dignity, holiness and equality of all human beings. Moreover, six raised hands represent the multi-ethnic diversity of the country, as the issue concerns any person, regardless of skin color, religion and much more. In the last section is placed the great American flag: the 50 white stars have been replaced by an image of the Earth superimposed on the poem “New Colossus” by Emma Lazarus (an inscription that also appears on the Statue of Liberty), as a beacon of hope and light (I lift my lamp beside the golden door!). Finally, in The Orchard a naturalistic and perfectly symmetrical landscape emerges, inspired by the works of Gustave Klimt, as in the Farm with birch trees. Each tree has its own space within the painting and the whole creates a harmonious vegetable symphony. As in Klimt’s paintings, there is a sense of order and stability of perception. Moreover, the presence of orderly vertical straight lines and small horizontal segments evoke the structure of a precious Art Deco fabric. The work is indissolubly linked to the gentle melody of Keith Jarrett with “Köln Concert”.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Peach Pair
Bleeding Hearts
Peach Pair
It Takes a World
Peach Pair
The Orchard
Peter Bobbett “The happiness of a man in this life does not consist in the absence, but in the mastery of his passions” (Alfred Tennyson)
Peter Bobbett is a self-taught artist, who from an early age has found art a fascinating way to channel his imaginative mind and to create. He loves to explore, from the abstract to the fluid, the landscape, the portrait and the comic strip. “Moving colours” created by the artist is inspired by the imagination to build his abstract composition of geometric type. The form is the result of the encounter between the artist and his world, in an alternation of empathy and abstraction. The term “abstractionism” contains several non-figurative experiences and is opposed to the objective reproduction of reality, due in part to the spread of photography. Abstract art, in fact, is the one that does not represent reality, but seeks to express its contents of the paintings in the free composition of lines, shapes and colors, without reference to the outside world. The affirmation of this art is a logical stage in the evolutionary process of modern pictorial philosophy. After the nineteenth-century rebellion against academic art, after the geometric and prospective experimentation of Cubism and the affirmation of the dominance of emotion over aesthetics, abstract paintings eliminate the subject and its recognizable figurative representation, creating a revolutionary artistic language. Peter linked to the expressive and symbolic function of color, with “Moving colours” producing emotions and moods. Almost the entire surface of the painting is occupied by an irregular multicolored geometric composition, whose lines create regular lattices inside, in which the observer can space his imagination. These signs are made with a minimal figurative language reminiscent of a vortex that almost seems to want to protrude out of the picture.
“An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all” (Oscar Wilde)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Peter Bobbett
Moving Colours
ReCreativeArtwork “My fault, my failure, is not in the passions I have, but in my lack of control of them” (Jack Kerouac)
ReCreativeArtwork, was born in Norway and is a non-practicing lawyer. She is a self-taught artist, who mainly does abstract art. She loves to express herself creatively through art and so began to paint, first with normal acrylic painting, mainly realizing geometric shapes. She has also recently discovered acrylic casting, alcoholic inks and spray paints. For her works she rarely chooses brushes, preferring the use of everyday materials such as paper, glasses and other. For the artist in the pictorial act is important to follow the flow and find joy in what comes out of mixing colors. This is a strong metaphor for life and acts as a mirror of our convictions. Almost always comes out a painting different from the one originally imagined. Fantasy and experimentation are two main tools that the artist uses, not following specific rules or theories. Is fluid art. In joining the colors they are able to create the same effects similar to marbled paper, as can be seen from “Legally Fashionable(u)”, in which some patterns reproduce the patches of color of a marble surface, proposing shapes and colors present in nature. Her works do not express an objective or subjective reality, but release a tension that in great quantity has accumulated in the artist. It is an action not conceived and not designed in the modes of execution and in the final effects. A pictorial technique very similar to the “Action painting” experimented by the American artist Jackson Pollock, who was one of the major exponents.This type of painting consists, in fact, in pouring or dripping the colors directly from the tube or jar on a canvas placed on the ground. “So I feel closer to the painting, I can cross it, I can approach it from all sides and enter it, literally,” Pollock said.
“Curiosity about life in all of its aspects, I think, is still the secret of great creative people” (Leo Burnett)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
ReCreativeArtwork
Dress In Layers
ReCreativeArtwork
Legally Fashionable(u)
ReCreativeArtwork
See Through Velvet
Regina Dantas “There’s nothing more inspiring than the complexity and beauty of the human heart “ (Paulo Coehlo)
Regina Dantas was born in Belo Horizonte, Brazil. She graduated at the Guignard School of Visual Arts and she is currently living and working in Rio de Janeiro. Regina’s art focuses on the investigation and research for musicality and harmony by experimenting with colours, forms, textures and materials with the aim of reinterpreting the world around her in its countless facets. In the exhibited series daydreams she shows, by using the art of mandala, five feelings using circular motions and circles to define a sacred space. Vanity, laziness, charm, perseverance and hopefulness are represented by using the circle that corresponds to spiritual perfection and its symbolic meanings strongly connected with both life and death in a circle of continuous birth and evolution. Moreover it includes the acceptance of the conflicting sides we all have within ourselves. The use of different shades of light blue and blue give a meaning to the imagination. The black colour signifies the need of reflection and purification, a pause to free herself, on the other hand the violet implies a state of meditation and creativity. These artworks are like labyrinths that are helping us to find our center or the emotions explained above. Vanity implies the frivolous appreciation of one’s qualities as well as the self. Laziness it’s a reflection of someone that neglects the enrichment avoiding the Charm is nothing else but that strength that attracts everything you desire, like an elegant call. Perseverance it’s translated into that tenacity to achieve something. Hopefulness suggests faith in the waiting, which is the base of her thought. Regina with this series wants to point out how important it is not to have everything under control otherwise we wouldn’t be able to feel those emotions and have those feelings.
Art Curator Erika Gravante
Regina Dantas
Daydreams 1
Regina Dantas
Daydreams 2
Regina Dantas
Daydreams 3
Regina Dantas
Daydreams 4
Regina Dantas
Daydreams 5
Renata Lempicka “For me I only want the sweet Muses, as Virgil calls them, to take me to those sacred places and their sources, away from anxieties and worries and the need to do something every day against my will” (Tacitus)
In Greek mythology they are Olympian gods, daughters of Zeus and Mnemosyne, the Memory, and are in the wake of Apollo. In Greece they represented the ideal of Art, one of the greatest representations of the divine. The Muses were invoked by poets so that they could inspire their lyrics. Hence the modern use of the term, especially in the artistic field, as a source of inspiration, a person or object that inspires the imagination and mind of the artist, then leading him to create a work of art. They have always been depicted in the history of art as beautiful women who enchanted the minds and hearts of men. The Polish artist Renata Lempicka with the work entitled “Muse” gives a modern representation of a muse. Renata represents with human features the inspiration that strikes her unexpectedly and leads her to transfer the energy and strength received on the canvas. The contrast between the muse’s clothes and the background against which the figure stands are representative of how this inspiring energy suddenly ignites and it is so disruptive. The artist’s energetic and elongated brushstrokes manage to give the idea of energy and sudden, fast movement, like the wind that suddenly creates a vortex and destabilizes calm. And just like a whirlwind, inspiration moves the artist’s soul. The color chosen by the artist for the muse’s dress is also representative: red has always been the symbol of passion and life energy. And it is precisely the passion for art that guides the hands of the artists along the wefts of the canvas, to fill it with colors and meaning.
Art Curator Silvia Grassi
Renata Lempicka
Muse
Romana Jelínková “The color blue responds more to my visual language and with blue I can best express my thoughts” (Romana Jelínková)
Romana Jelínková is a Czech artist who has a passion for nature and human feelings, emotions and the energy of what surrounds her. She also uses alternative tools such as a spatula, natural materials and her hands to make a painting: in this way, the artist is inextricably linked to the pictorial material. The focal point of her work is dark blue, placing it at the center of each of her paintings as well as in drawing or porcelain. In fact, in Wild Daisies this shade invades both real and mental space with its power and strength, creating a fusion of art and life. In this way, one can witness to its transformation from pictorial matter to a moment of indescribable poetry. Lines, contours, shapes and perspectives are absorbed by that single-color drawing, which is unfirming and compact, that will color the space of the canvas in its totality. Just as for the French artist Yves Klein, famous for his Monochromes and “his” blue, for Romana this nuance and its use is a search for style and a philosophical model. Blue invites us to embark on a journey into our soul, a personal spiritual search: looking at it, the observer’s gaze is infinitely lost as the essence of color becomes animated by a permanent inner movement. Several decisive and dynamic signs prevail, and the whole creates delicate daisies. The meaning of such a flower contains above all purity and innocence, spontaneity and patience. Appreciated for the beauty of its apparently simple beauty, in this work the daisy becomes “wild”, to symbolize a youthful and carefree innocence, free from any sense of guilt. The aim is to create an artwork that actively involves the public, between candid feelings and an enveloping serenity, in order to make it participate in the painting itself.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Romana Jelínková
Wild Daisies
Sanna Marja “The true art of memory is the art of attention” (Samuel Johnson)
“Compassionate art” under the guidance of her grandmother, that’s how we could describe the artworks of Sanna. Her grandmother used to invent stories in order to entertain her grandchildren. After her death, the artist understands how important it is to have an imaginative mind and how important those stories were. Stories that talked about compassion between one another and towards nature. The day after the grandmother’s death, she found herself on the floor, in front of an white canvas and with a brush in her hand and she felt that her spirit was guiding and encouraging her to paint.
Sanna Marja
Her works can be compared to those tales she used to listen to, they express timeless concepts that resemble a slide full of emotions and feelings. It’s a dimension without a logic but where the space creates and describes the sensibility of the artist. Compassion is the key to read sanna’s works where she wants to transmit good-will to the audience. Enjoying the moment trying to treasure it.
Art Curator Erika Gravante
Sanna Marja
Embrace, you
Sanna Marja
Release, innerpower
Sarah Peguero “The hours I spend in front of the easel are pure contemplation, happiness and balm for my soul. When I paint, the world outside my studio could end, and I would not notice” (Sarah Peguero)
These are the words that Sarah Peguero attributes to her love for art. She was born and raised in the Caribbean, later she moved to Paris to learn French and study fashion illustration. She has exhibited her paintings in numerous galleries, art shows and associations in Denmark, where now she lives. What you notice immediately, looking at her works, is the mastery in the use of color, both in the most lively, shouted forms, than in the nuanced, rarefied, transparent ones. Her emotions, her way of seeing, her sensitivity are varied and profound; she paints straight away, the picture comes from something that is in her soul and that needs to come to light. Her art is inspired by that of abstract expressionism and this can be understood above all in the vibrant use of colors and geometric shapes that she attributes to the female figures she paints. She manages to uncover all her most intimate emotions with great skill through the brush. The violent signs that cross the canvases are strong expressions, mixed with the consciousness and the will to change, the dripped and furiously tangled colors refer to the complexity of existence. For this artist, art must not be an individual experience, but a collective one. Therefore, the choice of the subject becomes fundamental, it has to be “tragic and eternal”, with an universal meaning.
“The modern artist works to express an inner world; in other words: it expresses movement, energy and other inner forces ” (Jackson Pollock)
Art Curator Maria Cristina Bianchi
Sarah Peguero
Gossip
Shoma Morishita “Reality produces a part of art, the feeling completes it” (Jean-Baptiste Camille Corot)
Shoma Morishita was born in Japan and specializes in creative technology. He uses the latter to focus on the different forms of human perception, transforming into art the inner emotions of Japanese thought concerning the changing of the seasons. Technically, it uses GPGPU, a technology that performs generic computer calculations, to create a three-dimensional representation of countless autumn leaves. In the history of art there are many works dedicated to autumn, the most loved are certainly those of Atkinson Grimshaw, who with the precision of the Pre-raphaelite and his very personal drafting of the dominant color, takes us through the streets and in the country avenues, so vivid that we can smell the musk, the damp leaves of rain and whisper the sound of footsteps on the golden carpet of leaves. The warm color rendering of the autumn woods is immortalized by Van Gogh, in which we can almost feel the swarm of leaves, or in grandiose views where we feel all the wild power of the still untouched nature of America in the 19th century, in Frederic Edwin Church. Shoma in “Floating Universe of Autumn leaves” aims to evoke, through warm and golden colors, the sad but brilliant atmosphere of nature that is preparing for winter. The moment represents an intense and nostalgic sadness, connected with the autumn and the vanishing of the world. This according to Japanese culture denotes one of the four moods of the “furyu”, called “aware”. The term “furyu”, which in modern Japanese means “elegant”, was used in late medieval poems to indicate a vision of aristocratic and nostalgic life: literally means “wind and water flowing” and probably the Zen decided to make it his own for the ideas of naturalness, instantaneousness and ephemeral beauty that he brings with him, as well as for the characteristic of the wind to be felt but not seen, and that of the water to be formless, tangible yet elusive. In the wake of this culture, Shoma’s art is almost sensory, and transports us into a lost space. It represents the warmth of the world, which is expressed in the background through a series of countless autumn leaves dancing, emphasizing everything that is extremely simple, daily, spontaneous; a moment at the bottom quite banal and common in the life of every man.
“I will be an artist or nothing!” (Eugene O’Neill)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Shoma Morishita
Floating Universe of Autumn leaves
Sindhuja Galipalli “The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable” (Robert Henri) Sindhuja Galipalli, was born in India, but lives and works in Dubai. She is an emerging artist and pharmacist by profession. She is currently experimenting with acrylic and oil painting, but is constantly looking for new techniques. Through art, Sindhuja investigates a broad spectrum of emotional and psychological hues. Her intent is to show on the canvas the varied world of human emotions and moods. In the transition between 800 and 900 the psychological states have become the subject of study and study in various fields, and in particular in the literary and artistic. Scientific and technological advances have broadened knowledge of man, perception and psychology. All this had an impact on consciences and was reflected in the restless and multifaceted imaginary that the artists of the period represented in their works. The period in which this passage took place is between late Romanticism and Verism up to the avant-garde. Melancholy and alienation, contemplation and empathy, communion and harmony, fear and hallucination, radiance and enthusiasm, fusion and ecstasy, become the protagonists of the paintings of many artists. A figure certainly emblematic in the Italian art scene is Umberto Boccioni, an artist very interested in the expression of psychological interiority that realizes his triptychs entitled «Stati d’animo». Boccioni intended to create canvases that were faithful transcriptions in the form of lines and colors of different human emotions. For Sindhuja art is the same thing. “Happy Bloom” expresses the positive vibrations of a flowering personality. It represents an optimistic character full of happiness, hope and pleasure. A work with bright, warm colors that transmits joy to the viewer. “Burning Rage” in contrast, represents the pessimism that slowly envelops a person. Anger, depression, anxiety, dark greed that involve the subject in this abyss, surrounded by a feeling of powerlessness. “Strong essence” depicts a confident woman who can illuminate the atmosphere with her own light. In this strong work is the essence of passion, trust, power and charm. It is clear that each of her works is a “silent story” that turns to the eye and not to the ear, according to which the viewer needs nothing else than the work itself. Sindhuja with her art manages to infuse grace and ingenuity in her subjects, making fascinating her language that injects color directly into the veins.
“Life is the art of drawing without an eraser” (John W. Gardner)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Sindhuja Galipalli
Burning Rage
Sindhuja Galipalli
Happy Bloom
Sindhuja Galipalli
Strong Essence
Snježana Ćirković “Colours ripen overnight” (Alda Merini)
Snježana Ćirković is a self-taught abstract artist based in Vienna. Colours, motion and harmony define her artworks, by which she explores her inner self and her feelings. “Painting is for me a way to transmit all my energy and emotions, like an exciting journey where I am discovering hidden corners of my soul” – she says. The title of her artwork, Technicolor Dreams, refers to the famous cinematographic process of technicolor, the most widely used in Hollywood from 1922 to 1952. Famous for saturated and realistic colours it is evoked in this painting by the variety and brightness of the colours used by the artist, spread through full-bodied brushstrokes of different materiality. But, as suggested by the title of the painting, the colours of the rich Snježana’s palette bring to mind also the psychedelic atmosphere typical of dream, where the different layers of imagination, emotion and reality are intertwined. The painting by Snježana envelopes the viewer in this fantastic symphony of sensations, immerging him in a kind of colorful daydream.
Art Curator Marta Graziano
Snježana Ćirković
Technicolor Dreams
Sonnhild Kost “Creativity takes courage” (Henri Matisse)
Sonnhild Kost is a self-taught artist who lives and works in Germany. After having worked as a draftswoman for 35 years, she decided to take her artistic journey in order to be able to freely express and manifest her inner world. In the exhibited series, the artiso wants us to pay attention to some aspects of our life. In the fors work highlights sonnhild wants to stimulate us. The routine is easy, convenient, it saves us a lot of energy but at the same time it dries up our potential. The major issue is to get used to living with the automatic pilot losing everything that surrounds us. In the second artwork moment we understand the importance of the little things. What are considered small details are actually the most important things. In the last one patch, we notice the power of colors, the vital energy and the creative restlessness, the coloristic vivacity that express an authentic love for life. The painting expresses through colors the artist’s emotions. Sonnihld’s art, which goes from traditional to innovative digital painting,becomes an experience which is aimed at translating her feelings and deepest hidden tensions into colours and images: emotions that are way too powerful to be expressed through simple words. The objective of the artist is to create compositions that are able to emanate light, love, power and vital energy throughout the environment where they are exhibited, like mirrors reflecting her bright and fascinating psychic and emotional dimension.
Art Curator Erika Gravante
Sonnhild Kost
Highlight
Sonnhild Kost
Moment
Sonnhild Kost
Patch
Tjeerd Doosje
Tjeerd Doosje photographs beautiful, angelic girls on stages purposefully set for the occasion. His shots show an extreme care to obtain the perfect picture, the product of a thoughtful and careful plan from the angle chosen to the setting to the lights. They tell a story product of years of experience, passion and study. The results are breath-taking shots of vivid colours that transport us into a fairytale world, invited by kids with big eyes and flawless skin. Doosje ‘s little models pose as one could find on a fashion catalogue, each one perfectly inserted into their context and one can play searching each time the link between the model and the overall scenery. Often it is the colours of their clothing that calls back to their surrounding. Thus the warm yellow of a sweater compliments the orange-red of a carpet of fallen leaves, the pastel blue of a flowing gown the same of a blurred background, and the black of the shirts the grey of the wall. Sometimes the link is in the shapes, like the flowers blossoming both living around a girl and embroidered onto her dress.
Art Curator Guendalina Cilli
Tjeerd Doosje
Catinca (0508)
Tjeerd Doosje
Claartje (0201)
Tjeerd Doosje
Claartje (1019)
Tjeerd Doosje
Fay (0108)
Tjeerd Doosje
Merel en Roos (0101)
Tjeerd Doosje
Teline (0115)
Tjeerd Doosje
Teline (1213)
Tanti Yulianty “Art sweeps our soul from the dust of everyday life.” (Pablo Picasso) Tanti Yulianty, is an abstract artist self-taught. Currently resides in Doha, Qatar, but has Indonesian origins. She uses painting as a means of expression and every unique life experience nourishes all the artistic instincts of Tanti, necessary to create works of art. She loves to play with different materials and styles, such as acrylic painting and media, obtaining abstract works. Abstractionism is one of the leading trends in 20th-century painting and sculpture. It is a type of art that does not represent recognizable scenes or objects, but on the contrary consists of shapes and colors chosen for their pure expressive value. More or less pronounced, the abstract expression was not only a visual revolution, but a step forward by artists towards a better world. The idea of having a mission to accomplish, the foundation of abstractism, was a unique feature compared to other avant-garde movements. This current is, therefore, constantly in search of direct individual emotion. The same that Kandinskij manifests with his “improvisations” and “compositions”. Thus a world made of lines and colours is born that, finding inspiration in the sensations, becomes an expression of the psychic content, that is the so-called “inner necessity” of the artist. Each color is therefore the bearer of a precise emotional message, which is also associated with a specific acoustic meaning: in Kandinskij, painting and music in fact blend into a single form of synesthetic art, which impetuously overwhelms the viewer. Tanti who, from abstraction, make her poetics and inspired by the Russian artist, follow the flow letting her imagination be unleashed. From her works a powerful effect of dynamism transpires, as if the colors chase each other and move each other. In “The eye of the forest” wide brushstrokes of a dark green provide a rich spectrum of pigments that illuminates with the solemnity of the colored shades, creating an explosion of light. The sudden shattering of color vibrates against the retinas of the observer and echoes in her ears as the emotional and spiritual fear of this painting becomes a physical experience. With this landscape work, there is a representation of the environment devoid of idealization, in which trees and vegetation, plays of light and shade, acquire the dignity of autonomous subjects of the painting. Nature is already an art form that the artist must know and understand precisely by living it in close contact. This is what Tanti intends to do through art, explore the wonders of life and dedicate her energies to create something fascinating and exceptional.
“Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable.” (Robert Henri)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Tanti Yulianty
Blue cosmos
Tanti Yulianty
Eye of the forest
Tanti Yulianty
Love flower
Tatsuhiro Nozaki
“In the middle of the mellifluousness” is the result of Japanese Tatsuhiro Nozaki’s entire artistic experience, as the artwork eclectically represents both his past and present styles. “The main feature of my painting is to make the sky and the sea look fantastic. Lately, I’ve been trying fashion art because I have been inspired by fashion from my experience as a show model and portrait” writes the artist. What is most interesting about this piece is the predominance of sky on the virtual canvas and the absence of land - stars in this case where a model is sitting on- almost left black, painted only with the colour’s shuffling coming from the brushes above. A strong contrast between sky and earth that intentionally leads the viewer’s eyes to get immersed in a dreamy setting where the blue of the night dialogues gently with shades of pink, orange and red, maybe recalling to a stunning sunrise. The presence of the blonde model at the centre of the drawing, wearing a red outfit and posing - maybe in front of a photographer, or maybe just rehearsing for a future shoot - becomes another focal point of the drawing. The red’s semiotics suggest vital energy, both mental and physical. The use of this colour opposes passive energies by infusing a captivating spiritual and physical strength. “In the middle of the mellifluousness” is a honeyed and pleasant vision with powerful energy, thanks to a skilful use of colours and composition.
Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni
Tatsuhiro Nozaki
In the middle of the mellifluousness
Tehila Avraham “Turning off all the lights and observing the world every now and then is good. How strange it is that the world goes on anyway whether I observe it or not!” (Virginia Woolf)
Each of us leaves the imprint of his passage in this world, in the heart of those we love, in the memory of those we met, in the gestures we make every day. The world around us, on the other hand, runs fast, undeterred, and every day reserves us new surprises, new adventures. It is then up to us to grasp what beauty offers us. This is what the young Israeli artist Tehila (Glory) Avraham does with her unconventional art: she captures what life offers her unpredictable, to give life to surprising artistic creations that go beyond conventional schemes. She manages to give a truly unique interpretation of the world around her. In her work entitled “Beyond the world”, the artist manages to merge man, his life and his gestures, with the world that surrounds him, which progresses and does not stop. Man and reality thus merge with each other. Innovation and progress are now a fundamental part of our lives. But even a small gesture from us can change everything. The technique used by Tehila is surprising: she managed to create 30 shades of colors starting from the five primary colors. Furthermore, the richness of details in the representation of the hand leaves you speechless: it has recreated a real world on the fingers of one hand. Instead, thanks to the wide shades of color given to the background, the protagonist of the painting is highlighted even more. The viewer is forced to carefully observe every single detail and get lost in what the painting can tell him.
Art Curator Silvia Grassi
Tehila Avraham
Beyond the world
Terry Hulsing
Terry Hulsing is a self-taught artist always eager to try different artistic means, from acrylics to oils, to expand her passion for art. She recently discovered a particular interest in Fluid Art: a new great love that helps her to overcome her own limits, without having control of the elements used, imagining and being surprised by the final result of the work. As in Dreamers Illusion where the chemical reaction, resulted by the merge between the White House paint and an acrylic extender, caused the formation of cells from which the painting originates. The selection of the shades to be used for the creation of the work is of crucial importance as the artist is careful not to confuse them with each other in order not to create wrong sequences. For example, water green infuses serenity in the observer and, being a natural nuance linked to the sea, it is extremely relaxing and pleasant. While purple, which symbolically represents mystery and magic, is the color of spirituality par excellence; moreover, it stimulates the mind and creativity and, on an emotional level, soothes from sadness. The overall movement within the painting attracts the attention of the observer, transporting him into his moods, reaching a carefree place with any kind of concerns in it. All this strikes the subconscious, giving a wide space to the unreal and dreamlike. Imagination and interpretation are of vital importance: in this way, every person can be involved by this work, letting himself be lulled by a sense of peace and quietness.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Terry Hulsing
Dreamers Illusion
Tiia Henriksson
The first traces of the use of gold date back to Ancient Egypt, where this color was used to best represent the divinities, as this is a shade that cannot be reproduced and, for this reason, alludes to the unreal, the unreachable, to something mystical, in a way to underline what is sacred. In all this, the artist Tiia Henriksson proposes an updated vision in the use of this color: the essence and form of every detail in the painting Pour the gold on me, baby! is entirely sprinkled with a single, broad golden shade, creating a dazzling monochrome. And it is in this way that one can notice the use of gold as the subject of the work, as reality, as truth and beauty, idealism and action, fertility and royalty. Gold as light or as a natural and mineral element: a creative mine that the artist discovers within herself, capable of expanding the soul and matter, expanding her perceptive and cognitive abilities. A nuance that turns out to be one of the purest materials presents: everything that was external now becomes internal and the universe is concentrated in the only possible reality, the one of the sensitivities of this color that leads to absolute freedom. The result of this experimentation corresponds to the purification of reality, namely the surrounding environment is annulled by virtue of the innocence released by the color which is itself a work of art. Reality becomes part of the ideal artist’s world, that keeps constantly changing up to “becomes gold”. In this cathartic process art is mainly a therapy and a way to channel the artist’s feelings, involving great emotions and moods.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Tiia Henriksson
Pour the gold on me, baby!
Tim Guse “The muse has kissed me and now live appears in abstract shapes and colors” (Tim Onday)
Tim Onday also known as Tim Guse, is a young and talented German artist; he has been entering the world of art for some years with an abstract tendency. For Tim, color is not an accessory tool: it is a choice, indeed a vocation. His ability to involve the observer, to initiate a dialogue with him, a path in which colors speak to each other, is evident in his works. The artist thus triggers a pleasant, alienating state of mind in which to continually walk the traits of the figures he represents in search of unlikely similarities, but with the certainty that part of those faces belongs to us. Through the most disparate figures with decomposed shapes, Tim expresses his most intimate emotions: the amazement, the expectation, the anxiety of our age, especially in expressive works such as the “Split” and a “Balance” of considerable beauty. If the artist reconstructs reality, only after filtering it, breaking it down and analyzing it, the observer has the task of carrying out the reverse process, of going beyond the first impression, penetrating into the deepest folds of the image.
“Art is anything you can get away with” (Andy Warhol)
Art Curator Maria Cristina Bianchi
Tim Guse
Balance
Tim Guse
Split
Tim Guse
Shining
Tina Corrales-Mader
The artist presents us with a multi-technique painting of a sleeping woman. Looking at it, Giorgione’s “Sleeping Venus” comes immediately to mind. The subject shows us not an alluring seducer, wielding all weapons of womanhood, but a simple, innocent and defenceless woman. There is indeed an absolute simplicity in Maeder’s woman. She is naked, but her nakedness is not to please someone or elicit a scandal. Instead, it is perfectly inserted in the context of her surroundings. Men are born naked and only naked they can really fit into nature. Sleeping, the woman does not care for any potential witness and we are not part of the scene, it’s simply our eyes glancing over. Someone might even think the woman is not sleeping, but dead, lying in the place of her eternal rest while flowers slowly take over her body. The title of the piece “In Dreams” prevents us from a similar interpretation. Yet, it is difficult to deny the return to nature, shedding clothes and everything born from man’s hands. We can imagine her stopping for a moment and deciding to lie down to take a pause from the outside world. Probably the woman is still too well groomed to have forgone the modern world, Yet, for an instant, she belongs here. Given society’s demand for modern womanhood, this pause is a rare luxury. In this pause, raw beauty blossoms just as the field flowers around the woman’s body. For now, she does not answer to anyone but herself. She does not need to hide in the latest fashion, or to alter her features with make-up. She is alone and sleeping and she is self-sufficient. Sleep is one of Maeder’s main themes and a constant in her works, where dreams play a fundamental role igniting a new inspiration. In the minutes before going to sleep, the artist’s mind blooms with new ideas that she must sketch down or they would disappear. The woman’s dream is a mystery we will never know. Lips, eyebrows, the whole face is relaxed, she is neutral in her sleeping. No nightmare is troubling her, or is laying heavy on her chest, and yet the dream is not beautiful enough for a smile either. Quite the contrary - if we take a step back, the eyebrows almost form a frown. Even in this parenthesis of Elysium, something of the outside world keeps bothering the woman. It is a memory maybe, or a person she’s lost, or even something too vague to be grasp on canvas and explained.
Art Curator Guendalina Cilli
Tina Corrales-Mader
In dreams
Tine Mynster “Let me, oh let me immerse my soul in colors; let me swallow the sunset and drink the rainbow” (Khalil Gibran)
Tine’s artistic work is a complete immersion in a sea of vibrant colors, the viewer is completely transported by the current of them, as in a shipwreck is catapulted into a whirlwind of emotions. Big brushstrokes, pasty and vivid colors play the role of protagonists on the stage of the canvas, light tones that contrast with dark and gloomy backgrounds, contrasts of colors, light and shadow, are characteristics that make Tine’s works strongly evocative and suggestive. Like Friedrich’s “The wanderer above the sea of fog”, so the viewer feels in front of Tine’s works: overwhelmed by the sublime. In fact, the work of the Danish artist could be defined as a “romantic abstract”, there is no presence of real forms, only colors disconnected from any constraint, therefore abstract, and at the same time it is romantic because it arouses deep feelings. Brushstroke on brushstroke, layers and layers of color, as if to condense in them all the passion that the artist possesses and that she wants to convey, Tine’s artistic work is born from instinct, from impulse and the creative act is clearly visible . Her works are ardor, they are so intense as to overwhelm and make the soul jump of the viewer.
Art Curator Vanessa Viti
Tine Mynster
At a distance but close by
Tine Mynster
Most of all is love
Tine Mynster
Sunrise
Toby King-Thompson “Both art and the artist do not have their own identity, but they acquire it in the encounter of one with the other.” (Harold Rosenberg) Toby King-Thompson is a contemporary London artist. He has a rare perceptive phenomenon called synesthesia. Toby sees words and names in color. So his fascination with color and his perception are considered truly innate gifts. His art recalls the canons of abstract expressionism, considered one of the most important artistic currents of the postwar period. Developed in America, it represents the leading phenomenon in the general affirmation climate of non-figurative painting, which characterized the second half of the 1940s and 1950s. It was the first typically American artistic phenomenon to influence the rest of the world and helped to radically move the artistic capital from Paris to New York, and more generally from Europe to the United States of America. The term “Abstract Expressionism” is due to Alfred H. Barr jr. who coined it in 1929 by commenting on a painting by Vasily Kandinskij. The movement takes its name from the combination of the emotional and self-expressional intensity of German expressionists with the anti-figurative aesthetics of European abstraction schools such as Futurism, Bauhaus and synthetic Cubism. In addition, the movement possesses an image of rebellion, anarchist, highly idiosyncratic and, according to the thinking of some, rather nihilistic. In its genericity, the term “Abstract Expressionism” has the merit of highlighting two fundamental attributes of the whole current: the central role assigned to the artist’s individuality and the development of an abstract pictorial language that represents perception and reality.Toby in his works, through the use of acrylic painting, expresses his daily visions imprinting everything he feels in the depths of his soul, free from aesthetic conventions. At the center of his work is the individuality of the artist who puts his own existence at stake in a psychological and spiritual sense. The canvas becomes the place of the artist’s being and of the art itself, in which it conveys its emotions and its vital energy. His is an art understood in the sense of “Action” not in the motor sense, gestural, existential and his works exist because he chooses to act. “Action” is understood as taking the risk of painting the picture, letting it arise and reveal itself at the moment. “Action”, therefore, as a self-confirmation of the artist’s existence.
“If I were called upon to define briefly the word Art, I should call it the reproduction of what the senses perceive in nature, seen through the veil of the soul” (Paul Cezanne)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Toby King-Thompson
Elation
Toby King-Thompson
Hope
Toby King-Thompson
Waves of Relief
Tracy White “The only true source of art is our heart, the language of an infallibly pure soul. A work that has not flowed from this source can only be artificial. Every authentic work of art is conceived in a holy hour and given birth in a happy hour, often without the artist himself being aware of it, through the inner impulse of the heart.” (Caspar David Friedrich)
Tracy White is an American artist with a strong passion and interest in art. She experiences painting, mixed media and sculpture. Her life path is the mirror of her painting. Art for the artist has, in fact, always provided a way out of the confusion and turmoil of life. Tracy’s is an art of escape. A metaphorical, imaginative escape that offers a look elsewhere to find yourself and begin to imagine a better future. From today, for tomorrow. Art offers extraordinary escape opportunities, and artists are second to none. Many have practiced escape from the world, reinterpreting the latter through a different look from the real that surrounded them; Van Gogh, Paul Gauguin and the French impressionists among all. Tracy, through the canvas and brush finds comfort and can get lost in the pictorial process and devote herself to this completely. Making use of an abstraction lens describes intense personal moments incorporating rules and omissions, often involving the viewer through circular forms and impressions. “Life has put a Crack in My Soul” is an abstract work that evokes emotion, intellect and memory. The dominant colors are white and gold. The first is understood by the artist as absence of sound, place of purity, place of nothingness or place of the invisible, able to tell stories of silences, of progressive subtractions up to the threshold of nothingness. This “symbolizes beauty and strikes us as a great silence that seems absolute to us,” as Kandinskij explains. The second, gold, is a perpetually shining stainless element. Tracy through the use of these two colors paints those places where she would like to escape to reach her lost happiness again.
“Who wants to know more about me, that is, about the artist, the only one who is worth knowing, look carefully at my paintings to find out who I am and what I want. “ (Gustav Klimt)
Art Curator Federica D’Avanzo
Tracy White
Life has put a Crack in My Soul
tuxedodoom “Form itself, even if completely abstract ... has its own inner sound.” (Wassily Kandinsky)
Claudia Taccia was born in 1988, active as a painter and illustrator, forging her works under the pseudonym of “tuxedodoom” mixing techniques in order to achieve the characteristic texture, the acrylic dream. Tuxedoom is born based on contrasts; it’s the result of mixing what’s stormy in life, with the lightest colours. She plays with the idea that there is no such thing as objective representation, and that the mind, feelings, beliefs, moods and attitudes of the artist influenced and distorted even the most faithfully rendered depiction of people, landscapes, objects and moments in time. Her art is stronger than ever and it’s particularly suitable for the art collector who wants to have a pure emotional connection with her work. Abstract art is a release of the entire emotional charge of the artist. It appeared as a manifesto against naturalism, as a rebellion against the laws previously known. In abstract art, colors have the largest role, through them the artist communicates the whole story of the painting. By coloring, a painting speaks and provokes emotion. For a better understanding of Claudia’s work, you must open the door of your inner thoughts, feelings and mood.
Art Curator Erika Gravante
tuxedodoom
Une
Vanda Parker “Life for me is a gift and should be appreciated as a gift. I love people and life is for people. Sharing what I can express is the most beautiful thing in my life” (Vanda Parker)
Through these words, Vanda Parker praises a supreme and unequalled good, the life of every living being. Despite this complex moment that has put the entire planet to the test, the artist does not lose hope and is confident for the future. Is it possible to obtain, from such a dramatic situation, a precious gift? Tragedies bring with them changes of all kinds and reality is turned upside down. There are different ways of representing and telling it: it is precisely the purpose of Vanda’s visual and perceptive language, capable of compensating and supporting the public through her love for art. “Hands” is the key word of the whole process, to which the most significance is placed to contrast the spread of the virus. An instrument so important that it becomes part of the mind itself, like an articulation of it. Hands express the soul of each individual and they can give life to a unique language. With Wash your hand before the shake, Vanda Parker proposes an awareness-raising and purification campaign, by sharing with the observer a key message in this difficult period that the whole world is experiencing: the act of washing one’s hands becomes a true artwork, through the extraordinary and lively use of bright colors. This image is full of strength and light. The hand creates a non-verbal language that accompanies the words, intensifying and highlighting them with a crucial emotional scope, which strikes the interlocutor and provokes many emotions. At the same time, the viewer can immerse himself/herself in the painting and understand this invitation. A hymn to help and improve oneself with a small gesture that can make a huge difference.
Art Curator Alessia Perone
Vanda Parker
Wash your hand before the shake
Varda Levy
Varda Levy paints four portraits of women, each different and unique. Focusing on the portrait allows telling a story without being distracted by other elements safe for some accessorize. They float and pop out from an unreal background of colour, almost a non-place. Her women are real, people anyone could easily meet in their everyday life and their own uniqueness makes it hard to find red threads connecting them lest one wishes to generalize a certain femininity to every woman. There is still a certain interest in glamour in every portrait though each one expresses it in their own way. Thus a woman wears a large pair of glasses reminiscing of a diva, another a pair of precious earrings and another one yet a beautiful and bright necklace.
Varda Levy
Some even express their identity and creativity in their hair, reviving it with unusual and colourful dyes. Levy’s women are thoughtful, peaceful and serious, lost in their world of reflection, and we are not given any hint to discover what that world may be. We can try to guess and infer their lives outside this instant but the lack of external elements makes it impossible to have any confirmation and in the end it doesn’t even matter. We do not need to have proof of these women’s inner and private lives, to spy on them, to appreciate and respect their existence. We are told they are unique and this must be enough.
Art Curator Guendalina Cilli
Varda Levy
Diana
Varda Levy
Golden Brown
Varda Levy
Margo
Varda Levy
Shiba
Virginia Lozano Garcia “Art has a voice – let it speak “ (Rochelle Carr)
Virginia Lozano Garcia was born in Madrid and since a very young age she started to communicate through art. His grandfather was his mentor which infused in her the passion for art and taught her how to express her emotions and feelings onto canvas. After achieving the diploma as a graphic designer, she went back to her old passion and she picked up her brushes again discovering abstract art. She found it was the best and spontaneous way to convey her emotions. It is like a magic filter where colors are merged together creating lights and shadows, giving life to shapes that are nothing more than her feelings. A fluid paint that is able to transport the ink into another dimension creating a personalized palette that captures the continuous change of her emotions. Everything starts from an intuition, she wants the other person to get closer to what is her intuition by letting them feel what she feels. The canvas becomes a tabula rasa where the deepest feelings can be applied and transferred in a specific moment. In this picture, abstraction is for her the most immediate form of personal manifest against the modern dogmas,requirements and clichés which our society demands and expects. The energetic and vibrant brush strokes and the use of deep colours are aimed at reproducing the variety and multiplicity of the feelings that accompany the artist’s experiences. The work “Destellos en el mar” is inspired by the Indonesian island of Pantai Merah, characterized by its pink sand and turquoise water where everything becomes magical when at sunset the sun casts its shimmer onto the sea.
Art Curator Erika Gravante
Virginia Lozano Garcia
Flashes of the Sea
Wax
Wax comes spontaneously from the artistic mind of Rinaldo Alessandro Malvermi. Born in Bucharest, he grew up in Italy and currently based in Amsterdam, after an experience living in the US. Wax is both the alter ego of the artist and the protagonist of his pieces. The adventures and life experiences of Wax can’t help but evoke satiric strips, and are nothing more than casual life settings that everyone could potentially experience and witness. Every real artistic piece comes from the urgency to say something, and we can sense that the artist decided to delegate to Wax his urgency to express his own social and existential discontent, while maintaining an ironic and visually pleasant expressiveness for the viewers. Wax is an amorphous character which finds its corporeal dimension by almost possessing and embodying the individuals he wants to focus the attention on. In “Opium” we see Wax taking on the semblance of a woman - or even a man - smoking opium poppies alone on her/his doorstep in an undefined place that could be a desert of the Southern United States. Even the artist’s use of colours, extremely bright and saturated, evoke a captivating lysergic aura. The character seems to be waiting for someone, maybe for some guests, as the elegant and expensive outfit may suggest. But this does not represent the focal point of the artist’s provocation. What Wax wants to point out in “Opium” is a subtle message against capitalism. He seems to scream: “I wear elegant clothes for myself and not to nourish the social expectations in curating my appearance and in pleasing others aesthetically. I wear elegant clothes at home, in a desert, even while appreciating narcosis”.
Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni
Wax
Opium
Wildstahl
Jochen Krobath is an Austrian artist and engineer born in Bruck an der Mur. His peculiarity is the eclecticism of his work, able to shape unique artistic pieces due to the support of steel and to his artistic sensibility. “Wildstahl” is the result of this unique synergy between the artist’s technical background as project manager in metal construction, and his creative vocation. Wildstahl is now a company, a project to which Jochen gives an all-round contribution as product designer, steel artist and CAD-designer. “Canvas and pen were exchanged for sheet steel and a computer. The brush is called the mouse, colors are called vectors and pixels, the biggest secret is the shadow play that is thrown on the wall by the works. True to the motto: We bring sheet steel to life. Elegance meets rust, chaos meets perfection and dreams meet reality”.The interesting element of this operation is the possibility to apply this artistic formula to multiple objects of representation: humane figures, famous icons, urban landscapes and so on. The poetic quality of the artist coincides with impressing - through steel - his subjectivity and identifying style. Jochen’s artworks “Eye”, “Passion”, Face” are rigorously black and white. In art, black and white have the power to generate an immediate tension and to effectively communicate without any additional intermediaries.
Wildstahl
The match of black and white wants to demonstrate that the viewer doesn’t need any realistic elements or recognizable background for an authentic fruition: the viewer should instead get invested by the pure message entrusted to the chromatic contrast. These two colours coincide with “the end” of the chromatic circle: white contains all the colours, and recalls the idea of a fusion and luminous union. Black, on the other hand, represents an absence of colour, and it is often linked to an idea of emptiness and darkness. But together, black and white act on our perceptual system, communicating much more than their “traditional” acceptations: eye and mind get activated and interact with each other, looking unconsciously for deeper meanings, worlds and an intimacy evoked by this complementary combination. The black and white triptych by Jochen depicts details of the human figure: an eye, a facial close-up and a passionate kiss between two lovers that, thanks to their chromatic opposition and unique manufacturing, result to be even more intense and visceral. The exception is played by the fourth piece “Marilyn” as it is softly coloured. The artwork is an artistic homage to the iconic picture of Marilyn Monroe, and shows the consistency of the artist’s poetics: a versatile attitude in representing different subjects while maintaining that artistic encounter between creativity and the potential of the material, steel.
“Stay wild! Is the motto. Wildstahl gives its steel laser cuts with hand-finished surfaces a special ‘wild’ touch. Each individual work of art is unique thanks to a wide variety of techniques” Jochen Krobath
Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni
Wildstahl
Face 01
Wildstahl
Marilyn
Wildstahl
Passion
Wildstahl
The Eye
Yamauchi Sayaka
Yamauchi Sayaka is a Japanese advertising designer and illustrator. She mostly creates hand-painted artworks, often using Japanese pigments. “Mermaid” is a one-minute-long video in which the artist synergically merges an harmonic design and composition of the moving image with a fascinating use of bright colors. The video is a moving painting able to capture the viewer at a visceral level starting from the mermaid’s presence that, in her being charming and seductive, brings the audience on a marine and flowering journey. The mermaid is already per se a persuasive figure, capturing the sailors with her fascinating beauty, grace and magnetic melodies, but this video, in its being silent, focuses its attention only on the visual aspect and the dynamism of color and image, succeeding in being incisive. At the beginning of the video a rain of petals encounters an explosion of colorful seaweeds from which the mermaid reveals herself, looking for an eye-contact with her audience. Perhaps the mermaid wants to encourage the audience to an emotional surrender where the analytical vision is completely supplanted by a mere affective fruition, following the sensitive and vibrant video’s flow. The artwork is an invitation to lighten our gaze and let the mermaid - the irrational - immerse the viewers in unruly seas of dreams.
Art Curator Cecilia Terenzoni
Yamauchi Sayaka
Mermaid
Zlatan Woszerow “My inspiration comes from the act of creation itself, which consumes me completely being the source of indescribable satisfaction” (Zlatan Woszerow)
Emerging artist of Polish origins, Zlatan Woszerow thus attributes his artistic inspiration. His works have been exhibited in international shows. Inspired by art since childhood, he creates digital art centered around geometric shapes and vibrant color palettes. Starting from an abstract drawing or a portrait, the artist manages to create true masterpieces using the Ipad as a digital support, instead of a brush, his fingers and a virtual palette instead of colors. His -mainly- is an abstract digital painting, simple but impactful, made of simple elements and bright colors. His conception of art is very peculiar and extraordinary, because he wants to express subjective emotions in the form of colours and informal components. In his works we find a surprising balance, a strong rhythm and dynamism that drags the viewer inside the work itself, transported by different and contrasting emotions.
“Art is not what you see, but what you show others” (Edgar Degas)
Art Curator Maria Cristina Bianchi
Zlatan Woszerow
Greeny blue is in the air
Zlatan Woszerow
Poseidon’s gaze
Zlatan Woszerow
Rain of rays from X543