LISA SOLOMON
DONATELLA
SPAZIANI
Fleeting
Beauty
curated by Marinella
Paderni
What has become of the
image of beauty in contemporary artistic expression? Once the prerogative of
art, today beauty is no longer a sublime ideal but has become a social
constraint or need.
With the cult of the image, its symbolic value has shifted to the fields of
marketing, economy and fashion, leaving a new task to art: the denial of beauty,
turning it into an aesthetic and spectacular phenomenon that we have to seek in
places where we do not usually look — in the inner recesses of the human
mind, in memory or in the reality that apparently removes, distorts or corrupts
it.
Under the ashes of the romantic ideal and utopia, beauty — formerly lost
— has only changed its
future.
Lisa Solomon and
Donatella Spaziani treat the theme of beauty by touching on it without
addressing it directly.
Their work deals with a number of the themes belonging to the intimate female
world — introspection, the disappearance of the ego, memory, nostalgia,
the male and female genders, the symbolic space between the solid (Solomon) and
the void (Spaziani) of familiar domestic contexts — from which emerges a
new sensibility to beauty, having an oriental basis that tends to be existential
and philosophical.
While the American artist intervenes in our perception of reality by
deconstructing it thanks to the invention of ‘beautiful’ images of
elements that are, however, threatening (viruses, toxins, arms, contaminated
trees) and are represented with childlike forms and settings, the Italian artist
focuses on the beauty of the void, the reverberation of space as a place of
expression of oneself and the concept of ‘shadow’, moulding and
drawing as constructions of identity.
The definition of a
different type of beauty, neither overused nor stereotyped, is rendered thanks
to the fusion of various artistic styles and techniques combining to form an
image of beauty that is hybrid from all points of view.
For the exhibition entitled
‘Fleeting Beauty’, the artists have created two separate
‘environments’ that are linked by a new vision of beauty as a
spiritual
exercise.
Lisa Solomon (b.
1973) lives and works in Oakland, California.
She studied at the University of California, in Berkeley, and then at Mills
College in Oakland.
Her solo exhibitions include: ‘Where Have all the Trees Gone’,
Angels Gate in San Pedro; ‘Intersections’ at San Francisco State
University; and others at the Richard Levy Gallery in
Albuquerque and the Walter Maciel Gallery in Los
Angeles.
Donatella
Spaziani (b.
in Ceprano, province of Frosinone, in 1970) lives and works in Rome.
In 2001 she won a study grant for the Art Omi, International Residency, Hudson
River Valley, NYC, and in 2003 for La Seine, a study programme for the visual
arts at the École Nationale Supérieure des
Beaux-Arts in Paris, where she remained until 2006.
>From 2004 to 2006 she was a resident in the Cité Internationale des
Arts.
In 2008 she took part in the 19th Quadriennale at the Palazzo delle Esposizioni
in Rome.
In 2010 she participated in the exhibition ‘Piazze di Roma’ at MOCA,
Shanghai World Expo, curated by Achille Bonito
Oliva.
Private view: Thursday 31st March 2011, 6.30pm onwards
Curated by Marinella Paderni, the exhibition will remain open until 10th of June
2011.
Opening hours for the public: Tuesday to Saturday, from 11am to 7pm.
Closed Sunday and Monday.
Galleria NICOLETTA RUSCONI, Corso Venezia
22
20121 Milan,
Italy
For information please contact:
tel 02
784100
press@nicolettarusconi.com
www.nicolettarusconi.com
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