NP-ArtLab presents, in collaboration with Martelli Fine Art, a selection of works by artists Mirella Bentivoglio and Serena Gamba in dialogue with each other. The exhibition aims to relate two artists of different generations but who use verbal-visual practice as a medium.
The work of Mirella Bentivoglio (Klagenfurt, 1922) takes place in a totally poetic sphere: between language and image, language and material, language and object, language and environment. In particular, her works in the exhibition are closely linked to the representation of the egg, linked to the letter O, which, according to the artist, is a symbol of the Universe, of nothingness and everything, of emptiness and fullness, but also of creation and motherhood, a fundamental concept for the artist, which she has repeatedly identified as an experience that has profoundly influenced and guided her in her artistic career. The egg returns frequently in the artist's works, often linked to books, a specific sign of the intellectual dimension, a symbol of culture. A veritable continuum with the works of Bentivoglio and the poets of the Nuova Scrittura in general is represented by Serena Gamba (Moncalieri, 1982). Her research revolves around the meaning of painting and its declinations in relation to the visual and applied arts. The images of Art History are emptied of their original meaning to be reworked in order to bring out their essential nature far from imperfect and preconceived forms. The genres and materials of painting, the bases of written and spoken language, the constituent elements of drawing are condensed into new structures and primary signs, activating a process of reconstruction of a new image. It is these structural elements that go on to define an architecture, a visual alphabet, leaving complete freedom of interpretation and re-elaboration.
The works on display perfectly reflect the artist's poetics where the concepts of memory and oblivion coexist. The act of writing and describing the original painting is a reflection and testimony of memory: it is an attempt to create an intimate encounter between the individual and his or her own act of remembering and memorising all of Art History. The hand-stitched letters become a vivid testimony of something that was present and is now disappearing or will soon disappear. It is writing that becomes the means and the way to slow down the process and welcome oblivion. An archive is created, an instrument for memory.