SOME ROSES AND THEIR PHANTOMS | 30 APRIL - 4 MAY
PRIVATE VIEW and MEET THE ARTIST'S EVENT | 30 APRIL 6 - 9pm
VENUE | Bermondsey Project Space - London
Sandra Beccarelli, is a London-based artist. Beccarelli aims to get to the "essence" of a feeling, often referring to nature as a starting point; her interpretation of what we can see and what we can't; the structure which underlies rhythms and movements stripped down and distilled to pure energy. The "backs" of her artworks are the equivalent to these unseen energies, where often the reverse side of her canvas will inform the "front" e.g. syringing through a "hidden grid" or sewing and rippling pins through paper. This method of working resonates with the idea of cause and effect and how everything is linked and exists, even if we can't see it.
The recurring theme of how emotions can be visually described has been her obsession throughout her career, as has the religious concept of light, dark, loss and hope, order and chaos. She looks toward nature as a metaphor, where shadows shift and emotions change. She sees this shadowy area as a merging or crossover between two possibilities where change occurs. Sandra sees it as a transitional place, a disruption, where consciousness and order “slips". The scale of the artwork is important to her. She moves between large-scale gestural paintings to small and obsessive pieces, drawing parallels between the grand scales in nature and the minutiae of energies unseen. She is interested in the use of "empty" space within her work, silent, yet active, where captured moments of intensity such as the accumulation of marks, drips, or heightened colours harmoniously emerge. Sandra is also interested in the disharmony created when many movements, rhythms and spaces converge.
BEYOND THE SURFACE
“Beyond the Surface” is about unseen energies, co-existing spaces and dimensions, and the seepages between the two. I see the optical colour vibrations, shapes which seem to emerge and disappear, drip and bleed as ghostly presences in a similar way to the roses’ phantoms of Dorothea Tanning’s painting.
CYCLAMEN
“Cyclamen” shows the interdependence of 2 surfaces. What happens on the one effects the other and vice versa. Neither in the end is the ‘right’ side. I entitled the piece “Cyclamen”, the flower I planted by a tree of a suicide victim. The blue surface reflects the water by the tree and the threads are the roots of the tree and spirit of the man as he becomes one again with nature.
SNOWDROP
Snowdrop’s focus is of the stained and creased white linen tablecloth in Dorothea Tanning’s painting. The edges reveal the once stretched canvas, now removed from the frame and free to show its underside of colours and stains. Snowdrop, the pure white sign of the beginning of spring could be seen as the freshly ironed and crisp pure white table covering, but like all nature will fade, wither and die, leaving its mark behind visually, and like the death of a loved one, in our hearts and minds.