The Essential of Contemporary
Posted on November 26 2018
The Essential │ 2nd November - 3rd December 2018
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According to the most common definition, the word ‘essential’ is referred to something “extremely necessary, important, and fundamental”. A person we need to keep in our life, a memory we would like to preserve in our mind, an emotion we would love to feel forever. A constant variable in everyone’s life. Again, the tendency of minimising emotions, situations, people. The conscious decision of separating what is important from what is not.
These are just some of the examples, suggestions and ideas revolving around the exhibition “The Essential”, based on images selected and shown at the space Millepiani in Rome (2nd November – 3rd December 2018).
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The group exhibition offers an interpretation of the theme "The Essential", in which to emerge is the ability of each author to grasp aspects of life that contain the most significant values of existence, those individual and / or universal.
The group exhibition offers an interpretation of the theme "The Essential", in which to emerge is the ability of each author to grasp aspects of life that contain the most significant values of existence, those individual and / or universal.
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Claudia Grünig, Waterportrait, 2018
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Despite essentiality is not really part of our era, the artworks collected for the exhibition are successful and quite accurate portraits of what is meaningful. To them, for sure, but also to us. Although transforming abstract concepts into visual compositions can be challenging and ambitious, the artists were able to accomplish their purposes.
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As visitors, we just need to walk through this creative path built on details, colours and balanced compositions. First, we have the body. Hands, holding hands, weaving hands, contextualised hands that stand for family, love and devotion – that indicate familiar places – that approach something new. Portraits: full-length shots, almost brutal black and white photos, enigmatic or theatrical representations where something is hidden (a detail, the identity). Every picture is a different narrative where colours, angles (poetic or documentarist) and intentions vary constantly.
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Then, we have a place, multiple places. Surreal shots, digitally retouched and overlapping details showing a compromised landscape. Still lifes that are silently quiet and simultaneously significant. Disappearing contexts, permanently in danger, as well as bird’s eye views showing the uncontrollable growth of the urban space – lights as stars, streets as constellations.
Then, we have a place, multiple places. Surreal shots, digitally retouched and overlapping details showing a compromised landscape. Still lifes that are silently quiet and simultaneously significant. Disappearing contexts, permanently in danger, as well as bird’s eye views showing the uncontrollable growth of the urban space – lights as stars, streets as constellations.
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Urban neighbourhoods populated by silent architectures and apparently deserted houses. Are we able control the superimposition between past and present, old and new?
In the end, we have all the rest, equally beautiful, equally dangerous. At the end of this visual itinerary, we have accomplished a social and at the same time personal reflection leading us to a clearer comprehension of what is essential.
Urban neighbourhoods populated by silent architectures and apparently deserted houses. Are we able control the superimposition between past and present, old and new?
In the end, we have all the rest, equally beautiful, equally dangerous. At the end of this visual itinerary, we have accomplished a social and at the same time personal reflection leading us to a clearer comprehension of what is essential.
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Ruby Steele - Divine Light #3, 2018
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Ruby Steele - Divine Light #3, 2018
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Ashley Jones, Our kitchen on Barnard Street, 2015
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Bénédicte Blondeau, Ce qu'il Reste #2, 2018
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Austin Fischer - American Teens, 2018
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Tessa Shaw, The Wind Among the Reeds, 2016
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Daniel Marquez - My Faceless Face #2, 2018
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Peter Ydeen, Yellow Red and Blue, 2018
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Ting Hsu, From Vauxhall Bridge to Charing Cross, 2018
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