INSPIRATION 11/25 JUNE 2016
M.A.D. Gallery is pleased to present you the second phase of our critical exhibition “Inspiration”, staged here in Milan from 11th to 25th of June 2016. “Inspiration” is an international group exhibition born from a critical approach to the tricky theme of inspiration, dropped into the various field of contemporary art and developped on the stimulating opportunity of this heterogeneity. The exhibition is a chance to think about procedures and incitements giving birth to the very proper act of creation: creating an artwork, creating a world, creating a pattern, creating a tradition. In the end, what is inspiration? It seems more easy to define what inspiration definitely is not. Inspiration is not only a matter of private genie, as the Romantic attitude wanted us to believe; it's not only a sudden epiphany coming from a celestial being, as the Ancient and Neoplathonical culture proposed; it's not only an expectancy hidden in the canvas, as Vasilij Kandinskij poetically recited. Does it? The XXth Century taught us to do not take anything for granted. From the early experimentations of the PostImpressionists painting to the freedom provided by Jackson Pollock gestuality; from the unconscious analysis of the Surrealist Avantgarde to the matherical composition of the Arte Povera movement; from the Art Nouveau elegance to the provocation of Body Art: the past century of art provided us a loss of centrality which has been translated in an amazing variety of approaches, a new tradition ready to be taken as an example.
Carlotta Biffi - Art curator at M.A.D. Gallery Milano
CATALOGUE
MARIA DURCOVICOVA
Travel - acrylic on canvas - 50X50 cm
Pure colors, simple and spontaneous lines, a naif composition which preserve all the innocent and odd sense of space of a child: this is “Travel�, the artwork presented by Slovak artist Maria Durcovicova. Primary tunes are spread leaving a notable space to the nudity of canvas, a few skinny lines build the scene and allude to an almost casual sense of deepness. Maria Durcovicova plays with space and lines in order to provide impressions: lines also provide the composition movement, which seems to be born by a sudden spasm, a primitive impulse coming directly from the human necessity to create.
Curated by Carlotta Biffi - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
ALBERTO RODRIGUEZ MIGUELEZ Refugees Welcome - mixed technique on wood - 50 x 50 cm
Spots of red color torment a still sea, while white contrails mark airplanes passages. In the middle of this sea portion there is a boat without its oarsman. An apparently static space that becomes dynamic in the mind of the observer.
Curated by Sara Bizzocchi - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
KARI ELIZABETH HAUG
The dawn - acrylic on lynen polyester - 80x60 cm
White and black shadows, as faint as the apparition of a dream which you have just a memory. The figures are in contrast with each other that symbolize the production of primary matters for mankind. The norvegian artist Kari Elizabeth Haug always took inspiration from philosophy and most of all from her personal life to make artworks.
Curated by Marika Lerna - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
LESZJA GASZTANY Sunflowers - acrylic on canvas - 50 x 70 cm
The artist's favorite subjects are landscapes and still lifes made with pasty brushstrokes that emerge from the canvas, forming a kind of relief in the salient points of the work. Sunflowers, a small canvas that grows vertically, has apparently a subdivision between the compact group of sunflowers in the foreground and the broad landscape behind, dominated by the sun, the focal point of the painting. But through the use of the same shade of color, the artist is able to unify the two different levels of depth into one, declaring the union between heaven and earth, strengthened by the relationship between the central Sunflower in the middle of the group and the sun itself.
Curated by Valentina Ricupati - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
MELINDA BARWANIETZ BEZEREDY Fantasy - mixed technique - 50x70 cm Melinda Barwanietz Bezeredy takes inspiration from her own experiences and is fascinated by human behavior. With soft, light colors, shadows and lines, she creates graceful figures, apparently floral, which, observing more carefully, hide human figures, creating a poem that features the personification of nature. The curiosity of this artist is in the executive method of her work. Her technique, featured only by the rotation of the wrist, is very special but also very risky because once you do the gesture you can never come back.
Curated by Rebecca Rossetti - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
CHIARA OLIVERI Sabato in moto - oil on canvas - 40x100 cm
Chiara Oliveri is an italian artist. To her, painting represents a dimension of contemplation and a recaller of past emotions, which permits her to escape reality losing sense of time. Her art research has a figurative approach which is characterized by the emotive thrust and by the richness of feelings her works are full of. This is how her works appear: of strong emotional impact. The harmony and colour research recall an interior world, her own, rich of intimacy.
Curated by Eleonora Valeri - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
TATIANA RIVERO SANZ There Is A Scarce Pattern - photo - 46 x 71 inches The new tryptich proposed by Tatiana Rivero Sanz resumes all the sophistication of a deeply aware experimentation. Her photographical installations verge on the edge of shapes, playing with different tunes and subjects, manipulating atmospheres and compositions in an almost psychological way. The immense elegance of her narrative lines is now disrupted, her subjects move in a storyline that, starting from a more traditional balance, seems now to be on the point to break: There is a scarce pattern brings a syncopated rhytm, as the refined woman which is the main character of the composition is dancing to the tune of a broken disk. The scene fall into pieces, repeating itself over and over, as the subject seem to be captured in a neverending dream where reality is dislocated and revived to create a brand new world.
Curated by Carlotta Biffi - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
ALAIN TARDIEU Clair feuchocolat - acrylic ink - 80 x 60 cm
Alain Tardieu’s painting recalls the African rituals and masks. It brings us with imagination in African tribes and remind us the lines and the drawings that all the members of tribes paint on their face. He uses simultaneously warm and cold colors mixing them together creating a perfect color balance. The point of view it’s like a photographic cut of a documentary, it’s introspective because it focuses eyes and it’s analytical because it shows us the details.
Curated by Sara Bizzocchi - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
LEVIA MONCRIEFFE KALLAI A Gorgeous Gypsy - oil on matt photographic with an original aluminium - 47x38 cm
Levia considers herself a self-taught artist, she experiments new tecniques with oil and acrylic paints. Her works are full of color that seems to escape from the canvas. Anyway her charachers range from the faces of ordinary women, in which some details like lips, eyes or hair come emphasized. However we can find other artworks like landescapes or architectures built only by touches of strong brushstrokes. For end up Levia’s artworks provide a deep emotional care.
Curated by Rebecca Rossetti - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
PANOS STEFANIDES East wind - acrylic on canvas - 85x76 cm
Panos Stefanides is a Greek artist. He lives and works between Cyprus and Greece. An incredible imagination, vibrant colour and a great design ability are central in his art work “East wind�. He has been described as weaver of mythical worlds. He approaches painting as the artistic play beetween the real and the unreal, as taking a view of things through a distorted lense. His composition is dramatic, theatrical and full of allegories.
Curated by Eleonora Valeri - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
JANE GOTTLIEB
Lawnbowlers: Life - print on aluminum - 30x18 inches
The uniform colors, brought to the most vivid saturation level, the playback of the same subject on several works and the conception of various series of works divided by theme are specific characteristics that link Gottlieb’s style to a precise precursor and art movement: Andy Warhol and Pop Art. But if usually through taking a picture and creating a work with such a strong visual impact, there is a more or less long time of gestation, in the case of Jane Gottlieb this step seems to be immediate: it’s as if the artist perceives naturally, without any filter, this precise enchanted world prototype, immortalized in her works. Lawnbowlers: Life, invites the viewer to look in the same direction of the players, catapulting him into a literally colormade world: Jane Gottlieb’s world.
Curated by Valentina Ricupati - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
JANE COWLES Shimmer - encaustic relief - 10 x 10 inches
Jane Cowles with her mind’s delicacy allows us to travel with our imagination to create wonderful poems about flowers, petals and life. It’s delicate.
Curated by Sara Bizzocchi - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
VIRGINIA FABBRI
Pensieri - acrylic on canvas - 50x150 cm
Virginia Fabbri is an italian artist, she mainly works with abstract subjects. The impression that you have by observing Virginia Fabbri's artwork is to be in front of her sensations and thoughts, where vivid colors represent the flux of consciusness, but, at the same time, brush strokes are highly tactile. Pure colors are juxtaposed, following an imaginary and inner meaning.
Curated by Marika Lerna - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
PATRIZIA ZOLLER Akropolis - acrylic mixed media - 80x80 cm
Through the use of golden and dark blue tones, brightened with white touches of colors, Patrizia Zoller creates a real dream dimension. Visually it's as if the temple, in addition to stand out physically and plastically from canvas, continued its movement of ascension thanks to the push of long, fast blue brushstrokes. The work stands as the evocation of the Greek classical age, so far away from us but still alive in the memory and in the heart of the artist.
Curated by Valentina Ricupati - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
FABIO BELLONI Once upon a time- photo - 60x40 cm
Abandoned places and architectures are modeled in front of the lens of Fabio. His shots evoke a romantic and nostalgic feeling, transporting us to a place where time seems to stand still ever. Specifically in the work "Once upon a time " Belloni took a contemporary living room where the true creators were nature and time; the dry leaves become a large carpet which is in perfect harmony with a crumpled and lame chair, that despite this aspect is able to enact a sense of beauty and elegance.
Curated by Rebecca Rossetti - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
KATERINA MACHYTKOVA Cosmic heart - acrylic paint with structures 80x90 cm Katerina Machytkova is a Dutch artist. In her artworks, Katerina uses different painting techniques, mainly watercolors, oil and acrylic. Her abstract paint expresses her personal emotion and feelings, her works are a poetic expression, in fact they transmit her love for humanity. Her main source of inspiration is human soul, human spirituality and universe, themes visible in her artwork “Cosmic Heart� where the sense of spirituality and the human connection with the universe become even more perceptible by the use of colors and light.
Curated by Eleonora Valeri - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
MIRA SATRYAN Komp 2 - oil on canvas - 70 x 95 cm
Mira Satryan uses strong colors and engages plans and forms. She prefers soft and curvilinear trends. Colors, shapes, lights and shadows are the musical notes of this great artist
Curated by Sara Bizzocchi - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
SUNG NAM LEE Goddes Gaea - ink on paper - 25x35 cm
Sung Nam Lee is a Korean artist, he uses ink on paper to realize wonderful artworks. His world is made by defined lines creating full compositions. “Goddes Gaea”, for example, is a very particular work where a tree is emphasized through a complex tangle of lines. Tree branchs seem to be composed by many bolts weaved together. It’s evident that Sung Nam Lee is deeply inspired by manga art.
Curated by Marika Lerna - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
GARULPH
L’ Alba spaziale - canvas - 80x80 cm Garulph’s canvases and panels made of various materials represent emotions, moods, or more generally concepts, that are strictly linked to human interiority. His peculiarity is to bring out what is most deep inside the human soul, through lines and projections intersecting each other. In general his artworks consist of abstract figures, composed of segments with colors and lines bright and shiny, silhouetted on a black background. Among the canvases, however, L’alba spaziale deviates from the use of the black background. Probably the particular concept expressed in this work, linked to a new day, or more precisely to a new beginning clearly understood in a cosmic sense, leads the artist to give color to the entire canvas, in a totalizing way: starting from mild violet at the base, until reaching the yellow blinding at the top. The intermixing of lines projected from various angles, makes the work highly dynamic, despite the essentiality of derived forms.
Curated by Valentina Ricupati - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
AL - ANNE SOPHIE LE PENRU Wounded soul - photo - 60x40 cm
This young artist decided to make her shots in black and white. The subject of this art exhibition is ‘Inspiration”: in her photos there’s a glimpse of a distant echo of long exposures created by Francesca Woodman. In Al’s pictures like “Introspection” and “Cinderella” movement and fluidity run to one direction. Completely different is the artwork “Wounded soul”: here it is represented the whole, which is divided by a line that creates two symmetrical worlds, one male and one female. These worlds are loving each other; through the line seems to end up to us but instead is infinite as their love.
Curated by Rebecca Rossetti - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
GREETJE VAN DEN AKKER
The word - mixed media paper on canvas- 140x200 cm
Greetje Van den Akker is a dutch artist, her art work “The word” is realized with different technique and materials, coffee, ink, acrylic on paper or canvas. Greetje likes to paint “faces”, most of the time not specific ones, but almost abstract. “The word” was made with a golden acrylic paint and coffe, because she was looking for a way to make the “faces” simple but strong of light and shadows. This method transimts a sense of spirituality and mystery also by the support used, a collage of bibble pages.
Curated by Eleonora Valeri - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
ANDREA SCHWERY Infiammation - ZIPA - 50x65 cm
Andrea Schwery creates a colorful world where is quiet evident her mood of happiness and life joy. She loves to play and to discover every day new things with shapes and colours. In her artworks Andrea Schwery emphasizes shapes through strong colors, but what is really important in her art is the complex pattern of the composition.
Curated by Marika Lerna - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
ARLETTE DELEVALLÉE Liberté - mixed media with recycled material- 65x140 cm
The triptych can be considered a summary of the style and the highly eccentric and multifaceted personality of this artist, who is able to deal with issues of universal range in a quite “sui generis ” way. Each panel must be read from top to bottom and on three different semantic levels, which include: the words of the treated theme, which bring us back with the mind to its meaning; its figurative representation, made in a contradictory manner compared to the original meaning; and finally the sculptural representation of the contradiction itself. The overall effect is a caricatural and satirical work addressed to contemporary society, which has completely changed the values of Liberty, Equality and Fraternity, by raising the totems of their opposites.
Curated by Valentina Ricupati - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
ANIS
Mayoutopia - ink on paper - 45x65 cm Even since the first glance, it’s clear that the artwork has quite a technical and semantic sophistication, which is also pointed out by the title itself: Mayoutopia. The term is actually the result of a melting between the English verb “may”, which represents the possibility of something to happen, and “outopia”, an ancient Greek word denoting, on the other end, the total impossibility to. This is the very contraddiction expressed by Anis, who throw the observer in an unreal, Dalì inspired dimension. A direct and refined quotation of the great Spanish master is revealed in the bird’s beack detail stinging the shoulders of the manlike subject, curled up in a fetal position in the very center of the composition. Wheter in “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee Around a Pomegranate” (1944) Salvador Dalì provided an almost physical pain, transmitted by the wild tigers, seventy years later Anis expresses, through minimal lines, a strictly mental and inner sorrow, brilliantly represented by the main subject holding his head with his hands.
Curated by Valentina Ricupati - M.A.D. Gallery Milano - www.madgallerymilano.com
ART DIRECTORS: Alessandra Magni & Carlo Greco INTRODUCTION: Carlotta Biffi CRITICAL NOTES: Carlotta Biffi Sara Bizzocchi Marika Lerna Valentina Ricupati Rebecca Rossetti Eleonora Valeri GRAPHIC DESIGN : Sara Bizzocchi
M.A.D. GALLERY MODA ARTE E DESIGN Associazione culturale Curatori Alessandra Magni e Carlo Greco CORSO SAN GOTTARDO 18 VIA ASCANIO SFORZA 15 20136 MILANO ITALIA + 39 348 2854357 www.madgallerymilano.com madgallerymilano@gmail.com