Corinna Gosmaro | THE GALLERY APART
TALKING KNOTS
Corinna Gosmaro
10 Apr 2018 – 08 Jun 2018
First solo show in the gallery by Corinna Gosmaro (1987).
The artist currently taking part in the residency programme at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris (from which she has been selected through the main programme Les lauréats). She lived for a few months in Rome as winner of the 6ARTISTA competition, the residency programme for artists under 35, organised by the Fondazione Pastificio Cerere.
The exhibition’s title, which evokes objects formed by fine threads of ropes interlacing each other that in some South American cultures and traditions used to have ornamental, ritual and communicative functions, provides a key to interpreting the new collection of works presented by Corinna Gosmaro.
Blending the here and now of the painting act, with the temporally, geographically and culturally cross-cutting nature of the symbol, the artist is interested in manipulating some major elements that have accompanied mankind throughout history, typified its passages and evolutions through their intrinsic expressive power.
Instead of drawing upon overused symbols due to ductility of their contents–e.g., the rainbow, which in the Genesis is the covenant established between God and every living creature on earth in the aftermath of the great flood, and later source of numerous meanings in the Jewish, Indian, Greek, Chinese mythology, until becoming a symbol of political and social struggle, from the post-apartheid South Africa to Greenpeace, and from the Gay Pride to the peace flag.
Corinna Gosmaro chooses the cosmetic palettes used in the predynastic Egypt, a more refined, almost concealed, symbol that evokes a fundamental and, at the same time, paradoxical aspect of the human condition: the connection between the desire of preservation and of death, which has led modern anthropology to match the first cultural manifestations with the beginning of the habit of burying the dead and with the first funeral rites.
Used to grind cosmetic paints in order to obtain pigments, palettes soon became and remained for centuries commemorative and ceremonial items with different meanings, to become later a language in the form of proto-writing and transition moment towards hieroglyphs.
The research conducted by Corinna Gosmaro is therefore interested not so much in the field of ritual related to death, but rather in the rituality related to the archetypical, expressive and iconic meaning of an object that cannot be interpreted univocally and which indeed involves multi-faceted meanings (offer, ornament, identity sign, magical instrument).
The palettes by Corinna Gosmaro evokes the shape of the original that in predynastic Egypt accompanied the everyday life as well as the journey towards the afterworld as funerary goods. Palettes were shaped in animal silhouettes related to the preponderant presence of the Nile river (fish, turtles, water birds, hippopotami), and that re-underline the universal value of the object and its prerogative of including rituality, artistic insight and cultural innovation.
The formal identity between the objects used ritually and those used as a decoration–the latter typified by the dominance of the colour red–introduces to the environment that Corinna Gosmaro has arranged in the basement of the gallery. The experience of entering into a sort of palette-environment typified by a strong domestic flavour is reinforced by the presence of a pair of pottery dogs (still a reference to the animals).
Here the painting becomes enveloping, trace of it can be found in the carpet that randomly includes the artistic act that the artist made through the spray painting, whereas big filters hang from the wall as an explicit reference to the Scapes, works that Corinna Gosmaro has been creating for a long time by painting industrial filters to outline not only ethereal figures evoking the idea of landscape but also material as they cross and pervade the weave of the medium.
Cultural paradigms, domestic scenes, evocation of landscapes that converge in the work by Corinna Gosmaro and in the exhibit Talking Knots to create a proxemic universe which, on the one hand, represent the attitude of the artist to interpret her own creativity in global and–once again–cross-cutting terms, both with regard to the contents and time; on the other hand, it underlines the communicative function of the primeval images and for this reason timeless.
A function that the artist exalts through the choice of the medium for her painting: the dibond, a material used widespread for the display and signage markets and in photo printing, the industrial filters that with their structure evoke selection and depuration (two essential functions in the communication and information fields). Finally ceramic which, by definition, is able to blend art and handcrafting through a common language and crafts manship and handed down over the centuries.
Corinna Gosmaro (Savigliano, Italy, 1987). Her work focuses on reflexions about the human being as a global entity and his/her timeless characteristics. The practice is based on the expression of a cognitive and psycho-physical process activated through the interaction with the environment. Going back and forth on the border between painting and sculpture, the work draws this journey throughout the history of our culture. The possibility of engaging different patterns elucidating the distinction between the work and its display represents another step further in her work.
In 2016 the artist was in residence at Viborg Kunsthal in Denmark and in 2017 she participated to the studio-residence program at Cripta747 in Turin. Selected solo shows: Uahed! Uahed!, IGAV, Saluzzo (2016), LAVORARE STANCA, Thomas Brambilla Gallery, Bergamo (2012). Selected group shows: La lama di Procopio, Dolomiti Contemporanee con Collezione AGI Verona, Nuovo Spazio di Casso, Casso (2017);LDD 07 | Haemolacria, Laboratorio del dubbio, Turin; PAINTING THE PRESENT, Peninsula Art museum, Weihai; IN THE DEPTH OF THE SURFACE, Ex Fabbrica Orobia, Milan (2016); OPEN MIA, Spazio Baco, Bergamo (2015); SPHÈRES, Galleria Continua, Les Moulins, Boissy-Le-Chàtel andFUNZIONE CONTINUA, Thomas Brambilla Gallery, Bergamo (2014).
THE GALLERY APART
Via Francesco Negri, 43
Rome
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