FOCUS ON
Sara Enrico (Gallery 2)
Asli Çavuşoğlu (Gallery 3)
Vistamare is pleased to present Focus on. A new series of projects that, in conjunction with the regular gallery program in Milan, invite artists to create new site specifics works specially conceived for the two lateral and symmetrical rooms of the space.
Sara Enrico (Biella, 1979) presents a series of new works centred on the corporeal experience in an enigmatic and elusive form – both an abstraction and a narration. The narration begins with elements that are recurring in the artist’s practice, like the raw materials whose physical characteristics and potential she explores, and the traces of the gestures that have shaped the works. Probed for their tangible and haptic possibilities, these elements draw the viewer into a non-linear and visually discombobulating relationship with the work of art. From an initial deconstruction of the language of painting, to sculpture and techniques borrowed from the worlds of tailoring, choreography and architecture, the transmedia approach typical of Enrico’s work is summarised in its surfaces. Via the processes of translation and transformation undergone by materials such as cement, pigment and fabric, the artist also relates to the postural and symbolic aspects connected with the body, in a broad and liminal interpretation of anthropomorphism. The exhibition features works that are evocative physical presences, which the artist employs to inscribe the spaces they occupy with a theory regarding unrecognisable forms and bodies, which linger unresolved and defy classification, and whose superficial, epidermal qualities generate a sense of remove – a feeling that this is something alien.
“The body is a sounding board, and it has an attunement resulting from its cut, covering, or cavities.” (Gernot Böhme)
The starting point of Asli Çavuşoğlu‘s (Istanbul, 1982) research is an analysis of examples of resilience and of processes of transformation in nature including non-humans. The artist uses biological facts as a metaphor to probe the various ways in which living creatures respond to inhospitable environments: in order to adapt and survive, all beings are capable of slowing down their biological functions when they face extreme conditions. Çavuşoğlu is interested in the natural phenomena we are increasingly having to deal with as a result of pollution and climate change. In her exploration of these narratives, the artist emphasises material and techniques, creating a visual description of the world and its increasingly violent transformations. The works in this exhibition establish connections with and between materials derived from the nature, using them to construct new natural forms. Each of these contains traces of what it once was and what it will become, in an ongoing inquiry into the meaning of change.