Vistamare is pleased to present Faux, Maria Loboda’s first solo show in Italy.
The exhibition is inspired by the artist’s fascination with the concepts of elegant faux finishes and the well-done imitations. Loboda has realized seven new sculptures where she has explored the notion of the imitation combined with a series of specifically related wall paintings.
For the exhibition the artist transforms the space, the sculptures and the wall paintings create a twisted garden full of ambiguity. In this garden you don’t know what is faux and what is real, what is dangerous and what is tempting. Loboda plays with the space bringing us to a different world.
In Loboda’s garden, the trees are petrified woods and the earrings attached look like coming from ancient tombs, discovered deep in earth. The shape of the earrings is inspired by the forms of Chanel and Bottega Veneta 80’s jewelry mixed with ancient archeological finds in tombs that were dragged out. The artist was captured by the elegance and the longevity of the city of Milan mixed with antiquities and ornaments and, with these pieces, seems to make a playful prediction of what accessories will look like in thousands of years, like fossils. The works create that certain kind of gloominess that is very interesting to Loboda, as she tries to elevate rather poor and simple materials into a higher state. Hiding behind the “espaliers” are written names of ancient and hyper modern weapons, like terrifying human threats hidden in plain sight behind some cultured trees.
Lastly wandering around the Gallery precious pearls are lying around, probably ripped from someone’s neck, spilled all over the concrete floor in a strange crime scene, a mistery.
Maria Loboda creates installations and sculptures investigating cultural codes and the grammar of materials and objects. Her research stems from the fields of poetry and history and results in a formal equation of language and materiality. Through the deconstruction and reorganisation of found objects and symbols, Loboda has become a unique voice in what might best be described as contemporary archaeology.
Maria Loboda’s (1979, Kracow, Poland) wide-ranging exhibition activities encompass the 58th Venice Biennale (2019), Taipei Biennial (2014), and documenta 13 (2012). Important solo exhibitions include Senckenberg Museum for Natural History, Frankfurt (2023), Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt a.M. (2018/19), Ujazdowski Castle Centre for Contemporary Art, Warsaw (2019), Kunsthalle Basel (2017), Institut d’art contemporain, Villeurbanne (2017), The Power Plant, Toronto (2016), and Palais de Tokyo, Paris (2012). She is the first recipient of the Otilie Röderstein grant from the Hessian Ministry of Education in 2022. Loboda lives and works in Crakow and Berlin. In 2023 she will have a new commission at Steirischer Herbst festival in Graz.