SPRING 2022
Thierry Bouffeteau
Strange Days
On view at 4m2 Gallery:
Silenzi Rossi/Red SilenceCorpi Segnati/Scarred BodiesDeposizione / Deposition |
Deriva/AdriftOrizzonti/HorizonsL’onda / The Wave |
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Abissi / Abysses |
2020
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Thierry Bouffeteau was born in France in 1954. He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Bath Academy of Art in Corsham. During his time in the United Kingdom, he worked as a set designer for multiple performances including, G. Verdi's Aida, G.C. Menotti's The Saint of Bleecker Street, and Peter Docherty’s various ballet performances. In 1983 he moved to Rome, Italy, where he continued his career as a set designer on cinema productions such as The Last Days of Pompeii by Peter Hunt, Blood Red Roses, Dido and Enea by R. Marcucci, and Via Panisperna Boys by G. Amelio. Around this time, he developed an interest in furthering his personal art career and would go on to participate in several exhibitions. His early exhibitions focused on Indian culture, which he had grown to hold a deep interest in. Some of these exhibitions include Le Molecole della preghiera/The Molecules of Prayer (2012), Tabernacles (2015), and Gli Asana e i detriti del mondo/The Asanas and the detritus of the world (2017). Starting in 2016 he developed a new focus, the Gazometro and its surrounding urban landscape. His work was displayed in the exhibition GAZO (2018). In recent years his works have focused on the theme of migration and been showcased in exhibitions including Papiers Bavards (2020), #r_esistiamo (2020), Orizzonti / Horizons (2020), and Silenzi Rossi / Red Silence (2021). His current exhibition Strange Days is named so because it focuses on the unusual time we are all living in. Depicting the tragedies befallen many migrants trying to cross waters and the anxieties brought about by the pandemic, his works give a face to these abstract feelings and ideas, and force one to confront these difficult topics and hopefully inspire change to be made.
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SPRING 2021
Giulia Mangoni
Primordial Shoes // Scarpe Primordiali
Lupi, Cattivi e Briganti. Acrylic on canvas, 4.20x4m. Diptych;
Campeggio Rupestre. Acrylic on blueback paper with boar skull;
Signorita Equanime a Cavallo. Oil on canvas, 28.5x23.5 cm;
Sceriffo Innamorato. Oil on canvas, 2 a8.5x23.5 cm;
Padrona di Tutto Notturno e Celest. Gouache on paper, 35.7x26.4 cm;
La Partita nel Saloon Installation. Sheep and badger skull and framed works on acrylic painting;
Primordial Shoes. Gouache on paper, 46x52.4 cm.
Campeggio Rupestre. Acrylic on blueback paper with boar skull;
Signorita Equanime a Cavallo. Oil on canvas, 28.5x23.5 cm;
Sceriffo Innamorato. Oil on canvas, 2 a8.5x23.5 cm;
Padrona di Tutto Notturno e Celest. Gouache on paper, 35.7x26.4 cm;
La Partita nel Saloon Installation. Sheep and badger skull and framed works on acrylic painting;
Primordial Shoes. Gouache on paper, 46x52.4 cm.
Primordial Shoes // Scarpe Primordiali presents a climax in Giulia Mangoni’s archival research into the tensions that affect Ciociaria, the rocky terrain to the Southeast of Rome within the province of Frosinone where she was born.
The works featured, of which there are seven, that range from large-scale panels to handicraft from the region, were curated and created by Mangoni in response to the academic environment of the 4m2 gallery; situating her research within a collective response to the urgent need for the consolidation of Ciociaria’s fraught identity.
In the eighteenth century, Ciociaria experienced an excess of image- production, serving as the backdrop for grand tourists traveling between Rome and Naples. With these paintings, the memory of Ciociaria is now fragmented across European museums, its people in mourning for the images that were never returned to their place of conception, having never been intended for their consumption to begin with.
This metaphysical loss of representation can be perceived at this moment in time. This is why the identity of the region has been defined by external influences, associated with cinematographic traditions. The arid landscape of Ciociaria and its proximity to Cinecittà in Rome presented an ideal solution during the proliferation of Italian-made ‘American Westerns’ in the mid-60’s and 70’s, often dubbed ‘Spaghetti Westerns’. Today, the region is superimposed by the performed rurality of cowboy culture, best exemplified by recent videos of illicit horse-racing, where bandit-like figures gallops through empty streets, turning the winding lanes and artisanal character of Ciociaria into a spectacle for the urban viewer once again.
Mangoni brings these tensions to a head in Primordial Shoes // Scarpe Primordiali amidst a frenzy of image-retrieval championed by local aficionado’s and historians alike to gather and reconstruct the identity of the region as it is conceived locally and externally. Her works, a number of which were created to respond specifically to the unique opportunities for rural-urban confrontation presented by the 4m2 gallery’s location within the Italo-American context of John Cabot University, layer archival images with stills from iconic Italian-made Westerns such as ‘They Called Him Trinity’, ‘Ramon The Mexican’, and ‘Go West’. Hanging boar skulls emerge between synthetic figures in cowboy hats whose presence stands ghostly and fragile despite a vivid palette. A pair of local worn leather shoes, also known as ‘ciocie’, hangs casually by its laces, its motif obsessively revised and replicated sporadically across the show. Between Mangoni’s generous brushstrokes and the intricacy of the found objects she presents alongside them, Ciociaria is characterized with nuance and empathy for its past and its present.
In collaboration with John Cabot University, Primordial Shoes // Scarpe Primordiali thus imports the peripheral stories of Ciociaria to the 4m2 gallery in a historicizing action that recalls, in the hope of resolving, the exodus of its regional image.
The works featured, of which there are seven, that range from large-scale panels to handicraft from the region, were curated and created by Mangoni in response to the academic environment of the 4m2 gallery; situating her research within a collective response to the urgent need for the consolidation of Ciociaria’s fraught identity.
In the eighteenth century, Ciociaria experienced an excess of image- production, serving as the backdrop for grand tourists traveling between Rome and Naples. With these paintings, the memory of Ciociaria is now fragmented across European museums, its people in mourning for the images that were never returned to their place of conception, having never been intended for their consumption to begin with.
This metaphysical loss of representation can be perceived at this moment in time. This is why the identity of the region has been defined by external influences, associated with cinematographic traditions. The arid landscape of Ciociaria and its proximity to Cinecittà in Rome presented an ideal solution during the proliferation of Italian-made ‘American Westerns’ in the mid-60’s and 70’s, often dubbed ‘Spaghetti Westerns’. Today, the region is superimposed by the performed rurality of cowboy culture, best exemplified by recent videos of illicit horse-racing, where bandit-like figures gallops through empty streets, turning the winding lanes and artisanal character of Ciociaria into a spectacle for the urban viewer once again.
Mangoni brings these tensions to a head in Primordial Shoes // Scarpe Primordiali amidst a frenzy of image-retrieval championed by local aficionado’s and historians alike to gather and reconstruct the identity of the region as it is conceived locally and externally. Her works, a number of which were created to respond specifically to the unique opportunities for rural-urban confrontation presented by the 4m2 gallery’s location within the Italo-American context of John Cabot University, layer archival images with stills from iconic Italian-made Westerns such as ‘They Called Him Trinity’, ‘Ramon The Mexican’, and ‘Go West’. Hanging boar skulls emerge between synthetic figures in cowboy hats whose presence stands ghostly and fragile despite a vivid palette. A pair of local worn leather shoes, also known as ‘ciocie’, hangs casually by its laces, its motif obsessively revised and replicated sporadically across the show. Between Mangoni’s generous brushstrokes and the intricacy of the found objects she presents alongside them, Ciociaria is characterized with nuance and empathy for its past and its present.
In collaboration with John Cabot University, Primordial Shoes // Scarpe Primordiali thus imports the peripheral stories of Ciociaria to the 4m2 gallery in a historicizing action that recalls, in the hope of resolving, the exodus of its regional image.
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Giulia Mangoni is an Italian-Brazilian artist questioning the modes of linear narration in favour of more complex and fluid systems. By creating interventions orchestrated through the lens of painting, she is interested in deconstructing notions of memory and identity. Born in 1991 in Isola del Liri, FR, where she now lives, she was raised between Italy, Brazil and England. Mangoni earned a Foundation Degree in Art & Design from Falmouth University of the Arts (2011), a Painting BA (Hons) from City & Guilds of London Art School (2014), where she was awarded the Skinner Connard’s Travel Prize and the Chadwick Healey Prize for Painting. She also earned a MFA from the SVA Art Practice program in New York City, (2019). She has participated in numerous exhibitions internationally and in Italy, such as, From the Island of Liri, a solo show curated by Juliana Leandra: Dreambox Lab, New York and a solo show in Rio de Janeiro titled Telas, Panos e Papéis in 2019. In addition, she has been part of the CASTRO Projects fellowship program, being awarded the Scovaventi Italian Fellowship for 2020. More recently, in 2021, she was included in two group shows like Ladder To The Moon, held at Monitor Gallery in Rome, and Vivere di Paesaggio at Apalazzo Gallery in Brescia.
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SPRING 2020
Liz Rideal
Temporal Stabilities
Denis’s Ball. 2020. Gilded copper sphere, ⌀ 30 cm.
Etruscan Shield (Blue). 2020. Silk print, 90x90 cm.
Etruscan Shield (Verdigris). 2019. Frottage watercolor drawing, ⌀ 96 cm.
Flower Bomb (Santi Quattro Coronati, Rome). 2020. Silk print. 178x134 cm.
Medallion (Pontine). 2019. Frottage watercolor drawing, ⌀ 96 cm.
Medallion (Seagrass). 2019. Frottage watercolor drawing, ⌀ 96 cm.
Seagrass Mist (Annisquam). 2020. Silk print. 90x90 cm.
Temporal Stabilities brings together new works by Liz Rideal in the first showing in Rome of works by this celebrated British artist in a decade. The show is the culmination of a year-long international collaboration between the Slade School of Fine Art (UCL), The British School at Rome, and John Cabot University.
Temporal Stabilities explores the constancy in temporal change: the interlacing of actions and associations, the resonance of haptic memories, and the layering of processes and histories. Ancient traces are not left unseen; rather, Liz Rideal’s works traces their presence like haunting memories. They reveal these metamorphic pasts through multi-layered references and an easy touch of complex artistry.
The seven works selected constitute an amalgam of artistic methodology that in their hybrid forms conjure up cultural and temporal spaces through their use of color and textures. All the works were created in response to the visually extravagant marble Cosmatesque floors found in medieval churches throughout Rome, and each work explores this in a variety of processes and techniques.
The silk prints Flower Bomb (Santi Quattro Coronati, Rome), Etruscan Shield (Blue) and Seagrass, Annisquam transform the intricate floor patterns into evanescent, floating forms that questions the stabilities of materials and time – calling to mind both the histories of the quarried marbles, the history of the silk road trade, and the use of spolia as a statement of luxurious continuity. In the movement of the silk prints with the real-time currents of air, performing colored silks move through the atmosphere, transforming these images from a momentary photographic state, to an apparent reanimation of the in-situ creative action by the artist.
The frottage watercolor drawings Medallion (Pontine), Medallion (Seagrass), and Etruscan Shield (Verdigris) similarly create and subvert the illusion of movement. The rubbings of the Cosmatesque floors may start as copies of patterns in wax and pastel on Japanese paper; however, by purposefully moving the paper during the process, a fleeting quality is created. Like the presence of sitters in early photographs that moved during the process of capture, these works unveil patterns that are present yet intangible.
Successive processes of soakings, printings, dragging, pressings and repainting wrests new textures from the paper in a layering of actions and gestures that echoes the transformative nature of the spolia floors.
The series is brought together a by glimmering gilded copper sphere, Denis’s Ball. A modest ballcock, originally part of an ancient water tank atop the National Portrait Gallery in London, this repurposed modern object is a prism for the show. Resting on top of a corbel where once stood a statue of the Madonna, Denis’s Ball alludes as much to a Christian royal orb as to Jeff Koon’s ‘gazing balls’ and its altering reflection offers an alternative process for viewing the stable non-linearity of time.
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Liz Rideal is an artist and author, with over 50 international solo exhibitions and artworks held in public collections including Tate; V&A; BM; Vancouver Art Gallery, Canada; Museet for Fotokunst, Denmark; Berkeley Art Museum & Yale Centre for British Art, USA. Professor at the Slade School of Fine Art, UCL; Leverhulme Fellowship (2016-17), British Academy grant (2011), and a British School at Rome Scholarship (2008-9). Author of Mirror/Mirror: Self-portraits by Women Artists, National Portrait Gallery/Watson-Guptill, NY, 2001; Insights: Self-portraits, NPG, 2005; and How to Read Painting, Bloomsbury/Rizzoli, 2014/15. Co-author of Madam and Eve: women portraying women, Laurence King, 2018, and of the introduction to Phaidon’s 500 Self-portraits, 2018. |
