Helen Chadwick Beatrice Marchi Rosa Panaro Suzanne Santoro Curated by Francesca Lacatena Opening Friday 27th April 6-9pm Exhibition 28.04. - 26.05.18
Helen Chadwick Beatrice Marchi Rosa Panaro Suzanne Santoro Curated by Francesca Lacatena Opening Friday 27th April 6-9pm
SANDY BROWN is delighted to present an exhibition curated by Francesca Lacatena featuring works by artists Helen Chadwick, Beatrice Marchi, Rosa Panaro, and Suzanne Santoro.This unusual collision of experiences in art production is the result of extended research and dialogue beginning with the question of whether the return of "feminist art" has any potential to imagine the feminist past and its continuity differently.In an essay published in Studio International in February 1976, art critic Anne-Marie Sauzeau-Boetti says: "When women's art explicitly accuses and vindicates, it re-enters the legible cultural space as militancy; and in order to be antagonistic (a type of dialogue), it has to recompose itself artificially (for instance through a "provocative" use of Pop technique), which means betraying the basic disunity, "negativity" and otherness of woman's experience. I do acknowledge feminist group expression as a rich militant instrument, in the way Chilean and Portuguese "murales" are a renewed political praxis; but I don't believe in "feminist art" since art is a mysterious filtering process which requires the labyrinths of a single mind, the privacy of alchemy, the possibility of exception and unorthodoxy, rather than rule."
In a brief yet prolific career Helen Chadwick (1953-1996, London) created groundbreaking work in performance, photography, and sculpture. Her unique hybrid of advanced technical form and conceptual documentation, from 'Ego Geometria Sum The Labours I - X' (1983-86) to the 'Piss Flowers' (1991-92), provides fugitive and potent traces of the artist’s inscription of her own body onto her work. The materials Chadwick utilised were unspectacular, but often visceral - treated leather or fur, animal flesh, chocolate, earthworms, rotting vegetables, liquid detergent, microscopic shots of viruses or bodily substances. Such items were re-introduced into Chadwick's order and brought into uncomfortable proximity to generate ambivalent results, at once, irritating, attractive, and repulsive. The work of Helen Chadwick can be found in major international collections including the Tate Collection, London; Victoria & Albert Museum, London; and MoMA, New York.
A fictional character named Loredana has been reinforcing Beatrice Marchi's (*1986, Gallarate, Italy) tendency to become someone else (or perhaps everyone else), including her dog Mafalda. Loredana first came to life in a short video animation that Marchi released in 2016 for her solo exhibition at Hester, New York. Marchi later played Loredana in a performance at Galerie der Stadt Schwaz, Austria, where she served chips and drinks wearing a pair of fibreglass claws whilst viewers were told the story of a young woman who wanted to become a waitress. Loredana's pale pink limbs appeared again at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg, on the occasion of Marchi's MA degree show; and at Kaya House, Museo Madre, Naples, where Loredana, assisted by Davide Stucchi, gave Kerstin Braetsch a chamomile massage. "Loredana gets by doing every kind of job" claims Marchi, and adds "she can learn quickly". A couple of framed black reflective screens made by Marchi elaborate on this narrative in a more elusive manner - these works have been used as functional side tables and also shown as mysterious black holes hanging on gallery walls. Are they Loredana's eyes or body orifices?
Rosa Panaro (*1934, Casal di Principe, Italy) works with materials such as concrete, papier-mâché, clay, and resins. By the late fifties, she had begun to manipulate the techniques learned from her maestro, the sculptor Antonio Venditti, and deviate from post-war abstractionism to find a more whimsical treatment of material and form. Panaro's use of papier-mâché in particular anticipates the emergence of artistic experiments dealing with the art object and commodification - as later became significant to Pop Art and Nouveau Réalisme. In 1977 Panaro began a series of collaborative activities with feminist collectives such as Gruppo XX and Gruppo Donne / Immagine / Creatività, which produced numerous itinerant actions including "Vaso di Pandora" and "Lavoro Nero - Lavoro Creativo". During these years she also contributed to the subversive magazine Effe.
Suzanne Santoro (*1946, New York) moved to Rome in the early 1970s and since then has been active as an artist. Her long-lasting friendship with art critic and activist Carla Lonzi had strong repercussions on her practice. In 1974 she produced the controversial book "Towards New Expression" (published by Rivolta Femminile). Fundamental is her contribution to the Cooperativa Beato Angelico in Rome - the first permanent space in Italy dedicated to female artists - which was established in 1976 by the union of eleven women together with the informal participation of art critic Anne-Marie Sauzeau-Boetti. Santoro's latest drawings expand her in-depth studies of ancient and classical art, concentrating on female statuary and architectural details, so as to illuminate the significance of obscured iconography and overwritten symbols with a desecrating poignance.~ * During Gallery Weekend Berlin * - on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th April - The exhibition will have extended visiting hours of 11am-7pm SANDY BROWN Goebenstrasse 7 10783 Berlin www.sandy-brown.com mail@sandy-brown.com tel. +49 151 2164 0399
* During Gallery Weekend Berlin * - on Saturday 28th and Sunday 29th April - The exhibition will have extended visiting hours of 11am-7pm