TRICKY FLAVOUR
GiULIA MESSINA - SOLO SHOW
07 NOVEMBER – 22 DECEMBER 2022
Perceived as sweet, colourful; that collection of drawings realised using the specific technic of marker pens is approaching both informal topics and a performative aspect that illustrates the working process. Tables, feasts or this complex staging are vibrating and the meticulous compositions warp under the effect of the medium and the paper used by the artist.
The art works are some evidences and relishes from a very near past. The compositions do appear like pictures of a crime scene, documented by the artist. Thanks to so many tiny details, they refer to suggested interactions and dialogues shared by the different participants and the different guests.
Moments of intimacy made exclusive and blurry that are the result of the ‘leftovers’ and ‘what still remains’. The very large amount of visible information encourages the members of the audience to indirectly take part to those performances. It drive them to frieze these moments they didn’t experience in person. The formal qualities are lying in the organic shape that could take the different goings-on and in the viewing angle that will be chosen to offer a precise overview of the scene: close-ups, stains, reflections, traces, cigarette butts…
Generally made for specific purposes such as parties or theme ceremonies, those meals are, in reality, constant researches related to the present time, to social evolutions, to the way to dress and to behave. Many elements that help to elaborate those fleeting moments.
The body of work created for the show takes inspiration from a dinner organised by the artist in the past summer in Milan. Reflecting on the topic of the garden of Eden and on the cultural believes associated to it – fakeness, betrayel, pleasure – the artist recreated an artificial garden by installing carpets of green fake grass, like a scenography were a meal with friends took place. The same grass that becomes the main character in all the drawings.
In order to create a clear narrative of the artistic process, the artist propose a reproduction of the setting of the performance in the center of the gallery’s space – placing fake grass and the most iconic objects used for the happening. Put in dialogue with the artworks hanged on the walls, the show propose a ping pong in order to have an immersive experience of the practice of the artist, getting into her very own world.
text by Vincent Vanden Bogaard