Figure evanescenti

Curated by Francesca Battistutta and Mavi Modolo

Figure evanescenti—literally, ‘Evanescent Figures’—exhibits works on paper by the students of the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice. The exhibition venue at the Antiche Carceri serves as a framework for an explorative and experimental journey, aimed at establishing a dialog among the seven protagonists. The show is organized according to a thematic itinerary, which includes a wide selection of different graphic techniques. From the more traditional xylography, to calcography and hybrid print techniques, from drawing to painting: the paper support remains the only common thread among the works on display.

The exhibition begins on the ground floor with black and white prints representing a pervasive and changing nature, which defies every form of domestication and control. Meadows in bloom, undefined landscapes made of seas and mountains which are sometimes harsh and wild, sometimes blended and evanescent: these landscapes are gradually repopulated by presences. In the natural spaces, small buildings and silent anthropic traces gradually appear, in a process of encounter between civilization and nature that will irremediably lead the former to overwhelm the latter. Disquieting urban glimpses and impossible architectures thus shape new imaginary worlds where the human figure also finds its place. It does so no longer implied, but, as further suggested by the titles of some works, finally expressed in its whole and undeniable corporeity. The itinerary then moves onto the first floor with figures manifesting increasingly defined silhouettes: these are apparitions which become the protagonists of dream-like and fairytale-like narratives, projected onto the future, but also of a sacred iconography which reinterprets and re-reads a long yet familiar past. Color here makes its entrance: by dominating with power and inflexibility, it determines an acceleration within the exhibition journey. The human figure, which had earlier stepped in, silently and cautiously, is here rapidly nullified; it disappears from the paper without a trace, dissolving into the pure abstraction of color. Bold chromatic combinations allow the overcoming of the figurative horizon to pave the way for a return to the bidimensional and surface essence of the paper support.

The exhibition features works by Martina Enrico, Simone Fochesato, Giacomo Fumagalli, Gaia Ghioni, Lenny Lucchese, Irene Paccagnella and Giulia Tombolato.