Isabella Nazzarri | Vita delle forme
Curated by Ivan Quaroni.
On Saturday December the 3rd 2016, 6.30 pm, C2 Contemporanea opens, in collaboration with ABC-ARTE, the new solo exhibition by Isabella Nazzarri: Life of Forms, curated by Ivan Quaroni.
In 1943, the year Henri Focillon published Vie des Formes, form was already considered not as a sign conveying a meaning, but as content itself. Isabella Nazzarri created for C2 a new series of medium and big size watercolors on paper, a reflection on the cognitive value of form and its related self-meaning. Working on the concept of illusion – and ambiguous abstraction at the same time – as she did for the “Uncertainty Principle” exhibition, the artist realized watercolors as big as arrases or tapestries. Form is first perceived as an apparent decoration and then it shows its content.
The new works, belonging to the Grafts series, have the same schematic structures of geometrical patterns and fabric textures. Indeed, forms are arranged on the paper surface in a regular way, as if they had an ornamental purpose. However, the decorative impression vanishes away as soon as the work of art is studied from a close point of view, each form analyzed in its own singularity. As we mentioned above, the biomorphic nature of these shapes recalls the complexity of microorganisms like germs, bacilli and microbes. It drives the mind towards something having nothing to share with the beauty of tapestry or wallpaper decorations. It rather produces an uneasy feeling in the observer’s mind. Her free forms look like moving in a huge field and, at the same time, converging towards a hypothetical spatial center.
In the big watercolors, their disposition does not feel as accidental, but it follows a logical direction, however random it may be. This is why the ornamental structure remains soft, like an impression or an illusion.
The contrast between the apparent overall structure, static as any decorative system, and the chaotic bundling up of different forms, conveying pulsating and disturbing dynamics, highlights a contradiction produced by fertile experimental procedures, one of the most interesting aspects of this artist’s recent work.
A new catalogue in Italian and English will be published by ABC-ARTE.
It will include images of all the exposed works and a critical essay by the curator Ivan Quaroni.
Isabella Nazzarri was born in Livorno in 1987. She lives and works in Milan. In 2011 she completes her three-year degree in Painting at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence. Then she studies Visual Arts at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Brera. In 2013 she wins the Griffin Prize – Student section. She is in several collective and solo exhibitions in art galleries and open spaces such as Villa Brivio (Nova Milanese), Spazio Oberdan (Milan), GalleryV9 (Warsaw), The Griffin Gallery (London), Spazio Soderini (Milan), Interno18 (Cremona), Galerie Michael Schultz (Berlin), Officina Giovani (Prato), Circoloquadro (Milan), Spazio Ex Fornace (Milan), Museo Fattori (Livorno), ABC-ARTE (Genoa).
Isabella Nazzarri – Vita delle forme
Curated by Ivan Quaroni
Opening Saturday December the 3rd, 6.30 pm
December the 3rd – January the 11th 2017
Opening times: Monday to Friday 5.00pm – 07.00pm
C2 Contemporanea
Via Ugo Foscolo 6 – Firenze
