Luisa Rabbia
dal 24/6/2008 al 27/9/2008
Segnalato da
24/6/2008
Luisa Rabbia
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Boston
Travels with Isabella, Travel Scrapbooks 1883/2008. During her residency at the Museum in 2007, the artist was inspired by photographs Isabella Gardner collected and pasted into elaborate travel scrapbooks while traveling in China in 1883. Fir this show, Rabbia takes and rearranges these archival photographs to create a video of an imaginary landscape, and a running panoramic view of her own journey through these photographs, and through space and time.
During her residency at the Isabella
Stewart Gardner Museum in 2007, artist Luisa Rabbia was inspired by
photographs Isabella Gardner collected and pasted into elaborate travel
scrapbooks while traveling in China in 1883. The Italian-born, New York-based
artist returns to the Gardner Museum this summer to present a new
contemporary exhibition: Luisa Rabbia: Travels with Isabella, Travel
Scrapbooks 1883/2008, on view June 27 through September 28, 2008.
In Travels, Rabbia takes and rearranges these archival photographs to create a
video of an imaginary landscape, and a running panoramic view of her own
journey through these photographs, and through space and time. The artist
animates these archival photographs with her own drawings, along with music
and other images inspired by her residency. The result is a fantastical narrative
that is both contemporary and historical.
Luisa Rabbia’s first exhibition at the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum, Travels
with Isabella also provides an interesting and unexpected contemporary look at
Isabella Gardner’s historic and fabled travels around the world – including to
China and the Orient.
Rabbia collaborated on the new work with Fa Ventilato, a Swiss-born producer and musician who is well established for
live projects in Europe and the U.S. and a regularly contributor of the music/sound for installations by international
artists, including Rabbia, Monika Bravo and Moataz Nazar.
LUISA RABBIA • Luisa Rabbia’s work is deeply rooted in drawing, which she sees as a platform that unites rational
construct with the imagination. The dynamic tension that exists in drawing between the subject figure and its
background, the being and becoming of space and time, has influenced much of Rabbia’s work with paper, papiermâché,
porcelain, and animation. Her evocative work was described in Artforum as “tinged with a sadness that spoke of
the precariousness, isolation, and fragility of human existence.”
Luisa Rabbia was born in Turin, Italy in 1970 and currently lives and has a studio in New York City. She received a
Masters’ degree from the Accademia Albertina di Belle Arti in Turin and trained as a studio assistant to artist Gilberto
Zorio of the Arte Povera movement. Rabbia has had solo exhibitions at Massimo Audiello Gallery in New York, Giorgio
Persano Gallery in Turin, and Rossana Ciocca in Milan. She had a Special Project in Arte All’arte IX and X, curated by
Associazione Arte Continua, S. Gimignano.
CONTEMPORARY ART AT THE GARDNER • Travels with Isabella is curated by Pieranna Cavalchini, Gardner Museum
Curator of Contemporary Art. The museum’s unique Artist-In-Residence program continues Isabella Gardner’s legacy of
supporting living, working artists by inviting artists across a range of disciplines to live and work amidst the museum’s
collection and history. The Artist-in-Residence program is made possible, in part, by the Nimoy Foundation and generous individuals.
The Gardner Museum receives operating support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council.
Press Preview: Wednesday, June 25, 5:30 PM
Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum
280 The Fenway - Boston
Tue-Sun, 11 am-5 pm
Admission: Adults dollars 12; Seniors dollars10; Students dollars 5; Free for members, children under 18 and all named Isabella