calendario eventi  :: 

X

13/2/2014

Barbara La Ragione

Paolo Erbetta Gallery, Berlin

The Paolo Erbetta Gallery is pleased to present the solo exhibition of Barbara La Ragione (Naples, 1974) entitled Burlesque. The title does not describe the kind of show but refers to the origin of the French word “burlesque”—derived from the Italian word “joke” and meaning accordingly “to jeer,” “to make fun of something or someone.” The artistic research of La Ragione tends toward classic analog photography, real and tangible, for creating portraits as an expression of the self hic et nunc, here and now.

The artist creates real and proper mise-en-scènes in which the represented subjects are not actual persons but lifeless masks that, worn by a fetish body, come to life thanks to the alchemy of light and depiction in the final act of the creative process. Thus through photography, the subject acquires an identity that is better represented and expressed through the mask, unique to each character, bringing into play reality and fiction, truth and manipulation, and purity and artificiality. La Ragione’s works are “open” and emphasize the “staging” of life that takes place in a real and perfect space. The look of these characters plunges into everyone’s memory and personal experience, as the artist states: “The eyes are the expression of the soul, they wander in the observer’s oblivion… photography is the eyes… the eye rests on what is still… we are witnesses of life put on stage. Ghosts of lives unlived … without languages … filling the eyes of the beholder, they tell us, whispering, so many things.”

The displayed series of shots is the first one that La Ragione has made with the use of color, done by painting directly on the black and white photo. The chosen subjects comprise a fellowship of masks that the artist has created by making reference to the Italian “Commedia dell’Arte”. Each costume worn by the Burlesque is characterized by the presence of a home, representing its birthplace, its roots. Moreover these structures, placed on the body of the character, recall the inner self, an intimate and confidential space, an inaccessible secret to be cherished.

The series closes with a subject different from all the others: a single house, a whole composed of all the constructions that we find on the characters. All the houses are here brought together to represent a “unicum,” to ratify and strengthen the bond among the different elements, to build the perfect home.

Paolo Erbetta Gallery
Potsdamer Str. 107 I D - 10785 Berlin
Opening Times: Tue – Sat 12:00 pm – 06:00 pm and by appointment

stampa

permanent link