Massimo Audiello 526 West 26th
Street no. 519 New York, NY 10001 tel: 212.675.9082 fax: 212.675.8680
email: audiello@msn.com website: www.massimoaudiello.com
LUISA
RABBIA February 23 - April 21, 2007
Massimo Audiello is
pleased to announce an exhibition by Luisa Rabbia.
The exhibition will open on Friday, February 23, and run through
Saturday, April 21, 2007.
The opening reception is Friday, February 23 from 6 to 8 pm.
Luisa Rabbia has been
interested in the body as a metaphor since her early works. The
bridge she has built between this subject and all kinds of possible
connections such as cosmic, philosophical, religious and existential
is what has kept this obsession vital and in continuous evolution.
The artist's work is
based on drawing, seen as a knot that unites rational construction
with the imagination, one mark after another.
The relationship between drawing and time and space, being and
becoming, figure and ground, have led Luisa Rabbia to work with
paper, paper-mache and porcelain.
Old Man, a sculpture
representing an old seated man, is absorbed in a never-ending
sleep. Roots entangle him and seemingly take him back to the earth
where he came from.
Brain, is a large porcelain wall piece representing a centenary
olive tree. The infinite lines which make up the bulging roots
of the tree draw similarities to capillary vessels and all together
seem to constitute a brain tissue. Crakes, naturally occurred
on the process of making and the drawing, slowly recorded the
time passing by.
A Tree to Walk With is a sculpture representing a portable tree
that could function as a pet or a traveling companion.
All the works in the
exhibition seem to come out, be composed of, or wrapped up in
multiple layers of roots and blood vessels. Their graphic similarities
seem to remind us of a primal cosmic unity which still entangles
us even when our daily life wants us to believe in separation
from each other and from the nature we leave in.
Entering Luisa Rabbia's
world is like reentering this forgotten unity. The secret life
of objects that surrounds us during the unraveling of our lives
comes to life, like creatures in a fairytale, where the fantastic
is removed and the existential appears in the layers of our personal
and collective experience.
Beside New York, Luisa
Rabbia's latest projects include the following exhibitions: Shanghai
Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai, China; Giorgio Persano Gallery,
Torino, Italy; Marta Cervera Gallery, Madrid, Spain; Special Project
at Arte All'arte IX and X, Associazione Continua, S.Gimignano,
Italy.
A monograph on her work
has been published by Hopefulmonster with a text by Achille Bonito
Oliva.