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LUISA RABBIA
Anywhere
out of the world
Baudelaire: ''Il
me semble que je serai toujours bien la, ou je ne suis pas.''
In other words:
It seems to me that I will always be happy
in the place where I am not. Or more bluntly: Wherever I am not
is the
place where I am myself. Or else, taking the bull by the horns,
Anywhere out of the world.
Paul Auster, City of Glass, New York Trilogy.
In her art, Luisa Rabbia
explores the perception of the body as border between the outside
and the inside world of an individual:
the relationship between
a human and his environment, including his spiritual journey,
his thoughts, memory and the passing of time.
Anywhere out of the
world narrates states
of precariousness and fragility.
The artist works with
various materials, though she prefers those that best narrate
the passage of time, the crumbling of things
and their disintegration. "I like to consider time itself
a material," Luisa Rabbia says, "the main material that
everything else may relate to."
In her exhibition for
the Galleria Giorgio Persano in Turin, Italy, the leading role
is played by fabrics.
Cloths often have their
own history. They are created in one place and finish up in another,
gathering
energies from the different places on their journey. They are
there when we cover, protect and, to a certain extent, hide ourselves.
The fabrics come alive
thanks to the myriad of forms they can take, transforming themselves
into mountains, lakes, streams, seemingly
breathing. In Luisa' Rabbias drawings, patterns mirror the world,
while the forms the textiles take create not only an outside world,
but also
hide an inside, which remains an enigma to the viewer.
A face with closed eyes
might suggest to us that the individual is resting, but who knows
what is going on inside? What determines being
present? What happens in an abandoned body next to us?
"I am attracted
to the fine line between logic and madness, to how personal obsessions
can construct a situation that is only real in our
thoughts", says Luisa Rabbia. "The drawing gives life
to the thought, expressed in the dialogue between formal construction
of the work and
the spark of creativity."
To the artist, it is
important to leave the mystery of the mind intact, to leave that
hidden universe alive. This mystery upsets certainty and
the possibility of judging. Outside, there is a confusing world
of patterns. But also the silence inside makes a lot of noise.