EXHIBITION n.98
EXHIBITION TITLE: REGINE DI CUORI, VALERIA AGOSTI NELLI / CLARA BRASCA
CURATED BY: IVAN QUARONI
PERIOD: 3 FEBRUARY - 14 APRIL 2007
VERNISSAGE: SATURDAY 3 FEBRUARY ORE 18.30

Thee gallery La Giarina is happy to present the exhibition, “Regine di cuori” that confronts the works on paper (and of paper) of Valeria Agosti Nelli and Clara Brasca, two artists whose research parallels, but style wise very different, they are joined not only by one single vision and opera of the human condition, but also from the choice of a technique and of a specific medium.
The design is, in fact, from the beginnings, considered the expressive instrument closest to the original idea of the artist. In their lives, the Vasari wrote in fact that ”because from this knowledge is born a certain concept and judgment that forms in the mind of that thing, that then expresses with hands is called design, one can conclude that design is non other than an apparent expression and declaration of the concept that one has in his heart and of that that others have imagined in their mind and produced in their idea”. Inadequate or elaborated that it is, design, hence, is the most intimate form of eloquence available to the artist, that which allows a more faithful transcription to the project and its realization. The two artists move from antithetic assumptions. Valeria Agosti Nelli, who presents a series of small and medium size works and some paper Mache sculptures, she expresses through a language in which the expressive and emotional component of the work prevails. Clara Brasca, who for the occasion exhibits ten or so large works, instead prefers a more sober style, that transposes a clear and classic line within the confines of a chromatic grammar absolutely contemporary.

Valeria Agosti depicts exile female figures, in balance between fragility and strength, lightness and heaviness. Her research profiles itself as an inquiry of the precariousness of conditional existence, as the foray between the folds of an inviolable intimacy.

Through the use of a wisely styled design, the artist fixes a roundup of hung paintings on paper, of rarefiable in which the archaic memories of the archetypal female melts with the all-consuming testimony of contemporary neurosis. Her threadlike figures, whether designed or sculpted, contribute to the creation of a gentile and discreet style, that sets against the clamorous vulgar of much contemporary art.

For Clara Brasca design isn’t only a project activity. Her papers, depict distemper, are autonomous works. With respect to the abstract composure and completeness of paintings, in the designs of the Milanese artist there is more formal liberty, a nimbleness in drawing and a lightness of new tones. Her subjects, gathered from the daily meditation of the myth, the poetry, the religion and art, are immersed in the chromatic vibrant material, that thanks to the combination of complimentary tones surprisingly drawn effects of fluorescence. Her interest is turned to the inquiry of a sublimated human condition, almost released from daily affairs, in a clenched confrontation with the archetypal always lively if myth and history.