October 8-29

edited by Francesca Baboni and Stefano Taddei

On Saturday 8th October at 6.00 pm, Giovanna Sottini’s solo exhibition “Cakes” opens at the Pini Arte modern and contemporary art gallery in Pontevico (Bs). On show works of the young artist, recently finalist at the Combat Prize, which refer to the world of childhood interpreted in an original and personal key, not only with a reassuring but also with ambiguous implications and unfortunately still socially relevant, without any intent moralizing but on the contrary with an objective will of evocation. In the pop and amusing series of baby bottles, outlined by a photographic matrix painting that was later re-elaborated autonomously with oil and acrylic blushing colors, the vehicle of exchange and growth of the mother towards the child, the basis of nourishment, the primary and natural, as well as the privileged family relationship that is established, sometimes sweet sometimes exaggeratedly oppressive. In this sense the medium of nurturing becomes a simulacrum of a close and indispensable affective link.

With the intriguing candies, which blend lively with the density of the soft brushstrokes, Giovanna’s subtext becomes thinner, referring to a typical sweetness of early childhood, to games and memories of sweetness; at the same time their use and colorful appeal is revealed as a means to attract the little ones from ambiguous presences (the proverbial saying “do not accept sweets from strangers”) and brings to mind facts of painful timeliness. The dark side in the apparently quiet and iridescent painting by Giovanna Sottini is not lacking, which in the portraits of children (including a child’s self-portrait and a depiction of her daughter) loads the vision of a real and at the same time visionary power, lighting up the chromaticisms and focusing on the infantile subject in the foreground, estranging it from the rest of the representation. In this way the memory becomes the still image of a moment that the artist has lived through the autobiographical experience.

So childhood, now the realm of a maniacal and / or neurotic torment from the adult world, becomes in these works a land to be emended from the sugary trappings that surround it. Faced with these works, the complicity of life emancipates itself from the clichés that move the majority, shattering even all the mediatically constructed scrawl that grips its consciences. (Francesca Baboni, Stefano Taddei).

Giovanna Sottini – Cakes
edited by Francesca Baboni e Stefano Taddei
October 8-29
modern and contemporary Piniarte gallery
Via XX Settembre, 14 – 25026 Pontevico (BS)
opening hours: Tuesday to Saturday: 9.00am – 12.00am, 3.00pm – 7.30pm / Monday: 3.00pm – 7.30pm
Tel. +39 030 930409 / +39 338 6203606 / Email: ermannopini@libero.it
orari : martedì a Sabato: 9.00 – 12.00, 15.00 – 19.30 / Lunedì: 15.00 – 19.30
Tel. +39 030 930409 / +39 338 6203606 / Email: ermannopini@libero.it