Marina Bastianello Gallery in Venice Mestre presents “La ruggine non dorme mai” (Rust never sleeps), a solo exhibition by Beatrice Gelmetti curated by Francesco Liggieri. The show will run until November 9th. The works on display, mainly created over the past year, mark a significant evolution in the artist’s career. Beatrice Gelmetti (Verona, 1991) is a visual artist specializing in painting. After graduating from the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, she continued her research at the Kadabra Studio in Mestre and with the “Fondazione Mulatta” collective, presenting her work in both solo and group exhibitions, such as “Perché siamo come tronchi nella neve” in Milan and “Super Call” in Pietrasanta (Lucca). In 2022, she won the fifth edition of “We Art Open”, curated by No Title Gallery at GAD Giudecca Art District.

Beatrice Gelmetti, “Pensieri Verticali”, 2024, acrylic, chalk and oil on canvas, 60 x 60 cm, courtesy Marina Bastianello Gallery, Mestre (VE)

The Mestre exhibition is named after Neil Young’s celebrated album “Rust Never Sleeps” and offers a view of the artist’s poetic style as being in constant change and evolution. Rust here takes on a new meaning: decay represents a constant struggle for relevance and innovation, and the signs of decline introduce new horizons and renewed beauty. The relentless nature of time and human resilience in the face of deterioration are issues that are dear to the painter and that take the shape of deep chromatic compositions, backed by great technical skills and a gaze that aims to spread beyond the boundaries of the retina. The exhibition setup, as the curator himself explained, takes into account the references to Young’s album with the division into acoustic Side A and electric Side B, assigning the categories to the works on display: the former referring to more intimate and reflective works, while the latter to those bursting with energy.

Beatrice Gelmetti, “Pensieri Verticali”, 2024, acrylic, chalk and oil on canvas, 60 x 60 cm, courtesy Marina Bastianello Gallery, Mestre (VE)

This dichotomy is emphasized in the “Vertical Thoughts” series, where the “electric” works are spaced away from the wall as if they were coming toward the viewer, while the “acoustic” ones remain aligned with the wall. The canvas is articulated in layers of color that blend into each other and cover the underlying layers, even if they are revealed in the trace left behind, not hidden but rather emphasized by the overlaying reliefs. Sand and dirt combined with pigment highlight the passage of time, presenting themselves as chromatic concretions that bring sediments to the surface: it is as if colors could ascend through human history in the same way geology reconstructs the history of planet Earth. The colors blend and blur in brushstrokes, stains, splashes, and drips, forming a composition that takes into account the underlying layers, which serve as both the background and the subject of the work.

Beatrice Gelmetti, “Pensieri Verticali”, detail, courtesy Marina Bastianello Gallery, Mestre (VE)

In the folds and turns of these mental landscapes, figurative elements, mostly naturalistic, emerge, like the wings of a butterfly, a raven with its sharp beak, a lizard, while the silhouette of a human figure introduces the eternal enigma: who are we? Only more questions can lead us to an answer: the critical text by the curator opens with a quote from Albert Einstein: «The important thing is not to stop questioning». Francesco Liggieri then reflects on knowledge and how it has been transmitted from antiquity to the present, evoking the figures of spiritual ancestors whose «legacy extends into the realm of the collective unconscious, influencing our lives through symbols, myths, and rituals».

Beatrice Gelmetti, “Lizard”, 2024, acrylic and oil on canvas, 18 x 24 cm, courtesy Marina Bastianello Gallery, Mestre (VE)

The essential questions that inspire the artist also resonate within the work, inviting the viewer to pause and wonder what they are looking at, a necessary act in contrast to the speed of the contemporary world, made of feedback and stimuli consumed in seconds. The immediate and unlimited availability of answers buries the need to ask questions. This aspect is crucial for Gelmetti, who criticizes the excessive speed of our times, not as acceleration but as indifference to what is being observed, deemed ephemeral and ready to be replaced. The artist might agree with Federico Fellini’s words from 1981 regarding channel surfing: «I think that little device [the remote control] has raised a tide of impatient, indifferent, distracted, vaguely racist spectators. Because that little device is a firing squad, it takes away your face, your voice, it erases you».  Though the contraption mentioned by Fellini seems primitive compared to modern Instagram reels, Tik Tok and streaming platforms, in both cases the simple gesture of a finger becomes the executioner of a sentence.

Beatrice Gelmetti, “Intermezzo”, 2024, oil on canvas, 200 x 290 cm, courtesy Marina Bastianello Gallery, Mestre (VE)

Whereas the “Vertical Thoughts” series differs in content but not in format (six canvases of the same size), the other two works on display, “Intermezzo” and “Lizard,” highlight a stark dimensional contrast. A young boy lowers his pants and urinates. The blue stream, like a crystal-clear sea, rises on the canvas, ascending toward the upper boundary, and transforms into an ambiguous alternation of fire and waves. It is unclear whether the scene takes place in a burning landscape or a space contorting on itself, collapsing and revealing its substrate. “Intermezzo” is a large canvas that, placed immediately at the gallery’s entrance, introduces the visitor to the other works, projecting them into a world of great suggestion. On the right, a very small-format canvas occupies the entire wall. It seems that a seascape and a landscape merge at the horizon: a satellite perspective and a panoramic view intersect, generating an unstable, dreamlike image. “Lizard” is by far the most textured canvas in the exhibition. It stems from a layering of colors and glossy resin agglomerates. The title evokes the shape of a lizard struggling to emerge from the brushstrokes, reaffirming the dialogue between abstraction and figuration that underlies Gelmetti’s work, where elements of the latter serve as a portal to enter the artwork.

Info:

Beatrice Gelmetti. La ruggine non dorme mai
07/09/2024 – 09/11/2024
curated by Francesco Liggieri
Marina Bastianello Gallery
via Pascoli 9C, Mestre (VE)
www.marinabastianellogallery.com

Enrico Boschi

Born in Bologna, he studies fashion design and multimedia arts at the IUAV in Venice. He believes in the possibility of crossing boundaries between disciplines and that art can have an active role in breaking down inequalities and uniting people by creating communities.