The sky fading from warm, golden hues through different shades of blue; the sunlight slowly leaving to give way to nighttime darkness. This is twilight. The blue hour heralding the end of the days. It is the clouds, dense and abstract, of the series of paintings, Crepuscolar Notes (2023), that open Elisabetta Bottura’s solo exhibition, curated by Francesca De Chiara and Ilona Särkkö, at Iperspazio, Milan, and in collaboration with Associazione Zona Blu.
Elisabetta Bottura, I was waiting for art to come, exhibition view, Iperspazio, Milano, 2023. Courtesy the artist, Iperspazio and Associazione Zona Blu
The path of the exhibition takes the form of a twilight sky; it is constituted as a gradual climax made of images and sounds, that lead from the public sphere to a private and intimate one. The artist retrieves previously made canvases and adds to them excerpts of quotations from Frantz Fanon, Francis Alÿs, Adrian Piper and others; dashed and fragmentary words that challenge all forms of neutrality and impartiality in artistic practice. A stance on frequent themes in her practice: «Galleries and museums are political arenas in which these conditions no longer applied», quoting Adrian Piper, 1983. Paintings are like fragments of a monolith, in which Elisabetta Bottura condenses references and offers her thoughts to the public, thus transforming them into a glimpse into the world around her.
Elisabetta Bottura, Crepuscolar Notes, 2023. Courtesy the artist, Iperspazio and Associazione Zona Blu
The environment is completed by a clear, celestial sound that emphasizes the lightness of the canvases and accompanies the study of skies and clouds, in a bright environment where the artist elevates artistic practice and production. She delves, indeed, into Art and artistic creation as a place for the investigation and questioning of the self and the cosmos in which we live. A space of freedom, open to mutual infiltrations between subject and surrounding elements.
Elisabetta Bottura, I was waiting for art to come, exhibition view, Iperspazio, Milano, 2023. Courtesy the artist, Iperspazio and Associazione Zona Blu
Going down the stairs, however, a dark room houses the work My daddy’s Golem (2019) in which the artist records her father immersed in the virtual reality of the video game “Eve” – a sci-fi game set into the space. Video, digital frames, sound and voice are mixed in a work that documents the manifestation of the self in the confusing context of today’s life. In this sense, the video game stands for a break in a personal moment to carve out at the end of a day, opposing the chaos of life. The video – as an apotheosis of an intimate and individual twilight – dwells on the need to find one’s own space of liberation in a suffocating time.
Elisabetta Bottura, My daddy’s Golem, 2019. Courtesy the artist, Iperspazio and Associazione Zona Blu
The exhibition expands itself between two opposite poles: on the one hand, the artist’s need to constitute herself as part of a public life and to reflect on the connoted spaces. On the other hand, it exposes a need for escapism from the very same collectivity about which she seeks to investigate and reflect. Carrying out these purposes, the exhibition is configured as a free place, in power, in which to recognize oneself, since it establishes an individual relationship with each observer.
Elisabetta Bottura, Crepuscolar Notes, 2023. Courtesy the artist, Iperspazio and Associazione Zona Blu
I was waiting for art to come is included within the exhibition program of Zona Blu, an association founded by artists and cultural workers, a multifaceted reality, a free laboratory that manifests itself as a “cultural incubator”. This is the second show realized in collaboration with Iperspazio, a space to support the arts, a place for experimentation and aggregation of different artistic practices. Two fluid contexts that cooperate to bring ever-changing and new practices and research on view.
Irene Follador
Info:
Elisabetta Bottura, I was waiting for art to come
curated by Francesca De Chiara e Ilona Särkkö
with Associazione Zona Blu
22/06/2023 – 28/06/2023
Iperspazio
via Carlo Torre 43, 20143 Milano
www.iperspazio.xyz
www.zonablu.org
is a contemporary art magazine since 1980
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