Downward looking, grounded, conical vision of the ‘where’, the ‘how’, curious and wondering above all about the ‘who’. Expression of personality, object to be used, adaptable to situations and conforming to occasions. Of different natures, materials and shapes that carry the pace in everyday life. New, old, worn, dirty, fetishism of some, compulsions of others, normality of all: shoes.
Kyveli Zoi, “Shoe Shop”, exhibition view, 2024, ph © Danilo Donzelli Photography courtesy the artist and Galleria ACAPPELLA
Representing shoes can mean different things, like a life experience, a job, whether in an advertising manner for sales or historical emblems such as steps on the moon, the mark it leaves is as visual as it is fleeting as the impression of its form. In art, it can be categorised as ‘still life’, a stationary object, placed there in time and space, but for Kyveli Zoi – Athenian artist born in 1993 – the shoe is more of a living nature. A colourful painting, departing from canons such as perspective and proportion, in favour of gestures, languages and interpretations. More than analytical aspects, it is an art that leaves behind bibliographical pieces, of a daily journey towards an unknown known.
Kyveli Zoi, “Modern Art Collection”, oil on linen, 22 x 30 cm, ph © Danilo Donzelli Photography cour-tesy the artist and Galleria ACAPPELLA
Rituals and personal existences become collective readings, details make the difference between past, present and future. And it is here that for Zoi, the figuration of an object becomes a tool for expressing vitality, the dynamism of a still scene, the imagination of moving environments, stopping the ground and walking through experience. The chromaticism of her art is synonymous with the emotions conveyed, in step with the surrounding reality and attentive to the categorization of the distinct here and now. In this way, the Greek artist seeks to argue cultures and other worlds in order to manifest her identity, her aesthetic ductility, without taking away a kind of creative power from contact with others, with possible variations, ‘mistakes’, experimentation.
Kyveli Zoi, “At Home”, oil on linen, 27 x 35 cm, Galleria ACAPPELLA, 2024, ph © Danilo Donzelli Photography courtesy the artist and Galleria ACAPPELLA
On the occasion of her second solo exhibition, Galleria Acappella in Naples metaphorically (and literally) becomes an exhibition space for Kyveli Zoi’s shoes. Shoe Shop is the title of the exhibition about what an object which is as ordinary as it is sought after can communicate life when it is seen from other aspects. As if displayed on a single shelf, the painter’s oils are lined up on the white walls of the gallery. Each pair of shoes is distinguished mainly by its colour and shape, such as trainers, slippers, ballerinas, heels of various sizes and patterns. In their colourfulness, the protagonists take on very different roles from painting to painting, describing many everyday realities that tell as many stories.
Kyveli Zoi, “Studio in Brooklyn”, oil on linen, 27 x 35 cm, Galleria ACAPPELLA, 2024, ph © Danilo Donzelli Photography courtesy the artist and Galleria ACAPPELLA
Studio in Brooklyn is a cross-section of the artist’s life in America; At Home her scruffy home narrative; Staying Alive her long nights amid disco-music and twinkling lights. This aesthetic biography can also be read from the outside, with an interpretative framework that belongs to the viewer. What is visible can belong to everyone. A singular example are the medium-sized oils Modern Art Collection, Museum Goers and Private Art Collection. In spite of the repetition of the view from the bottom of shoes, the setting glides towards walls set up like a painting within a painting, but above all like the real content of the Neapolitan gallery with the imaginative content of the exhibition space of Zoi’s painting. Like Chinese boxes, each inside the other opens up to worlds and visions that are known, but still to be discovered.
Kyveli Zoi, “Shoe Shop”, exhibition view, 2024, ph © Danilo Donzelli Photography courtesy the artist and Galleria ACAPPELLA
The ‘shop’ that Kyveli Zoi presents – accompanied by ceramic reproductions of shoes with a singular appearance, placed in the corners of the gallery and on a table at the entrance – is an invitation to look and peek, to try on how they ‘fit’ in order to feel an emotion, to celebrate an everyday object that tells of the living nature of the human being. There is no ambiguity in the artist’s paintings, because they are pure and simple fragments of an existence that can belong to everyone.
Info:
Kyveli Zoi. Shoe Shop
27/09 – 10/11 2024
Galleria ACAPPELLA
Vico S. M. A Cappella Vecchia 8/A, Napoli
www.museoapparente.eu
Art Curator and Art Advisor, graduated in Visual Arts and Cultural Mediation, with Master in Curatorial Practices, born in 1995, lives in Naples. He collaborates with Galleries and Independent Spaces, his research is mainly focused on Emerging Painting, with a careful and inclined gaze also on other forms of aesthetic language.
NO COMMENT