LONDON.- Part of
Richard Saltoun’s ‘Women 2.1’ virtual series of exhibitions spotlighting female artists, this digital presentation showcases works by Italian artist Gaia Fugazza. The online exhibition presents a series of wood and mixed media works by Fugazza that draw on primal everyday experiences, pairing the wonders of nature and the universe with female “rituals of corporeal management”.
The exhibition brings together a selection of works from Fugazza’s renowned Contraceptive series, depicting the more mundane aspects of female fertility, alongside works displaying the wonders of nature and the uni-verse - constellations, childbirth and animal figures reminiscent of the traces found in the Lascaux caves. In presenting different female contraception’s methods, the artist is interested in addressing this subject from an artistic, psychological, botanical and scientific point of view. In Natural Response, 2019 she attempts to represent the many entities that populate a person, and the constant shift between the perception of the self as a unity and as an interconnected multitude. Linked to contemporary life, her “paintings” are inspired by archetypes of the past while possibly presenting themselves as propositions for the future. Quelli che si al-lontanano [The ones who walk away], 2019, shows how Fugazza’s research gives access to knowledge accord-ing to languages and meanings between common reality and altered states of consciousness. Included in the exhibition is a new work released in 2020 Plants like him - Cerulean Blue, that depicts ”A man hanging pas-sively from a branch using prehensile feet. He is subject to slight sensual touches from different plants” says Fugazza. Visually, most of the work’s surface has undergone a process of paring away, and in some areas the paint is stripped back or burned to reveal rough wood: by reducing to the bare minimum, Fugazza reveals the elemental necessity of her subject matter.
Working across the mediums of painting and performance, Fugazza is interested in experimenting with or-ganic materials and ancient techniques, which she approaches in a performative way, to explore the troubled relationship of humans and the natural environment, plant knowledge, reproduction and transcendental practices. Works featured in the show were included in Antidotes and their Counterparts, a joint exhibition with Haroon Mirza, at Hausler Contemporary, Zurich in 2019 and in The London Open Live at the White-chapel Gallery in 2016.
Gaia FUGAZZA (b. 1985) was born in Milan, Italy and currently lives and works in London. Fugazza com-pleted an MA Fine Art at Chelsea College of Arts, London (2014), received her BA in Painting at the Brera Art Academy in Milan (2008). She had solo and duo exhibitions at Gallleriapiú, Bologna; Haüsler Contemporary, Zurich; Zabludowicz Collection, London; Spazio Cabinet, Milano. Selected group shows include Royal Acad-emy, Lisson Gallery, Whitechapel Gallery, Baltic Triennial 13, Mimosa House.
“I make works as punctuations, inspired by observation of daily life and stretched to some sort of archetypal patterns.” – Gaia FUGAZZA
