"Luisa Rabbia's infernal drawings on display in Bergamo"
By Giulia Giaume
September 29, 2022
THE DRAWING HALL IS A SPACE DEDICATED ENTIRELY TO DRAWING. TODAY IT SHOWS NINE GREAT UNPUBLISHED WORKS, WHICH ORIGINATE FROM BOTTICELLI AND THEN FIND AN EMOTIONAL AND INTIMATE CONNOTATION
If for many artists drawings are nothing more than a preparatory phase of a larger work, there are others that make drawing a complete form of expression, as well as the culmination of a long artistic and intellectual elaboration. Thus Luisa Rabbia (Turin, 1970), who brings nine, unpublished large works to The Drawing Hall , the independent space just a few minutes from Bergamo that puts contemporary drawing at the center of her investigation. Inaugurated on 9 September and curated by Veronica Santi, the exhibition is entitled The Inferno, Broken in Nine Pieces and until 1 October 2022 shows a cycle of works made with wax crayons and tempera specifically for this space. This is an international preview, given that the drawings exhibited here will be shown in February in the spaces of the Peter Blum Gallery in New York, with which the artist has exhibited since 2011.
THE DRAWINGS OF LUISA RABBIA FROM THE DRAWING HALL
They are Luciferian chest cages, now straight, now upside down, with ribs that resemble infernal circles and dark riverbeds, at the center of the nine works, each titled to remember a form of "hell on Earth": impotence, loneliness, anxiety , abuse, war, separation, unwanted child, loss, injustice . After two years of pandemic, eroded civil rights (including the abortion represented here) and rampant armed conflicts, it is difficult not to feel the strength and honesty of the artist's message, difficult not to perceive a mixture of anger and sadness. Color gradients on blue themes (dear to the artist) accompany this catabasis with more than earthly features, where significant hands indicate that “broken line” that gives the name to the various works. "'The Inferno, Broken in Nine Pieces' is a reflection on nine emotional states that take inspiration from our contemporaneity and, inevitably, also from my perception of the world ” , Luisa Rabbia tells Artribune . “ They are situations or psychological states that each of us may have experienced or could potentially experience in the course of our life. The hell I have been thinking about is an earthly hell. Inspired by the 'Voragine Infernale', a key design among the 92 executed by Sandro Botticelli to represent Dante's hell, in my hell the Botticellian circles have become bones of the rib cage. There are no sinners, only 'victims' of life itself". The artist thus departs from the first literary inspiration, to address the ancestral theme of "evil" with an empathic and intimate approach, which gives the pure color of the pastel, spread or scraped, an emotional connotation that brings us to the center of a compassion without judgment.
THE DOCUMENTARY ON LUISA RABBIA
The project, as per the practice of the interdisciplinary format of The Drawing Hall, is accompanied by a documentary produced by Yanzi srl and directed by Marco Marcassoli, co-founder of the space in Grassobbio together with the artist Andrea Mastrovito, who has his atypical atelier here , and the visual designer and photographer Walter Carrera. The three, in less than a year, have collected, in an industrial warehouse that shouts love for the territory and attention to the value of design, a small series of large exhibitions which, in addition to Mastrovito himself, have already involved Stefano Arienti - in an intervention that became a prelude to an installation at the Mirador del Lago d'Iseo -, and Gian Maria Tosatti , who brought here the preparatory drawings of theItaly Pavilion then re-proposed by the Lia Rumma gallery. The documentary, a necessary guide in a space otherwise devoid of indications, approaches the practice of Rabbia with incredible delicacy, showing the origin of the signs present in all the works on display - fingerprints - and showing it at work. To complete the project, the fourth Quaderno, which presents, together with a precious selection of images, the text of the curator Santi, who analyzes the practice of drawing by Luisa Rabbia as a "pure form" of thought and action, which invades all techniques and surfaces, from stone to ceramic, from canvas to paper.
"Working with The Drawing Hall has been an experience of energetic sharing, each of us has put his own and has exposed himself to the most similar " , continues the artist. “ Veronica Santi wrote with passion and vision, sharing with us all her reading of the evolution of my work over the years. Marco Marcassoli took care of the documentary. Walter Carrera of the catalog design that The Drawing Hall publishes for each exhibition. Andrea Mastrovito shared with us his enthusiasm for everything creative. I participated with my drawings, which I had to adapt very little since the drawing is the basis of everything I do ".
–Giulia Giaume