On the Threshold of Abstraction

On the Threshold of Abstraction/Sulla soglia dell'astrazione: the art of crossing the border

 

From 24 January to 7 February, the curator and gallery owner Stefania Carrozzini opens the doors of her Milanese apartment, transformed into the exhibition space MyMicroGallery since 2013, to host the exhibition "On the Threshold of Abstraction / Sulla soglia dell'astrazione".

Argentina, Japan, Russia and the United States thus meet in this place in the city's historical center , to investigate the border between reality and abstraction.

 

Once crossed the threshold, art enters the house: the exhibition runs between the entrance, the living room, and small space with black floor that gives the name to “MyMicroGallery” opens up to the universe of the international artists Sandra Duran Wilson, Midori McCabe, Barbara Morea and Ramil Karipov.

 

In the canvases of the Russian artist Ramil Karipov, it is still possible to notice a connection to the real data: hidden faces emerge from the colour, a boat takes off, a cat peeps out, a city crumbles, fast and quick. The figures, however, erase themselves, the profiles pulverize. Color creates and destroys.

 

Medium-sized and small works characterize the work of Santa Fé artist, Sandra Duran Wilson. Like windows open onto a blurred reality, it only remains the landscape outlines, sunrises and sunsets, which fade into shape and matter. Layers of color become a delicate beach, a bright dawn, a horizon over the sea, a mauve sky: "eternity. The sea mixed with the sun”, as Arthur Rimbaud wrote.

 

In contrast to this colorful universe is the canvas of black ink on rice paper by the Argentine artist Barbara Morea. Another way to open a passage into infinity is thus suggested thanks to the use of solids and voids, of black and white. The work becomes a parchment on which parts of color thicken to let the roughness of the paper speak for itself.

 

In the last room of MyMicroGallery are hosted the large-format works of the Japanese artist Midori McCabe. An explosion of galaxies closes the path and opens up a gentle passage into the universe. The rosy colours soften the apparent violence of celestial motion and create a cosmic suspension: they are drops and splashes that slowly dissolve into clouds and dust.

 

The exhibition "On the Threshold of Abstraction / Sulla soglia dell'astrazione" presents itself as an open door to new ideas, a free and welcoming horizon, a gateway suspended between reality and imagination.

 

Roberta Maroncelli