Anna Marra Contemporanea is pleased to announce the solo-show by Maria Elisabetta Novello entitled “Limen” ,curated by Lorenzo Respi, which opens on Thursday, January 14, 2016.

 

The exhibition includes works created ad hoc by Novello, installations and wall pieces, occupying both the inner rooms of the gallery and the courtyard. The works, which are part of the “Sopralluoghi” project, are the result of a performative action in which Maria Elisabetta Novello collected the remaining dust from the streets of Rome.

 

For several years, Maria Elisabetta Novello continues a meticulous, and personal, research on places, their memory and the inexorable passing of time. Time specific actions of collection of tracks, “Sopralluoghi” are direct surveys in the area: the artist runs and walks through the places, she gains experience of the extension of the spaces and their transformation, gathering dusts on her way and the evidences of the present, in addition to the ones from the past. “Soprallluoghi” are an attempt to understand the physical reality, its evolution, through the investigation and reworking of what survived the time.

The time required for the actions and for the collection of fragments of our memory offer to Maria Elisabetta Novello the pretext to reflect on herself - and on her being an artist - as "temporal being". Geographical exploration joins, therefore, an inner journey of knowledge and appreciation.

 

With “Limen” exhibition at Anna Marra Contemporanea gallery, Maria Elisabetta Novello adds a new definition to the notion of “Sopralluoghi”: the border.

Moving between the visible and invisible borders of the city of Rome, the artist goes up to the most extreme limits of space, manteining balance on the thin dividing line that, on one side, delimits a space-time area and, on the other side marks the beginning of another one. And so on to infinity.

As geographical, political and social borders are permeable and movable, the same happens to the places of the mind and the manifestations of his unconscious. The uncertainty and the doubt, which animate and nourish the artistic creativity, give shape to unknown landscapes, outline distant horizons and build archives of memory. In this new series of “Sopralluoghi” Maria Elisabetta Novello opens the physical borders to her inner world, accepting the vagueness as an existential condition and as a stimulus in her artistic research.

 

From the “Sopralluoghi” project are exhibited the photographic series "Sopralluoghi - Roma" which documents the performance action; the series "Opacità" composed of mirrors, instruments of knowledge of the outer world and the inner, damaged by time and obscured by dust collection and finally the two series "Archivi - Paesaggio" and "Archivi - Orizzonti" in which dust is collected on laboratory slides or fixed on glass, as if she wanted to analyze it and give it a new configuration. There is also space for "Orizzonti" in which the composition of the ashes of two different shades delineates a physical and mental border, an elusive and unattainable horizon. In the courtyard of the gallery, the installation "Paesaggi" stands out for its silent solemnity.

 

The catalogue that accompanies “Limen” is edited by Gangemi and contains a text by the curator.

 

ITA