It’s just a vague memory -. Bird’s nest, silk, embroidery 2018
My text from the catalogue:
I collect particular objects, which I have found by chance. Some, like the bones, are mere remains of life, others have had a function of protecting, controlling or manipulating. Created by nature, like the nest, or invented by man such as the swaddling band for newborns. They are silent witnesses, everyone hides a secret story and this often scares me. It is as if it were a memory of suffering from within their interiors, emanatating from those objects and simultaneously their decadence touches something in the depths of my being. I need to understand why. I must stop their destruction and raise them from oblivion to cover and celebrate them.
Covering an object is an act of protection and creates the intimacy that makes energy flow between the object and myself. At the beginning I have a vague idea of the final result, but I feel obliged to follow what the object tells me to do. In the final stage, I create the embroideries, which are inspired by nature in its continual transformation. With the needle and thread, my hands find the paths guided by the same object, now enveloped in my creation.
Il mio testo per il catalogo:
Raccolgo certi oggetti incontrati per caso. Alcuni, come le ossa, sono meri resti di vita, altri hanno avuto una funzione come di proteggere, di controllare o di manipolare. Creati dalla natura, come il nido, o inventati dall’uomo come la fascia per i neonati. Sono muti testimoni, ognuno nasconde una storia segreta e questo spesso mi spaventa, come emanassero una memoria di sofferenza dal loro interiore, ma nello stesso tempo la loro decadenza tocca qualcosa nel mio profondo. E devo capire perché. Devo fermare la loro distruzione ed elevarli dall’oblio per rivestirli e celebrarli.
Rivestire un oggetto è un atto di protezione e crea l’intimità che fa scorrere energia tra l’oggetto e me. All’inizio posso avere una vaga idea del risultato finale, ma devo dare spazio a quello che l’oggetto mi dice di fare. Alla fine realizzo i ricami , che sono ispirati dalla natura in continua trasformazione. Lascio che le mie mani con l’ago e filo trovino percorsi indicati dallo stesso oggetto rivestito.
Eva Gerd
PRESS RELEASE
HAND – MADE (ROČNO DELO)
Time and light are the two key elements that follow the genesis of the work of art and have served to the participating seven international artists as the driving engines for creating objects, materials, linear perspectives, and often delicate forms, which tend to veil, uncover, and weave upon open visual works with a strong aesthetic interaction and with an explicit reference towards a different way of making art and looking at things. Through manual dexterity and those practices that are historically deemed as being exclusively feminine, such as sewing, embroidery, lacemaking, and crochet, these artists combine tradition, new dialogues, and intimate spaces, while demonstrating a pinch of transgression, great technical abilities, and depth of thought.
This kind of a conscious awareness is noticeable in the works of Kyriaki Costa, Eva Gerd, Resi Girardello, Ina Loitzl, Eva Petrič, Elisa Rossi, and Stanka Vauda Benčevič, not only in the employment of different techniques, but in generating thought structures and aesthetic actions applied to a texture, whether it be the result of an embroidery, sewing, crochet, or of a more contemporary painting, sculpture, video, installation or performative act. And so to the eye of a careful observer, the plot reveals itself as an element of human culture, where the movement of a hand, often in conjunction with a needle, a crochet hook or a brush, is not merely an extension and artistic practice, but an aesthetic experience, a personal way of being in dialogue with oneself and the world, and a way of offering and suggesting new experiences, directions and connections.
The creations by Elisa Rossi – lace presented as still life painted on canvas, Resi Girardello – metallic lingerie combined with copper crochet patterns, Eva Gerd – corsets, tablecloths, embroidered and hand sewn items, as well as personal stage costumes and other elements by Stanka Vauda Benčevič, are perhaps more conceptual in their representation and process of creation and serve as a perfect counterpoint to portraits of the female body by Eva Petrič, Kyriaki Costa, and Ina Loitzl, represented here through elements of a more iconic nature, namely through photography, video, and the use of various materials, with a highly specific and very personal emphasis on sewing or crochet.
In this regard, the hand-made products wish not so much to offer a reflection on art, history and tradition, as to induce a reflection on the use of simple materials which can be defined through hand movements.
Here then, the works chosen one by one for the halls of the Ptuj City Gallery, among which some have been created especially for this occasion and have therefore not been exhibited before, as in the case of Gerd, Rossi, and Vauda Benčevič, open up to us in the form of new linear perspectives, as open fields extending among materials, shapes, and hands, between a thinking mind and a living body, between things we have seen and experienced and those that we would instead like to disclose through palpable desires and emotions
Ptuj, April 1st, 2018
text by Marika Vicari
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HAND – MADE (ROČNO DELO)
artists: KYRIAKI COSTA, EVA GERD, RESI GIRARDELLO, INA LOITZL, EVA PETRIČ, ELISA ROSSI, STANKA VAUDA BENČEVIČ
curators: Marika Vicari & Jernej Forbici (ART STAYS)
Opening: on Tuesday 15th May 2018 at 7 pm in the Ptuj City Gallery, Prešernova street 29.
Times: Until 29th June 2018.
Opening hours:
from Tuesday to Friday: 10.00 -18.00, Saturday and Sunday: 10.00 – 13.00
Eva Gerd 