Composite Materiality

The necessity of experimenting with materials and techniques plays an important part in “Composite materiality” where the works exhibited lie from traditional techniques such as drawing or painting to the most linked to crafts, sewing and pottering. From the natural environments created inside vitrines by Bianca Bondi, to the processes of modifying the fabrics of Bea Bonafini, these four artists practices inherit a strong influence from the craftsmanship and play with new interpretations of textures, surfaces and materials in order to reinterpret the contemporary through the elements they have chosen for their practices.

 

As well as we can comprehend, the artists themselves are not anymore intended only as painters or sculptors. However, more often they are seen as multidisciplinary professionals. They develop their body of work by using different techniques and materials or usually due to the need of more freedom for their creative process, providing in this way, a clearer understanding of their thoughts to the viewer.

 

The use of different materials does not have to be perceived as something dispersive, contrariwise it strengthens the artist’s body of work, which experiences the contemporary through different media and therefore reinterpret it with such variety. The visual experience is unique, as unique is the result of the four artists’ practices in conversation which create therefore a composite materiality used as instrument of multiple narrations.

 

Bea Bonafini’s interdisciplinary practice plays with different materials, often textile-based, exploring the flexibility of materials, testing the notion of comfort and modifying the spaces and traditional structures as the carpet will lay on the wall in a vertical display.

 

Passing from the bi-dimensional painting techniques to the three-dimensional works, by applying a mixture of painterly gestures, is the core of Kristian Touborg practice. He presents sculptures hanging on the wall, created by different textures coming out from paintings, new media and technology that through polyester and linen become the key materials of his work.

 

Laurence Owen’s body of work is inspired predominantly by carpentry, architecture and craft, speaking with the viewer through those diverse materials, ideas of fluidity in relation to time, matter, borders and territories.

 

Bianca Bondi instead, gathers from different territories objects that have a special meaning to her, items that are inhabited with spirit, linked to concepts of animism and spiritualism. The delicate selection of those objects, some of them natural, others chemical, serve to her to examine the properties and energies that the items have themselves, selecting and placing them in closed vitrines in which a new environment will be created.