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R.O.S.A. presents:
Johann Nortje, Carlos Crespo Laìnez, Josefa Parra
Eva Lavinia Maffei
- Remendadora de corazones, J. Carlos Crespo Laìnez
- Gatos guia para noctambulos, J. Carlos Crespo Laìnez
- Female with crow, Johann Nortje
- Single female, Johann Nortje
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Last November, after the success of the parallel “Città al Muro” event at Manifesta 7, the European Biennial of Contemporary Art , held in Trento in July, R.O.S.A presented the first one-man show in Europe by the young South African artist Johann Nortje.
Johann Nortje was born in 1980 in Pretoria, where he lives and works. He is one of South Africa's most promising young artists; his work and person incarnate one of the most interesting developments of the contrasts between the planet's whites and blacks. Even at a sociological level, his work encompasses a sense of awareness of diversity. Nortje is one of those white South African artists that know they're white but also feel a little black.
The show of his works, “Amniotic Dreams,” hosted by Giorgia Lucchi's Boccanera Gallery of contemporary art has proposed an original interaction between comics and sculpture. There is a long tradition of comics in Africa and South African artists are in the avant-garde in this specialty. At Trento, Nortje presented an original interpretation of this discipline: stories, painting and sculpture intertwine and blend into a single medium, creating the singularity of a story told through comic pages, created with inks and acrylics, from which iron sculptures burst out.
Nortje's work relates a brilliant and fantastic way of reconstructing ones interior and exterior existence in a difficult situation like apartheid. The separation between persons who feel they are different is common to all societies and “Amniotic Dreams” is a dream of the possibility of emancipation. The hero of the comic transforms himself into a giant condor, a symbol of great freedom and awareness. Amniotic dreams occur during pregnancy when - according to Nortje - we decide who and what we are about to become, which is to say that we determine the life we will lead a priori, starting from a concept for which nothing is unreachable or impossible.
 But, in his comic, there is also an important chromatic symbol. The use of white, black and grey represents the reality of things that are, in large part, grey and neither completely white or completely black, as we tend to perceive them, deceiving both ourselves and others. It is this vision that triggers his principal message: a method for not falling into victimhood and reacting correctly to the bitterness of life.
R.O.S.A. is preparing another important event for 2009: “Los Oficios Imposibles” by Carlos Crespo Laìnez. The project intends to familiarize the public with a fascinating work of art, philosophy and contemporary fable. The “Impossible Works” comprise Laìnez's fabulous artistic universe, represented by 26 painting on large canvases that are described by as many poems by the respected poet Josefa Parra. Two artists of exquisite talent playing an ingenious game that, they remind us, could go forward into infinity, as Lorenzo Saval writes in the prologue of the volume containing the work, and that, according to one of the seven sages of Greece, desire for the impossible in an infirmity of the intelligence.
In these paintings, anything can happen and the characters we find could be in the Yellow Pages and cell phone contact directories of solitary people. So, the “Shadow Thief,” “Fish Tamer,” “Heart Mender,” “Maker of Lost Objects” and many others, including the “Inventor of Impossible Works,” will be coming to Trento, where it will be possible to visit the art exhibition and, on the occasion of its inauguration, follow the introduction of the Italian edition of the delightful book that contains this incredible concentrate of imagination and sweet irony.
An international cultural association was founded in Trento in 2007 to keep Mara Maffei Gueret's message alive through important artistic initiatives. Mara Maffei Gueret taught us never to lose the will to publicize what we know; a sort of call to cultural generosity, an attempt to feed the hope that the world can be saved. An expert in Territorial Information Systems and environmental impact, a great lover of art and nature, her character led her to believe that the will to spread culture and make it accessible through quality communication systems, whether technical, artistic or any other type, was fundamental for the future of our planet. |
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