Alice Cattaneo
Unbroken Landscape
April 28, 2022 - June 11, 2022
Opening: April 27, 2022 | 18:00 - 21:00
Vista della Mostra
Opere in Mostra
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Info e Comunicato Stampa
MLF Marie-Laure Fleisch is pleased to present Unbroken Landscape, Alice Cattaneo’s new solo exhibition in the gallery. A dominant presence of glass might have characterized her earlier work, but the new landscape we get to see gives pride of place to stone. The Venetian glass so dear to Cattaneo does not disappear for all that. On the contrary, this exhibition proves to be fertile ground for a new hybridization between materials, with a fascinating contrast between mineral opacity and transparency. As always, the choice of material implies the prior exploration of a specific field. Apart from the artist’s long-time collaborations with master glassmakers, she now has new relationships with stonecutters. The fundamental principle of Cattaneo’s practice remains unchanged: the apparent simplicity of her work partly resides in her consummate mastery of ancestral knowledge.
Following an invitation last year to create an in situ work in the Italian region of Liguria, Alice Cattaneo took a keen interest in the minerals in the area. She was fascinated by the landscape of this valley, an ancient place of pilgrimage impregnated with the heritage of the different adjacent regions, and discovered a cave that for several generations had been exploited by the same family. This new body of sculptures is therefore above all the result of the meeting between an artist wishing to celebrate the know-how of Italian craftsmen and a family carrying on the tradition of manual stonemasonry from father to son. During her research, she also was influenced by the typical stela statues (a type of prehistoric monument) in the region. Cattaneo could follow the entire extraction process of the stones, which are probably similar to the rock used for such anthropomorphic sculptures 3000 years ago. In addition to this “geological memory,” which she condenses in her work, the artist was invited to the workshop to witness the shaping of this material that is particularly sensitive to its environment, making the color of each stone unique.
Rather than as a structured staging, Cattaneo wants her unique works to function as a scenography. Continually striving for harmony in her creations, the artist deftly confronts balance, tension, and gravity. The forms she uses are not figurative but suggest the hand that produced them. The exhibition, conceived as a landscape, consists of atypical elements extracted from the earth that unite in a new choreography designed by the artist. In this process, she could rely on information from a 16th-century herbarium found in the region of Liguria, an allegorical synthesis of the mountain landscape she explored. Wishing to infuse the region’s soul into her creations–which become the fragments of a matrix shaped by nature–the artist has reconstituted the colors from the book with natural pigments. These pigments, which she slowly spread on selected fractions of the stones, are therefore sculptural elements in their own right, additional indications as to the origin of these landscape totems.
Cattaneo achieves her artistic translation of the gaze mainly through the fragmentation of materials which, like the natural environment from which they stem, are bodies capable of expressing themselves independently of any concrete meaning. The sculptures being shown here–on pedestals, on the ground, or fixed to the walls–bear witness to the artist’s desire to simplify forms to the limit in the hope of externalizing the soul of the panorama which she wishes to reconstruct, an approach which is akin to animism. Just as the territories that have fed her imagination keep changing, the artist has never stopped acquiring more skills. In this exhibition, Alice Cattaneo shows us a poetic summary of the Italian mountain landscape in the heart of Brussels.
Biografia Artista
Nata a Milano,1976.
Formazione
2004 Master of Fine Arts in Sculpture, San Francisco Art Institute
2001 BA (Honours) Degree in Fine Art, Environmental Art, Glasgow School of Art
Premi e Residenze
2015 Moroso Concept for Contemporary Art, Udine (finalist)
2015 Madeinfilandia, Pieve a Presciano, Pergine Valdarno (AR)
2014 AIR - Artist in Residence, Krems, Austria
2013 Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco
2012 Premio Lombardia Arte, Miart, Milano
2009 Premio New York 2009/2010, Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Italian Academy at Columbia University, New York/International Studio and Curatorial Program, New York
2008 Premio Cairo, Palazzo della Permanente, Milano
2007 Premio Furla (special mention), Bologna
2006 Premio Epson, Ratti Foundation, Como, IT
Mostre Personali
2018
Alice Cattaneo, MLF | Marie-Laure Fleisch, Brussels, Belgium
2017
Alice Cattaneo - Michael Höpfner, Galerie Hubert Winter, Vienna
2016
Alice Cattaneo, Galleria Collicaligreggi, Catania, Italia
2015
La Quarta Vetrina, Curata da Francesca Pasini, Libreria delle Donne di Milano, Milano, Italia
2013
Romer Young Gallery, San Francisco
2012
Galerie Stadtpark (two person show with Fred Sandback),Krems, Austria
2011
Galleria Suzy Shammah, Milano
Ikon Gallery, Birmingham
2008
MADRE Museum, Napoli
2007
Analix Forever, Geneve
Mostre Collective (selezione)
2016
La Pelle (Skin),Officina, Bruxelles, Belgio
Premio Fondazione VAF (VII edizione),MACRO Testaccio, Roma, Italia
2015
VX30 Chaotic passion curated by Anna Lovecchio e CHAN, Museo d’arte contemporanea Villa Croce, Genova
Tensioni e-statiche (two-person show with Hilla Ben Ari), Galleria Marie-Laure Fleisch, Rome, Italy
Assonometrie. Antonio Catelani | Alice Cattaneo, Rizzuto Gallery, Palermo
CArD in città, Percorsi d’arte tra passato e presente, Antiquarium Santa Margherita, Piacenza
2014
CArD Contemporary Art&Design, Val Tidone, Piacenza
Ritratto dell'Artista da Giovane, Castello di Rivoli, Torino
Non-Profit & Profit, SpazioA, Pistoia
Equilibri, Galleria Erica Fiorentini, Roma
2013
Autoritratti. Iscrizioni del Femminile nell'Arte Italiana Contemporanea, MAMbo Bologna
Arte in Memoria, Sinagoga di Ostia Antica
2012
Performing Structures, Wäscherei Kunstverein, Zurich
The Fourth Guangzhou Triennial, Guangdong Museum of Art
Periplo della Scultura Italiana Contemporanea 3, MUSMA, Matera
2011
Arte essenziale, Collezione Maramotti, Reggio Emilia/Frankfurt Kunstverein, Frankfurt
2010
Terre Vulnerabili, Hangar Bicocca, Milano
La scultura italiana del XXI secolo, Fondazione Pomodoro, Milano
Roaming, Musée Cantonal des Beaux-Arts, Lausanne
Casa Dolce Casa, Centro per L'Arte Contemporanea L.Pecci, Expo Shangai/Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts, Taiwan
The Second Today's Document 2010, Today Art Museum, Beijing
L'Elogio della Semplicita', Palazzo delle Stelline, Milano
2009
Fragile, Terres d'empathie, Musée D'Art Moderne Saint-Étienne/The Daejeon Museum of Art, Daejeon
Galerie Christine Koenig, Vienna
2008
Italics, Palazzo Grassi, Venice/MCA, Chicago
2007
Apocalittici e Integrati, MAXXI Museum, Rome; Abstract Art Now, Wilhelm-Hack-Museum, Ludwigshafen