Exhibitions, Italy, Latina, 26 September 2015
A show of great impact opens our new exhibition season 2015/2016 in LATINA. JERNEJ FORBICI and MARIKA VICARI, two artists at their first personal showing in ROMBERG with a site specific project for the ROOMBERG Project Space.
Curated by Italo Bergantini and Gaia Conti.
The things a child loves remain within the realm of their heart well into old age. The most beautiful thing in life is for our soul to linger fluttering in the places where we once played.
Khalil Gibran
The history of art is studded with couples, husband and wife, both artists, both well known. A constellation of experience in the artistic field which bring into symbiosis their life and work. I can name some which are as dissimilar as Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, or related, taking as example Hans and Sophie Arp, or even accomplices as in the case of Marina Abramović and Ulay. Jernej Forbici and Marika Vicari are a couple, they are married and they are like two poles of the same magnet.
EVERYWHEN sums up the first ten years of their journey together. Even if their respective works travel independently along tracks which I could easily define as parallel, the concept underlying the research of both is their relationship with nature. Both of them explore its artistic nature through a game of mirrors and references impressed upon their retina and which goes from childhood memories up to the present. They “steal” nature with their heart and eyes. I'm thinking they are the two lenses from a pair of glasses: one lens sees the dream and the other one what remains of that dream. Enchantment and disenchantment. Uncontaminated and contaminated.
Vicari's landscapes, echoes of her relationship with nature, with the woods where she used to wander around Vicenza, her home town, intimate and profound: an aesthetic pleasure. Forbici's countrysides, counter-echo, a lost past in his Slovenian land, a vision shattered by the passage of modernity, that has overshadowed his memories: a criminal report.
An excursis which begins from her, Marika's, very first exhibition, in the year 2004, “ Una stanza per sognare” (A room to dream in)is a disruptive and romantic pictorial installation. Re-shown in our space in Latina the three large original panels 180x450 cm, graphite, acrylic, oil, acrylic resin and bituminous resin open an ideal gash in the wall, an endless wood, delicately coloured, summery and dreamy. Wood shavings, laid out on the floor, a large black album of notes and drawings to explore, the call of childhood, to the lightness between two ropes attached to the ceiling and tied to a table: a red swing. An ancient game going back to Greek myths, and its oscillating movement is associated with the idea of rebirth, energy and ...the idea of giddiness.
The same giddiness, that feeling of sensory distortion, which runs through his, Jernej's, great work. At the other end of the gallery an ad hoc canvas, from 2015, a large work 180x450 cm, oil and acrylic, the perfect nemesis of that of his consort. The poetic illusion in this case, however, is turned off. The giddiness increases and the abyss opens up beneath our feet suspended in the void. Forbici drags us into a world which is far from accommodating, the landscape which he portrays, his nature, is pervaded by a sense of loss.
The red of the swing, the deep red of the works. The colour red dominates the space, not green, and the brush strokes are sweeping and dense. A bucolic world, that of his native country, Kidričevo in Slovenia, violated by the armed hand of blind progress. His land scarred by social, political but above all environmental changes. Her delicate trait slides on the wooden panels, his energetic brush stroke sweeps across the canvas. 2004,2005. Marika Vicari, Jernej Forbici. These works are separated by more than ten years. A leading thread which ideally reunites the journey of their career and creates that which is inside the Romberg space. Between one work and another, between the two poles of the same magnet, hanging on the walls of the gallery, their artistic journey: a constellation of small works, wooden panels for her and small framed canvases for him. Hand in hand, creativity and love, personal ties like artistic harmonies. Intimately intertwined, the two artists follow a common trajectory which looks on a past which is already a future ...
EVERYWHEN.
(Text by Gaia Conti)
Curated by Italo Bergantini and Gaia Conti.
The things a child loves remain within the realm of their heart well into old age. The most beautiful thing in life is for our soul to linger fluttering in the places where we once played.
Khalil Gibran
The history of art is studded with couples, husband and wife, both artists, both well known. A constellation of experience in the artistic field which bring into symbiosis their life and work. I can name some which are as dissimilar as Georgia O’Keeffe and Alfred Stieglitz, or related, taking as example Hans and Sophie Arp, or even accomplices as in the case of Marina Abramović and Ulay. Jernej Forbici and Marika Vicari are a couple, they are married and they are like two poles of the same magnet.
EVERYWHEN sums up the first ten years of their journey together. Even if their respective works travel independently along tracks which I could easily define as parallel, the concept underlying the research of both is their relationship with nature. Both of them explore its artistic nature through a game of mirrors and references impressed upon their retina and which goes from childhood memories up to the present. They “steal” nature with their heart and eyes. I'm thinking they are the two lenses from a pair of glasses: one lens sees the dream and the other one what remains of that dream. Enchantment and disenchantment. Uncontaminated and contaminated.
Vicari's landscapes, echoes of her relationship with nature, with the woods where she used to wander around Vicenza, her home town, intimate and profound: an aesthetic pleasure. Forbici's countrysides, counter-echo, a lost past in his Slovenian land, a vision shattered by the passage of modernity, that has overshadowed his memories: a criminal report.
An excursis which begins from her, Marika's, very first exhibition, in the year 2004, “ Una stanza per sognare” (A room to dream in)is a disruptive and romantic pictorial installation. Re-shown in our space in Latina the three large original panels 180x450 cm, graphite, acrylic, oil, acrylic resin and bituminous resin open an ideal gash in the wall, an endless wood, delicately coloured, summery and dreamy. Wood shavings, laid out on the floor, a large black album of notes and drawings to explore, the call of childhood, to the lightness between two ropes attached to the ceiling and tied to a table: a red swing. An ancient game going back to Greek myths, and its oscillating movement is associated with the idea of rebirth, energy and ...the idea of giddiness.
The same giddiness, that feeling of sensory distortion, which runs through his, Jernej's, great work. At the other end of the gallery an ad hoc canvas, from 2015, a large work 180x450 cm, oil and acrylic, the perfect nemesis of that of his consort. The poetic illusion in this case, however, is turned off. The giddiness increases and the abyss opens up beneath our feet suspended in the void. Forbici drags us into a world which is far from accommodating, the landscape which he portrays, his nature, is pervaded by a sense of loss.
The red of the swing, the deep red of the works. The colour red dominates the space, not green, and the brush strokes are sweeping and dense. A bucolic world, that of his native country, Kidričevo in Slovenia, violated by the armed hand of blind progress. His land scarred by social, political but above all environmental changes. Her delicate trait slides on the wooden panels, his energetic brush stroke sweeps across the canvas. 2004,2005. Marika Vicari, Jernej Forbici. These works are separated by more than ten years. A leading thread which ideally reunites the journey of their career and creates that which is inside the Romberg space. Between one work and another, between the two poles of the same magnet, hanging on the walls of the gallery, their artistic journey: a constellation of small works, wooden panels for her and small framed canvases for him. Hand in hand, creativity and love, personal ties like artistic harmonies. Intimately intertwined, the two artists follow a common trajectory which looks on a past which is already a future ...
EVERYWHEN.
(Text by Gaia Conti)
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