33″x41″; collage on scratched hardboard; 2013. Courtesy of the artist.
COLLAGE ON VIEW
Venus in Furs
at Spazio Arte Contemporanea in Robecchetto con Induno, Italy
9 March-6 April 2024
Leopold von Sacher-Masoch’s 1870 novel, Venus in Furs, remains a renowned book in the collective memory: Severin, a simple man, expresses his absolute devotion for Wanda, a woman that he identifies as Venus, the goddess of love. In Severin’s room, a painting dominates the setting, which he says was inspired by Titian’s Venus in the Mirror, which depicts a northern Venus wearing only a fur coat: she is the incarnation of the perfect woman according to his fantasies. But the protagonist rebels and emancipates herself from the ideal by taking her fur off, the same fur that imprisoned her in a role. Venus in Furs is the final affirmation both of the desire of self-expression and of the creative instinct conceived as a generating force on a deeper level.
The group exhibition “Venus in Furs” brings together twenty-four women artists who express their creativity and their artworks by projecting them as a life-driven energy, the famous Eros described by Freud, named from the Greek god of love. Each artist is in dialogue with a large fresco where different areas of research investigate the contemporary fabric of existence using different mediums.
Women and how they are represented today is contrasted with their classic role as angels of the hearth. The female image is painted as being trapped in suffocating domestic settings permeated with flowers or while dealing with common chores. The artworks are also linked to current events, to social issues involving anti-speciesism and the female world, outlining painful paths that lead to rebirth and self-discovery.
The artists in the exhibition are: Silvia Beltrami, Marianna Bussola, Anna Caruso, Antonela Casazza, Elisa Cella, Eleonora Chiesa, Cristina Costanzo, Ilaria Del Monte, Loredana Galante, Debora Garritani, Giovanna Lacedra, Coquelicot Mafille, Florencia Martinez, Marta Mez, Elena Monzo, Saba Najafi, Ieva Petersone, Alessandra Rovelli, Marta Sesana, Milena Sgambato, Tina Sgrò, Sanda Skujina, Vania Elettra Tam, Francesca Vitali Boldini
(text adapted from material provided by the curator, Rebecca Delmenico)
INFORMATION
Spazio Arte Contemporanea
Via Umberto I 108 (enter from Via Carducci 2)
20200 Robecchetto con Induno, Italy
+39 0331 122 7674
HOURS:
Wednesday-Sunday, 2:30-7:30PM