Daily Lazy: Searching For Myself Through Remote Skins at Renata Fabbri / Milan, Italy

Searching For Myself Through Remote Skins

Rebecca Ackroyd
Gabriele Beveridge
Bea Bonafini
Irene Fenara
Beatrice Gibson
Lydia Gifford
Goldschmied & Chiari
Catherine Parsonage

Curated by Bianca Baroni

7 May - 7 July, 2018

Renata Fabbri

Via A. Stoppani, 15/c
20129 Milan

Installation view, Searching for myself through remote skins, Renata Fabbri Gallery, 2018, Milan

Bea Bonafini, Slick Submissions (detail), 2018, pastel on wool and nylon inlayed carpets, cm 426x366
courtesy the artist

Bea Bonafini, Slick Submissions, 2018, pastel on wool and nylon inlayed carpets, cm 426x366
courtesy the artist

Beatrice Gibson, Agatha, 2012, Colour, sound, 16 mm transferred to HD Video, 14 minutes courtesy the artist

Catherine Parsonage, Untitled (Ear painting), 2018, acrylic on canvas, cm110x200, courtesy the artist

Catherine Parsonage, Untitled (for V.W), 2018, acrylic on canvas, cm 28 x 35 courtesy the artist

Gabriele Beveridge Perfect Clearance Towering, 2018, found poster, hand-blown glass, steel hardware, 39 x 62 x 23cm
courtesy the artist

Gabriele Beveridge, Skin for either one, 2017, found poster, granite, frame, cm 50x83x7.5 courtesy the artist

Goldschmied & Chiari, Enjoy, 2006, silicone resin, 2mt courtesy the artist and Renata Fabbri

Irene Fenara, Photo from surveillance camera, 2018, digital print, cm 50x90 courtesy the artist

Installation view, Lydia Gifford. Left to right: Include, 2018, cardboard, cotton, towel, wood, nails, glue, white clay, oil paint, acrylic, cm 78.5 x 87 x 50; Caps, 2018, towel on board, glue, nails, oil paint, wood, cm 43 x 34.5 x 9
courtesy the artist

Lydia Gifford, Harbour, 2018, canvas, wood, nails, white clay, oil paint, acrylic, string, towel, cm 240 x 139 x 11
courtesy the artist

Rebecca Ackroyd, Husk, 2017, gouache, charcoal and soft pastel on Somerset satin paper, cm 125x78
courtesy the artist
photo credits: Bruno Bani

Renata Fabbri is glad to present "Searching for myself through remote skins", a project curated by Bianca Baroni which gathers works by nine international artists such as Rebecca Ackroyd, Gabriele Beveridge, Bea Bonafini, Irene Fenara, Beatrice Gibson, Lydia Gifford, Goldschmied & Chiari e Catherine Parsonage.

Inspired by Luce Irigaray’s text "Perhaps cultivating touch can still save us", the title of the show indicates the physical experience of the other as a fundamental premise in the articulation of the self. In some of the most salient passages of Irigaray’s essay, the author suggests that touch does not simply underlie an intimate encounter with another subject, but it actually plays a crucial role in the definition of one’s own identity. The process of identification of one’s own nature through tactile experience is here imagined as an actual path, a journey through the landscape of the body and its social habitat, two territories appearing as both exotic and familiar. Departing from some of the key propositions that constitute Irigaray’s theoretical contribution, the present exhibition proposes a dialogue among a series of artistic practices incarnating different languages and researches and yet manifesting a shared sensitivity in relation to the idea of intimacy.

The works featured in the exhibition subtend different approaches and perspectives in relation to such concept. They highlight reciprocities and contradictions that characterize this notion within the personal and creative sphere of each artist, as well as within the broader socio-cultural arena in which they operate. Besides manifesting itself through those gestures foregrounding each artistic process, the idea of touch is explored through materials and objects specifically conceived in relation to the body and to those daily rituals that implicate it. However the exhibition also travels along radically different trajectories, questioning the supposed correlation between touch and the articulation of an intimate relation. In some of the exhibited works, the tactile experience is completely abstracted from the reality of the body in order to become pure suggestion. In certain cases the portrayal of the body retraces a simulation of physicality or – better yet – the tactile feeling of a bodily surface. In other cases such representation is focused on a particular aspect of the body that, being alienated from the totality of its apparatus, becomes the fulcrum of a self-standing, abstract composition.

Developing on diverse conceptual and visual levels, the project deconstructs and re-imagines the idea of intimacy through a fluid negotiation between the reality of the body and its erotization, between artistic and popular imaginaries, between the public and the private dimension, between science-fiction and historical narratives, between the definition of the self and its dissolution through the digital space.