Pietrasanta • Audrey Guttman at Futura Gallery
The exhibition focuses on the dialogue between the Belgian artist and the writer Jiri Kolar. 27 collages on display
Love, memory and the relationship between past, present and future are the themes explored in a mixture of different media
“Beyond the Face” is the title of Audrey Guttman’s exhibition, hosted by Futura Art Gallery in Pietrasanta, until August 7th. Curated by Chiara Vecchiarelli, professor at the École Normale Superiore in Paris and member of the coordinating committee of the Forum of Italian contemporary art. The exhibition focuses on the dialogue between the works of the Belgian multidisciplinary artist with those of Jiri Kolar, Czech poet and writer, revealing the deep links between the two imaginaries.
The poetics of Kolar persecuted and censored by the communist regime and imprisoned in 1953 because he was considered subversive, is in fact recalled by the mixture between texts and images that we find in the figure of Guttman. 27 collages on paper, all realized in the last year and one dated 2020, are the corpus of works present in the solo exhibition which focus on the human figure. Fragments of bodies and faces are deconstructed and reconstructed in the process of researching new connections and parallels between them and the society in which we live.
Love, memory and the relationship between past, present and future are among the themes explored here, with a harmonious mixture of different media that allows our inner contradictions to emerge without forcing them, but leading the investigation with a sensitive and delicate look at the past. The aesthetic potential of anatomical structures finds space to play with poems and clippings in a new assembly of images, words and colors with a strong compositional balance. Connections between bodies, parts of hands and faces, anthropomorphic silhouettes sampled with mechanical details, games of projections of light and shadow describe a dreamlike dimension that contemplates the strong surrealist tradition originating from the country of origin of the artist.
The aesthetic potential of the anatomical structures play with poems and cutouts in an unpublished assemblage
The femininity that characterizes some of the subjects finds in the sinuous lines a further field of expression, a space in which to free oneself. Awarded the artist residency at the Hangar Photo Art Center in Brussels, she lives and works in Paris, where she earned two masters in art history, art theory and literature and a degree in political science. In 2020 she published a book titled “Making Arrangements”; and her resume of exhibitions are already substantial, despite the young age, ranging with exhibitions from France to Belgium to Italy. “Little Athens”, the nickname with which Pietrasanta is known, draws on a historical context to decline, with this initiative, a glimpse at the future.
