Solo Cose Belle

La Galleria Acappella è lieta di annunciare la prima mostra in collaborazione con Spazio Artisti, programma di residenze in Pozzuoli, Napoli.

Comunicato stampa

La Galleria Acappella è lieta di annunciare la prima mostra in collaborazione con Spazio Artisti, programma di residenze in Pozzuoli, Napoli.

My mouth was black and open. I was afraid that the half-sentence, I had just spoken, would fly like a boomerang, right back between my lips. (…) The idea was somehow seismological, abstract and emotional, but also concrete because we were spending our month in Pozzuoli, walking the Phlegraean Fields, near Naples, sitting on a collapsed caldera, near the Solfatara, a site known for its fumaroles: steaming, sulphuric breaths. “It’s the Earth exhaling,” he had explained, paternalistically adding a “you know” at the end of every one of his silly little sentences.
– April 2017, Pozzuoli

The legend speaks of the dead body of a young woman that was found in the river Seine around 1880 and it is believed that she committed suicide. Because she remained anonymous, her face was turned into a putative death mask, so that someone might recognize her. In search of her identity, her face became an image and was made public. To this day, this image became something like a centuries-old meme that was reproduced, idealized and distributed. Her smile was compared to that of the Mona Lisa. “L'Inconnue de la Seine” became popular as an image because it was deemed beautiful. Over time, her unknown fate was the image that became stylized, misconstrued and subject to a great variety of literary and other projections. These projections originated mostly from male perspectives. In the United States, the mask is also known as "La Belle Italienne”. Simply, because she was immersed in an image of beauty, soaking her over and over again.

For her sculpture “Never Let Jealousy Threaten Female Bonds”, Daphne Ahlers used the mask of the unknown woman from the Seine to address different issues. She cast the mask in latex five times, colored in seaweed green and bound together by long braids of nylon-made hair, which themselves suggest the passing of time as it takes awhile for hair to grow that far down. Even though the image of the unknown woman from the Seine was reduced to an image that was alienated from her actual face as many times as her story must have been misinterpreted—which made her vanish all over again—, she was also never released, as the artist points out, and if she really committed suicide, she made the conscious decision to disappear, which suggests that she wanted to be let go but, for centuries, no one ever would.

Bringing together the works of its four artists, this exhibition raises the question of beauty or the use of beautiful things with a smile and a rivel, causing anxiety and comfort alike. For example, when Lilli Thiessen uses natural materials, referring to geographic locations and historic events, for visual purposes, sometimes bordering on the decorative. She takes the colors for her abstract compositions from sea shells or uses sand to frame a painting, materials which she collected on beaches in the US and in Normandy. How we can reconsider what’s already been historicized when Daniel Faust reframes obscure museum objects and questions, what we put on display and for what purpose. Or when Vittorio Brodmann considers that painting has past the point of having to address beauty, simply, because the question has become an intrinsic aspect of the medium itself.

– Tenzing Barshee

Daphne Ahlers was born 1986 in Hamburg, Germany. Her work has been shown at Galerie Genscher, Hamburg (2016), HHDM, Vienna/New York (2016) and Sandy Brown, Berlin (2015). Her musical practice as ​Lonely Boys in collaboration with Rosa Rendl include performances at New Bretagne/Belle Air, Essen (2016), Skulpturinstitut, Vienna (2016), 3HD Festival, Berlin (2015), Halle für Kunst und Medien, Graz (2015), Halle für Kunst Lüneburg (2015), Kunstraum Niederösterreich, Vienna (2014), Kunsthalle Project Space, Vienna (2014), Ve.sch, Vienna (2014), 21er Haus, Vienna (2013), Wendy’s, Vienna (2012), Casa da Musica, Porto (2011), Elaine, Basel (2011). She lives in Berlin.

Vittorio Brodmann was born 1987 in Ettingen, Switzerland. His work has been shown at Gavin Brown, New York (2016), Kunsthalle Bern (2016), Halle für Kunst Lüneburg (2016), Truth & Consequences, Geneva (2015), Freedman Fitzpatrick, Los Angeles (2015), Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2015), Swiss Institute, New York (2015), Gavin Brown’s Enterprise, New York (2015), Galerie Gregor Staiger, Zurich (2014), Up State, Zurich (2014), Stuart Shave / Modern Art, London (2014), Badischer Kunstverein, Karlsruhe (2014), SPACE, London (2014), 21er Raum/21er Haus, Belvedere Museum, Vienna (2013), Leslie Fritz, New York (2013), Galerie Nicolas Krupp, Basel (2013), CEO Gallery, Malmö (2013), Sandy Brown, Berlin (2012), New Jerseyy, Basel (2009). He lives in Berlin.

Daniel Faust was born in 1956 in New Rochelle, New York. He is exhibiting Silicon, a series of six sizable photographs 5 x 25 linear ft, in “Life in Picoseconds” at Le Laboratoire Cambridge, MA; March to June 2017. His photographs have been exhibited at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; Arsenal Biennale, Kiev; Ural Biennial, Ekaterinburg, Russia; Museum Van Hedendaagse Kunst, Antwerp, Belgium; Gwangju Biennale, South Korea; Istanbul Biennial, Turkey; Vienna Secession, Austria; Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; documenta, Kassel, Germany; American Fine Arts Co, New York; and The New Museum, New York. He lives in New York.

Lilli Thießen was born 1983 in Hamburg, Germany. Her work has been shown at TREIZE Paris (2016), HHDM New York (2016), Mavra Berlin (2016), Skulpturinstitut Vienna (2016), Vartai Vilnius (2015), CRONE Berlin (2015), wellwellwell Vienna (2015), Steve Turner Los Angeles (2014), Belle Air Essen (2014), 21er Haus Vienna (2014), Remap Athens (2013), Autocenter Berlin (2010). She lives in Berlin and Vienna.

Tenzing Barshee was born in 1983 in Basel, Switzerland. He works as an independent writer and curator. Until recently he organized exhibitions at wellwellwell, a non-profit gallery funded by the University of Applied Arts in Vienna. In 2017, he will have curated an exhibition with Anita Leisz at Norma Mangione Gallery in Turin, "Namedropping" at Jan Kaps Gallery in Cologne and "Der Verdienst. 2014-2017" at Oracle in Berlin. In 2016, he curated "Le Mérite. 2014-2016" at Treize in Paris, "Passo Dopo Passo" in collaboration with Molly Everett and Dorota Michalska at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin, Margaret Honda's exhibition "An Answer to 'Sculptures'" in collaboration with Fanny Gonella at Künstlerhaus Bremen, a two-person exhibition with Anne Speier and Judy Fiskin at wellwellwell, University of Applied Arts, Vienna, and Rochelle Feinstein's retrospective exhibition "In Anticipation of Women's History Month" in collaboration with Fabrice Stroun at Centre d'Art Genève. He writes a serial novel for Starship magazine and contributes regularly to Mousse and Spike magazine. He lives in Berlin.