OPEN STUDIO Josefina Vilela / Il Cammino

OPEN STUDIO
JOSEFINA VILELA
The Path

OPENING: NOVEMBER 9th
from 6pm to 9pm

exhibition until November 23, 2017
from Monday to Friday
from 2pm to 5pm

(by appointment only, please write to info@fonderiabattaglia.com)

The argentine gallery PAGANA Casa de Arte presents, in the spaces of Via Stilicone 10, the artist Josefina Vilela thanks to the Open Studio project of Fonderia Artistica Battaglia. Three important factories were involved in the project: Officine Saffi for ceramics, Serra 1938 for wood, Battaglia for bronze.

The Path

In her first approach to bronze, Josefina Vilela uses a series of symbols to illustrate the idea of duality: an egg sliced in two asymmetrical parts, a vessel, a walking stick and red earth spread all over the floor of the exhibition place.

Here there is clearly a person missing: the one who walks with the stick and uses the vessel to go through the long path in order to join the two parts of what could be interpreted as the symbol of cosmic egg.

Josefina Vilela requires the viewer to develop a new form of intuitive awareness capable to sense what story the artist is constructing.

What do the two portions of the egg represent? Why are their sizes and colours so different? Could the larger half represent the cosmic and natural forces within our unconscious?

The artist has a profound interest in understanding and experiencing the separation between the conscious and the unconscious; that tension between the internal and external worlds that relay in the human being.

May be the only way of bringing together these fractions is a long and confusing path, one that one has to walk with temperance, and which may help us achieve the union of our divided self. 

Josefina Vilela was born in 1985 in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her work explores the interaction between inner and external worlds by means of simple objects and messages. In “Savia”, her latest project, created from an au plein air experience, tree barks, cotton paper, graphite, charcoal and copper transform into drawings, sculptures and sound recordings in an intent document the traces of nature. Heavily intertwined with her studies in mysticism and shamanism, Josefina experiences the act of creation as a ritual where organic and inorganic energy intermingle in a new naturalism.

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Officine Saffi is a centre dedicated to contemporary ceramics founded in Milan in 2011. The project includes the Gallery that proposes exhibitions by contemporary artists and masters of XX Century; the Workshop, used for courses and practical work, as well as for production by artists and designers and during Artists’ Residencies; and the Publishing House, which produces the quarterly magazine La Ceramica in Italia e nel mondo and art catalogues. The project is completed by the Open to Art biennial competition.

SERRA 1938 is a specialized carpentry in the towers, in ancient methodologies of manufacture and special wood coatings. The project includes Manifacture and Management with sophisticated technologies; the artisan work is one of the foundations of Italian culture and economy; to return to betting on it, contaminating it with the "new knowledge" of technology and management by opening it to globalization, because by doing so Italy would find itself in its hands a formidable tool of growth and innovation. Being able to manufacture handicrafts with close contact with art and culture, ensuring management with sophisticated technological tools to meet the bidding of both economic and delivery times without ever losing the quality of the piece, is the goal of Serra1938.

Fonderia Artista Battaglia is a lost bronze wax foundry with a history that is more than centenary. They have cast their works in Battaglia with many of the most important artists of Marino Marini at Kengiro Azuma, Alighiero Boetti at Arnaldo Pomodoro and Giuseppe Penone and recently Francesco Arena, Giorgio Andreotta Calò, Nico Vascellari and Serena Vestrucci. The project is to turn Battaglia from a historical foundry to a company for the new generations of artists and, therefore, the Open Studio to convey the knowledge of wax lost in bronze, the annual award, Battaglia Foundry Sculpture Prize, the Museum of wax lost for educational purposes and the Department of Restoration for bronze works.