Vandalized Bodies // Cuerpos Vandalizados
Opening 03.03.2022 - 19:30h
FLIPA Art Gallery · Passeig del Born, 14
Vandalized Bodies is an aesthetic exploration that defies conventional ideas about the body. Through its social and political dimension or through the search for beauty in contrast with the grotesque, the exhibition gathers the work of four artists that explore the different ways in which the body is used as a space for expression.
Hidden identities, social issues, and moral dilemmas are reflected through the decomposition of fragments of the body. Pictures of young bodies, flawless from a technical point of view, breaking their harmony with dead animals hugging them or above them. The distortion of one’s own body image, which can lead to anxiety or depression, is exacerbated by social media and its images of unattainable beauty and happiness.
Although all works are aesthetically very different, they all look to explore the tension we experience as humans between our interior and the images that are imposed and that we also project. Vandalized Bodies presents a critical vision of the individual’s role in the contemporary world.
FRANCESCO PETRUCCELLI (Italy, 1977)
Francesco Petruccelli is an Italian painter and sculptor. Graduated from the Università degli Studi di Milano with a Master’s Degree in Arts and Humanities, since 2011 he has lived in Berlin and is exclusively dedicated to art. He grows up in Italy, surrounded by examples of exuberance in art which in their harmony and majesty conceal social and moral issues. Therefore, the artist finds in vandalism and iconoclasm a way to discover new meanings in the work of art and reflect the urgent questions in society. In a continuous dialogue between his past and his present, the artist rejects the cold look and stiff pose of the statues with which he grew up and finds in their destruction a hidden identity that reveals itself, at last, a connection with parts of the soul that become visible in the process of deconstruction of the skin and the body. In 2017 he participates in an artistic residence at the Goethe Institut in Bangalore (India) and in 2019, as a finalist for the Arte Laguna award, has the opportunity to exhibit his work in the Arsenale (Venice). His work has been exhibited in different galleries across Italy, Germany, India, and Ukraine.
SANDRA HICKEY (Ireland, 1987)
Sandra Hickey is an Irish painter, who graduated in Fine Art (with Honors) from the Limerick School of Art and Design, specializing in painting. She obtains her Master’s Degree in Fine Art - Painting in 2013, from the National College of Art and Design. Through her work, the artist explores the human body both in its abstract and figurative form, focusing on the honesty of the body and our perception of it. They are distorted bodies, liquid, that contrast with the rigid perfection of canonic beauty. In 2016 she is selected among more than 5000 candidates to work on Loving Vincent, nominated for an Academy Award, and the first movie to be completely hand-painted. She has participated in both national and international exhibitions in Poland, the United Kingdom, and the Netherlands, among others.
DANNY FREDE (Germany, 1982)
Danny Frede is a German artist that through his work looks to translate traditional themes in painting to a vision of everyday life progressively more influenced by digital processes. In the photography series, he presents in this exhibition, the artist recovers motives of the Renaissance period to talk about death and the manipulation of bodies. In the pictures, both men and animals have gone through a process of transformation, a digital iconoclasm that has converted them into supermarket products. At the same time, the work of Danny Frede is also an invitation to reflect on mortality, and the dead animals appear as a reminder of the fragility of the bodies that hold them —both are part of an industrial production system that is only getting faster and more efficient. The artist has exhibited his work in Germany, South Korea, Italy, the United States, Austria, and the United Kingdom.
DANIELA ADAMEZ (Colombia, 1986)
Daniela Adamez is a Colombian artist. In her series ‘Things you have that they think you shouldn’t. But I do.’ the artist explores the themes of luxury and opulence, which in the past have adopted different forms but have always been associated with symbols of oppression. However, luxury has now entered into new territories. The symbols of luxury and exuberance, the things with which we decorate ourselves, obtain a new meaning in the artist’s work, as symbols of freedom of expression and identity. In 2019 the artist inaugurated the individual exhibition ‘Please Like Me(n)’ at Le Trottoir, Milan. She has also participated in collective exhibitions in Spain, Italy, Colombia, Austria, and the United States.
FLIPA ART GALLERY · Passeig del Born, 14
Located in the heart of Born, FLIPA is a crystal and art gallery that appears as a space where art created by nature blends with art created by emergent artists from all around the world. The project begins with the curatorial platform RICE Initiative, whose mission is to promote and support the work of underrepresented artists, especially women, the LGTBI+ community, and racialized people. The gallery strives to be a space that creates openings in the dominant discourse of contemporary art and actively creates an art world that is more inclusive and plural, opening opportunities for visibility and exhibition of new aesthetic proposals.