The Studio Chronicles
Curatorial Statement by Bianca Baroni
The artist’s studio.
A space of physical production.
A unique environment enabling the creative process to unfold.
A heterotopic extension of the artist’s most intimate routines and obsessions.
A tangible manifestation of a vision.
Many are the definitions that have crystalized the idea of the studio within our collective imagination. Emerging from a more or less romanticized depiction of the artist’s figure and their genius, such ideas and projections have often insinuated an idealized representation of the atelier as a space of creation.
But how can we shift prevailing modes of representation and think of it as a site of meaningful encounter? Can we envision the studio as a place of dialogue and exchange? Can we imagine it as a ground of co-production and even co-determination between diverse subjectivities and realms? And given the imaginary that developed around the atelier, how does this actually fold into the real experience of each artist? And, perhaps most importantly, how do such experiences ultimately infiltrate and manifest within the work of art?
These are but a few of the interrogations behind The Studio Chronicles, an exhibition that proposes the idea of a studio as a dialectic space and adopts this perspective to read/open up the work of five international artists: Alessia Armeni, Damien Flood, Nicholas John Jones, Aurora Passero and Daniel Schubert. The show not only proposes their experience of the studio as a key into their respective practices; it also questions the studio as a seminal space of conversation among different perspectives and voices, between artistic and curatorial work, conceptual and aesthetic concerns, creation and display as well as between the artist the work.
Within Aurora Passero’s practice, the studio functions as a site of convergence and experimentation. It is the place where she selects and re-arranges the multiplicity of visual materials and references, collected and registered through a relentless documentation of her daily experience. As such, the studio constitutes the space where material is edited and re-configured into new constellations, setting the ground for her own visual language to emerge; and a space of physical labour, a place where the artist encounters the medium and implements it in a process of physical production.
Nicholas John Jones sees the process of painting as a journey, a conversation with the work as a way to uncover the potentiality of the medium. He likes to think the works as questions, as well as debates. Developing a work is about questioning the relevance of the practice, as well as his own approach to the medium. The conversation doesn’t only take place between him and the work, but also among several different paintings. If they are simultaneously hanging in the studio they might generate a sort of constellation, taking on different personalities and attitudes. As such, the studio becomes the space and the moment where the artist starts formulating heterogeneous configurations and as such can imagine the potentiality of the works in way that he never projected.
Along similar lines, Daniel Schubert conceives the creative process as a fight, almost as an exhausting match that strips all the artist’s energies. Whereas Nicholas John Jones sees the encounter involving the artist and the work within the studio as something like cross between an interrogation, debate, and discussion, Daniel takes this possibility to an extreme. The studio constitutes the territory where a quasi-antagonistic relationship is consummated, translating the creative impulse into a generative and almost erotic energy. Encompassing a combination of glowing presences, violent brushstrokes and saturated compositions, the appealing façade of his works often overshadow the struggle that takes place in the studio, removing the viewer from the actual process of making. Daniel likes to play with the contrast between the lightness of his paintings and the tormented journey behind each one of them.
The studio as specular to the artist’s mental dimension and, as such, a space of removal from reality - this is one of main conclusions that emerged from the numerous conversations developed with Damien Flood. According to the artist, when stepping into the studio, one doesn’t simply enter a space of physical production, but a very intimate environment that often provides a quite introspective look into the mind-set of the artist. These ideas somehow seem to find correspondences in the status of the paintings. Whereas he identifies a parallel between the ecology of the studio and the mind, his paintings subtract the subject from any realistic scenario and try to imagine it within a metaphysical dimension. As such, the studio is the place where one withdraws from the rest of the world as much as the paintings retain a metaphysical removal from reality. Similarly to the quick gestures Damien performs in the studio, the subjects of his paintings reveal themselves as glimpses. Rather than being crystallized presences, they are caught in the process of becoming, remaining indefinite and ungraspable.
As suggested by the title of these highly performative pieces, Alessia Armeni’s paintings document how the appearance of the studio changes over a time frame of 24 hours, a contemplative operation that involves the artist both physically and mentally. Thus, the paintings, which emerge from an act of observation, give body to the gaze and the gesture of the painter, both documenting and reflecting upon an act of looking and reproducing. As such, Alessia doesn’t simply delineate a relation with the temporality of painting and its creation within the studio, she actually goes back to the basic elements of the pictorial operation, an activity that has to do with the studio portraiture as much as it deals with the Impressionist tradition of the en-plein-air.
Bianca Baroni
Bianca Baroni (b. 1987) is a London-based independent curator and curatorial advisor for RH Contemporary Art. Since 2013 she is a permanent member of FormContent, a curatorial initiative active between London and Vienna. In 2014 she curated "Proposition for an Infinite Garden", a project featuring an exhibition and series of public events at the UK Government Art Collection London. Bianca collaborates with several private collections in London and Italy and recently completed her MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is a contributor for Le Salon and occasionally collaborates with the Fine Arts program at Kunsthochschule Mainz
Curatorial Statement by Bianca Baroni
The artist’s studio.
A space of physical production.
A unique environment enabling the creative process to unfold.
A heterotopic extension of the artist’s most intimate routines and obsessions.
A tangible manifestation of a vision.
Many are the definitions that have crystalized the idea of the studio within our collective imagination. Emerging from a more or less romanticized depiction of the artist’s figure and their genius, such ideas and projections have often insinuated an idealized representation of the atelier as a space of creation.
But how can we shift prevailing modes of representation and think of it as a site of meaningful encounter? Can we envision the studio as a place of dialogue and exchange? Can we imagine it as a ground of co-production and even co-determination between diverse subjectivities and realms? And given the imaginary that developed around the atelier, how does this actually fold into the real experience of each artist? And, perhaps most importantly, how do such experiences ultimately infiltrate and manifest within the work of art?
These are but a few of the interrogations behind The Studio Chronicles, an exhibition that proposes the idea of a studio as a dialectic space and adopts this perspective to read/open up the work of five international artists: Alessia Armeni, Damien Flood, Nicholas John Jones, Aurora Passero and Daniel Schubert. The show not only proposes their experience of the studio as a key into their respective practices; it also questions the studio as a seminal space of conversation among different perspectives and voices, between artistic and curatorial work, conceptual and aesthetic concerns, creation and display as well as between the artist the work.
Within Aurora Passero’s practice, the studio functions as a site of convergence and experimentation. It is the place where she selects and re-arranges the multiplicity of visual materials and references, collected and registered through a relentless documentation of her daily experience. As such, the studio constitutes the space where material is edited and re-configured into new constellations, setting the ground for her own visual language to emerge; and a space of physical labour, a place where the artist encounters the medium and implements it in a process of physical production.
Nicholas John Jones sees the process of painting as a journey, a conversation with the work as a way to uncover the potentiality of the medium. He likes to think the works as questions, as well as debates. Developing a work is about questioning the relevance of the practice, as well as his own approach to the medium. The conversation doesn’t only take place between him and the work, but also among several different paintings. If they are simultaneously hanging in the studio they might generate a sort of constellation, taking on different personalities and attitudes. As such, the studio becomes the space and the moment where the artist starts formulating heterogeneous configurations and as such can imagine the potentiality of the works in way that he never projected.
Along similar lines, Daniel Schubert conceives the creative process as a fight, almost as an exhausting match that strips all the artist’s energies. Whereas Nicholas John Jones sees the encounter involving the artist and the work within the studio as something like cross between an interrogation, debate, and discussion, Daniel takes this possibility to an extreme. The studio constitutes the territory where a quasi-antagonistic relationship is consummated, translating the creative impulse into a generative and almost erotic energy. Encompassing a combination of glowing presences, violent brushstrokes and saturated compositions, the appealing façade of his works often overshadow the struggle that takes place in the studio, removing the viewer from the actual process of making. Daniel likes to play with the contrast between the lightness of his paintings and the tormented journey behind each one of them.
The studio as specular to the artist’s mental dimension and, as such, a space of removal from reality - this is one of main conclusions that emerged from the numerous conversations developed with Damien Flood. According to the artist, when stepping into the studio, one doesn’t simply enter a space of physical production, but a very intimate environment that often provides a quite introspective look into the mind-set of the artist. These ideas somehow seem to find correspondences in the status of the paintings. Whereas he identifies a parallel between the ecology of the studio and the mind, his paintings subtract the subject from any realistic scenario and try to imagine it within a metaphysical dimension. As such, the studio is the place where one withdraws from the rest of the world as much as the paintings retain a metaphysical removal from reality. Similarly to the quick gestures Damien performs in the studio, the subjects of his paintings reveal themselves as glimpses. Rather than being crystallized presences, they are caught in the process of becoming, remaining indefinite and ungraspable.
As suggested by the title of these highly performative pieces, Alessia Armeni’s paintings document how the appearance of the studio changes over a time frame of 24 hours, a contemplative operation that involves the artist both physically and mentally. Thus, the paintings, which emerge from an act of observation, give body to the gaze and the gesture of the painter, both documenting and reflecting upon an act of looking and reproducing. As such, Alessia doesn’t simply delineate a relation with the temporality of painting and its creation within the studio, she actually goes back to the basic elements of the pictorial operation, an activity that has to do with the studio portraiture as much as it deals with the Impressionist tradition of the en-plein-air.
Bianca Baroni
Bianca Baroni (b. 1987) is a London-based independent curator and curatorial advisor for RH Contemporary Art. Since 2013 she is a permanent member of FormContent, a curatorial initiative active between London and Vienna. In 2014 she curated "Proposition for an Infinite Garden", a project featuring an exhibition and series of public events at the UK Government Art Collection London. Bianca collaborates with several private collections in London and Italy and recently completed her MFA in Curating at Goldsmiths College, University of London. She is a contributor for Le Salon and occasionally collaborates with the Fine Arts program at Kunsthochschule Mainz