Bendana | Pinel Art Contemporain is pleased to present "Lights for winter" a group exhibition of works by artists from Europe and Latin America dedicated to painting and photography. The colder days and longer nights of winter emphasize our vital need for light and warmth. Still, the winter period brings its own magic and light. Manifestation of hope in the darkness, the light is also the one we carry within us and that we share with the world. Then, as the very essence of creation, especially in photography, the captured light offers a particular vision of the world, and directed towards crucial subjects it carries strong beliefs. "Lights for Winter" is an eclectic exhibition that highlights the singular universe of six artists who work and celebrate light or lights in their own way.
Iulian Bisericaru expresses himself through painting, in very colorful canvases organized in the manner of collages. Passionate about the relationship between nature and urbanism, he integrates into his paintings fragments of landscapes and architectures that are the fruit of his memories and experiences. His latest works are the result of his residence on the island of Pantelleria, and plunge us into a green, sunny, and luminous universe. While Bisericaru's works push the limits of pictorial perspective, with figurative and abstract elements intertwined, they also critically highlight the environmental problems caused by our modern societies.
Alberto Cont's works focus on experimenting light using color and space. By juxtaposing lines of color that he covers with thin layers of translucent resin, Cont manages to create veils that obscure more or less intensely parts of his initial composition. The viewer is thus absorbed in abstract and atmospheric landscapes irradiated by light vibrations. His more recent works continue this search for light using this covering technique, while varying the thickness, direction, or intensity of his color lines.
Lake Verea's artistic practice focuses on experimentation around the expanded idea of image and photography. The singularity of the Darkrooms, Barragan in Penumbra series lies in the capture of light: lighted only by moonlight, these images taken at night in the house of architect Luis Barrágan reveal through the play of light and shadow imprecise details and influence our perception. Both abstract and enigmatic, these works depict an intimacy that only the architect knew.
The themes addressed by Niccolò Montesi are diverse but mainly expressed through architecture and landscape. Shadows, lights, and their contrasts participate in the representation of a space and give the architecture its relief. Sharing Oscar Wilde's reflections on beauty and superficiality, the PANTELLERIA PAESE series, although luminous, seems lacking of volume. It allows us to appreciate a new facet of architectural beauty, almost pictorial with an air of abstract painting, where forms become surface, color, and contour.
Caio Reisewitz finds his inspiration in the pictorial tradition of landscape photography as well as in the history of modern Brazilian architecture. His increasingly political works portray the sublime in nature while highlighting the contradictions and internal conflicts experienced in his country, torn between an aspiration to preserve a rich environmental heritage and a desire for exponential urban growth.
Sturm and Drang II is a reference to the German movement that gave birth to Romanticism in the 19th century. While Miguel Rothschild intensifies the dramatic effect of the storm with fishing line, this work pays homage to the supreme value of nature, full of spirituality and light, and the central source of creativity. This work is part of Rothschild's artistic practice, which diverts the notion of photography by treating it more like a painter approaches his canvas. He intervenes directly on his prints, by burning or perforating them, or on their framing, to propose an innovative form of photography underlining the sculptural aspect of the landscape.
