PAST EVENTS

Summer Show 2018

I See an Omen

curated by Will Hutnick

Immagine: Kelly Worman, A Pain I Can Do Without, 2017, gouache, acrilico and matita su carta-cotone.

19 May 2018 – 31 December 2018

Exhibiting work by:
Beverly Acha, Kate Alboreo, Natessa Amin, Rebekah Callaghan, Charlotte Hallberg, Cheryl Hochberg, Meredith Hoffheins, Christopher Kardambikis, Simone Miani, Padma Rajendran, Scott Robinson, Melissa Staiger, Taylor Thomas, Elizabeth Tolson, Orkideh Torabi, Morganne Wakefield and Kelly Worman.
Benaco Arte is pleased to present I See an Omen, a group exhibition composed of painting, drawing, printmaking, collage and video that explores ideas around dreamscapes, alternative realities, and the artist as shaman. The exhibition, curated by Benaco Arte alum Will Hutnick, brings together four past Benaco Arte artists-in-residence whose works were created while in residence in Sirmione, with additional artists selected by the curator.

In the yes/no colors of eclipse, she will try to feel a spectrum by occulted sun.
-Jenny Mueller, “State Park”

A gulf separates what we attempt to perceive from what we are actually able to perceive. It is so deep that it can never be calculated, however long our measuring stick.
-Murakami, “Hear The Wind Sing”

Dreams are an escape – as well as an extension of – the world that we live in. Sometimes fantastical, boring, gravity defying, horrible and illogical, they represent an in-between space between reality, non-reality, and our perceptions of each. How much information can we believe – or want to believe – throughout the formation of dreams? What happens when the line between dreams and reality becomes blurred or eschewed? How does that time plug with space? What lies beyond those spaces?

The artists in I See an Omen are formulating their own dreams and realities by constructing relics of past and future civilizations. The artists are taking on the role of a mystic or shaman (and are in complete control), presenting us with a slow vibration of surrealist landscapes, psychedelic spaces, topographical maps, precise and imperfect geometry, utopias and dystopias. It’s a seductive aura.

Our mind can wander to things physically rooted in the past and present tiptoeing towards a pop and cultural specificity: from illuminated manuscripts, sacred texts and spiritual masks to tarot cards, science fiction literature, biology textbooks, comic books.