Upside / Down

For the third round of 2023, Spazio Leonardo is pleased to present Upside/Down, a solo exhibition by Gabriella Ciancimino (1978, Palermo), an artist who carries out a research based on relationships and on a conception of the artwork as a moment of encounter/exchange between individuals. Upside/Down brings together a body of works created between 2020 and 2023 and is conceived as a journey that unfolds along the walls of Spazio Leonardo's "open world". For the long wall of the gallery, Gabriella conceived a wall painting, a leitmotif of her artistic practice, which suggests looking at the world "upside down", changing the perspective on things and awakening consciousness, like children who explore the world through fresh eyes. Thus, symbolically upside down, through the wall drawing the artist explores an underground landscape made of intertwining patterns, seemingly suggesting new physical landscapes and emotional scenarios hidden in the ground, where one can discover roots recently sprouted from planted seeds.

Irregular, sometimes sharp, sometimes rounded lines create an almost lunar atmosphere and symbolise the rupture of a linear sense of time upon which history is traditionally based, where past, present, and future become merely a convention to mark the passing of time. Therefore, the wall drawing appears as a timeless page and serves as a backdrop for drawings on paper appearing as pop-up windows, from which to glimpse images of lost worlds or ones yet to be explored, but within which finite forms and familiar iconographies can be observed.

The wall-based pieces have been created with interwoven paper pieces, evoking both the technique used by nomadic peoples to make carpets inside their tents, and the pixel grids of digital images. Upon these weaves, the artist intervenes with images drawn from Renaissance Iconology, botanical references, plants from ancient worlds or distant countries, as well as poetic compositions conceived by the artist herself, in search for new visions to be shared with the audience.