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LAGOS Berlin @ MOMENTUM AiR
ARTIST RESIDENCY
#5
Aurora Pellizzi
1 – 31 July 2023
OPEN STUDIO
28 July 2023 @ 5 – 9pm
RHABARBER SPRITZ
Works on Paper, Weaving & Felt
Artist Residency Presentation by Aurora Pellizzi
@ MOMENTUM-LAGOS
Kunstquartier Bethanien, rm 134
Mariannenplatz 2, Berlin
ARTIST BIO:
Aurora Pellizzi currently lives and works in Mexico City. Daughter of anthropologists, she was born in 1983 in Mexico City and grew up between New York and Cuernavaca. She studied art at Cooper Union School (BFA, 2010) and art history at New York University (BFA, 2005).
Pellizzi’s work combines formal precepts of painting and sculpture with craft techniques. Her practice is informed by pre-industrial textile processes and materials, from natural dyeing to back-strap loom weaving. Technical constraints give way to textural, dimensional shapes and forms. Fiber is used both as a pictorial field and as the embodiment of the subject it represents.
She has exhibited in Austria, Belgium, Colombia, France, Italy, Mexico, Morocco, Peru, Spain, the United Kingdom, and the United States, including exhibitions at the Franz Mayer Museum in Mexico City, the Museo de Arte Maya in Cancun, the Museo de Artes Populares of Mexico in Mexico City, and forthcoming at the Museum of the City of Queretaro and the Mexican Institute in Madrid (2023).
Pellizzi’s recent one and two person shows include Gorgona, forthcoming at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Monterrey (MARCO, 2023), Culebras with Jeff Marfa Gallery at Salon Acme in Mexico City (2023), Corpi a Galla / Cuerpos Flotantes at the Italian Cultural Institute in Mexico City (2022), El Deseo Aparece de Repente at Instituto de Vision Gallery in Bogota (2022), Focus: Aurora Pellizzi at Lisa Kandlhofer Gallery in Vienna (2022), Transfiguration at Canada Gallery in New York (2021) and Serpientes at l´Appartement 22 in Rabat, Morocco (2016). She has published two artist books Serpientes (2016) and Transfiguration (2021).
Pellizzi´s work has been featured and reviewed in Agenzia Ansa, Art Net News, Art & Object, The Art Newspaper, Art Observed, Art Review, Blouin Art Info, Coolhunting, Coolhunter Mx, Dazed Digital, Espoarte, Exibart, Glocal Design Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Hyperallergic, la Jornada de Morelos, Local MX, Purple Magazine, La Razón, Reforma Newspaper, el Sol de Cuernavaca, Terremoto Magazine, El Universal Newspaper, and on the cover of U: magazine published by the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM).
ARTIST STATEMENT – Aurora Pellizzi:
My work playfully combines formal concepts of painting and sculpture – such as abstraction, perspective, figure, and ground – with traditional textile techniques and practices – most notably weaving and natural dyeing. Humor acts as a catalyst dissipating the traditionally ascribed divide between craft and art.
In my work I often use natural infusions of indigo, brazilwood, cochineal, avocado pits, and Aztec marigold to produce my color palette. Variations of tone and hue derive from the source’s natural composition and from the particular PH of each dye recipe. Treated as a material in and of itself and not as an external attribute or coating, the resulting colors are deeply saturated and unusual, especially in our post-industrial, digital age.
Simplified abstract shapes are fleshed out into volumetric relief through layers of sculpted fiber. Geometry, figuration, and abstraction are turned on their head so that circles become breasts which spin into spheres. A triangle exists as a triangle, becomes a pubis, and then recedes into a vanishing point. The body is experienced both as detail and landscape – figure and ground coexist symbiotically.
The female figure isn’t represented but embodied as field, subject, and symbol. Bodies are simultaneously uninhibited, charged, at ease, and distended within their canvas. Physically dominant like the boulders, depressions and horizons that make up a landscape, the female body is permeated by the creative force within it –– the pro-creative and creative, intertwined.
– Aurora Pellizzi
Berlin Artist Residency Project
RHABARBER SPRITZ
During my residency at MOMENTUM-LAGOS, I transposed my studio practice from San Miguel Chapultepec in Mexico City to Kreuzberg in Berlin. Employing many of the same processes I use at home: weaving, felting and natural dyeing – I adapted these practices to local sources, materials and workshops in the area surrounding the Residency Studio within the historical Kunstquartier Bethanien Art Center. Throughout the Residency, I have been furthering my engagement with locally sourced materials and craft communities.
Working within the BBK Print Workshop at Kunstquartier Bethanien, I extended my use of natural dyes by applying them to the silk-screen process. The result is a series of works on paper and fabric in different hues of color (from yellow, to pink, brown, and teal) – obtained by altering the PH of a dye liqueur I extracted from Rhubarb root. Rhubarb, native to Siberia and Alaska, was introduced to Europe in the 1600s as a medicinal plant for its healing properties. It is particularly suited to northern countries for its ability to withstand winter frosts. It is now a ubiquitous ingredient in dishes, beverages, and deserts in Germany.
The print edition references the optical illusion known as Rubin´s Vase. The image used in psychology tests typically depicts either a cup or two faces kissing; depending on the viewers own interpretation and ´projection.´ In art it is referred to as a figure/ground relation. In these rhubarb tinted prints, profiled and frontal female torsos combine, separate and merge back together. The edges of one define the shape of the other. The process entailed printing a series of transparent acid and base layers onto paper. The final flush of dye reveals the image – as the dye reacts to the invisible inks ¬ the figures emerge.
Other experiments during the residency include a small-scale weaving project made with fabric refuse sourced at a local knitting shop in the neighborhood. Woven on an improvised rigid-loom made from painting stretcher-bars; the weaving combines tapestry and double-weave techniques, which together permit more elaborate color combinations and representational freedom. Using only straight and diagonal lines, I return to a prevalent tension or ambiguity in my work between geometry and figuration.
A female figure composed of parallelograms is entwined throughout both warps. ´Positive´ and ´negative´ versions are visible on both ´faces´ of the weaving. The figure isn´t in repose, but is meant to evoke movement. Since the material itself is left-over from fashionwear and retains the printed patterns of the original fabric – the image is meant to allude to the origin of the material – to an urban rhythm and pace that incorporates a sense of street wear and style.
Lastly, by way of a collaboration with local felter Elizabeth Schwartz – in her workshop and store, Lieberfilz, directly across from the Kunstquartier Bethnien from Mariannenplatz – I am working with wet and needle felting techniques within the parameters of her own studio´s materials and equipment; producing a series of samples and experiments in color and texture.
In Cooperation With:
The MOMENTUM AiR / LAGOS Berlin
ARTIST RESIDENCY
is part of the
LAGOS Mexico City / MOMENTUM Berlin
RESIDENCY EXCHANGE