Monteoliveto Gallery : Cities of Europe / Illustration, Graphics, Communication.
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Monteoliveto Gallery returns to The Coningsby Gallery in London to present the latest exhibition in their ‘Cities of Europe’ project. This year’s show is dedicated to Illustration, Graphics, and Communication, displaying work from artists located all over the world. Here is an introduction to the creatives featured in this exhibition:
Carolina BRAVE, Visual artist, Argentinian, born 1978, living in Buenos Aires. Her work is characterised by expressive gestures and great freedom of colour, using her palette to translate intense states of mood.
Quentin CHEVRIER, a young French photographer whose artistic research is focused on the themes of movement, space, point of view and time. Here he presents the series Bridges-Planets; the concept of bending bridges so that they no longer serve to go from one bank to the other, but a place in itself where the passers-by turn in circles.
Stephen DALY from Texas, realizes works with a strong visual presence and communicates ideas that may be interpreted in multiple ways. “Daly toes the line between developing a visual language accessible to the public and creating the kind of deep personal imagery related to his life.” (Susie Kalil)
Roger DE TANIOS was born in Beirut. “Aychak Man” is his symbolic representation of the Middle Eastern “Macho Man”: strong, sure, self- confident and showing off, he is clearly adhered to the traditions, but claims the American or European civilization mentality when it comes to dealing with women.
Astrid FESTOR, graduated from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts and holds a Master Digital Image and Interactivity. She and lives and works in the outskirts of Nancy in Lorraine. By means of digital techniques, photographed photographic material forms the basic element of much of her work, which is finished on a canvas or paper support.
Fabrizio FONTANA, an Italian artist of the Salento Region, returns to London to offer his artistic world; a universe constructed around the game, re-using all the codes of the joke sphere, through an artistic journey where the Joke is the “king”. Here he plays with reality, distilling from human creativity the pure and creative weapons of a young boy.
Gianmaria GIANNETTI, born in Milan in 1974, lives and works between Bari and Finale Ligure. He is an experimental artist creating imaginary worlds, bidimensional parallel universes, and escape-route alternatives to the logic of things. Utilising with appropriate irony a language of symbols and signs reminiscent of Basquiat’s language, he derides the art system through his labyrinth paintings, his impossible worlds and his “invaders of canvas”.
Ana GIOVINAZZO makes her pieces from beginning to end, making the cast for the different pouring and the inclusion of glass. She experiments with aluminium loads and transparent parts reaching the definition of her current work realizing geometric pieces of pure and intense colours, with impeccable margins and shapes.
Megan Janine HARMER studied Fine Art at Griffith University (QCA) and Graphic Design at the CATC Design School in Brisbane, Australia. She realizes personal creative work like illustration, photography, or painting, with a creative approach to find points of difference to the medium she is interested in.
Bénédicte KLENE, from France, winner of the Aralya éditions/Monteoliveto Gallery is a French urban sketcher who describes herself as a “chroni-croquese”. Paper and drawing are always at the center of her creative process, as she explains: “We draw on location, indoor and outdoors, capturing what we see from direct observation”.
Eva OTTERSTRÖM born in Gothenburg, Sweden. Strongly contrasting colours are used prominently in her dynamic compositions, realising different textures in her works through the application of acrylics and ink.
Nicola PISCOPO is a young Neapolitan artist, who expresseses the urgent dilemma of man with the environment, between reality and sensitive digital reality. In his work we see liquid life, fast and overactive, tirelessly devouring new experiences.
Alissa THOR, born in Paris in 1974, lives and works between Paris and Rouen. A long time “intellectual” she has rediscovered after so many abstractions, the radical demand to confront directly with matter: to take life from the other point of view. Painting is her ideal test ground; she acts instinctively, resuming her own breath, her own rhythm. Expressionism is of course the movement that “speaks” to her.
Serenella SOSSI was born in Imperia, and has now lived for years in Nice on the French Riviera. Her works are characterized by a constant search for verticality, a reflection of a personal inner voyage, philosophical and spiritual. In her paintings the refined search of light and color dominates.
Fulvio TORNESE, born in 1956 in Lecce, began his artistic training at the studio of the painter and graphic artist Moscara, then proceeded to study Architecture at the Florence School of Art. His artistic research focuses on urban landscapes and fragments of imaginary cities, through traditional and innovative techniques.
Max WERNER born in Ghent Belgium, currently resides in the USA. His works have been variously described as realist, figurative, descriptive and narrative, sometimes with a touch of surrealism as he uses a range of different ideas, which don’t seem connected with each other at first; but as himself tells us “ I am not a landscapist, a surrealist, or a realist etc… yet perhaps, I am all those things at the same time”.