Sfiorare Fantasmi
Bea Bonafini
Curated by Edoardo Monti
NOVO Firenze
Eduardo Secci
Florence, from September 9 to November 6, 2021
Opening: Thursday, September 9, 4:00 - 8:00 pm
Exhibition walkthrough video with the artist
Exhibition view, Sfiorare Fantasmi, Bea Bonafini, NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze, 2021, Florence, Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci
In Florence, from September 9 to November 6, 2021, NOVO is pleased to present “Sfiorare Fantasmi” (Brush against Ghosts), a solo show of Bea Bonafini. The exhibition curated by Edoardo Monti at Eduardo Secci’s project space explores the latest representations by the Italian artist through the different media distinguishing her practice.
The corpus of works mixes various techniques and materials, such as drawing, handmade tapestry, ceramic, and cork, inspired by mythology, fantasy, and folk tales.
The viewer bumps into the aquatic creatures, dissolving bodies, and hybrid shapes - imagery populated by water fairies as much as grotesque characters resembling medieval tarots. Bea Bonafini’s figures are ambiguous, gender fluid, and sometimes zoomorphic - evanescent silhouettes that recall the magical, encouraging us to investigate the most transcendent dimension of universal human experiences.
The images are fragmented - in cork works, where the color sections were carefully cut out and then reinserted within the composition, or in a large tapestry piece titled Face of the Deep I (2021), conceived as a textile collage - and melt losing the lines of their physical presence, until to collide.
Personal and collective narratives are intertwined, as well as the enchantment and the reality, the spirituality and the transcendent creating a space of almost mystic encounters where we can only brush against ghosts but not grasp them: close enough to become fascinated by this world without being scared.
The exhibition walkthrough video with the artist will be online at www.novo.ooo/exhibitions/10-sfiorare-fantasmi-bea-bonafini.
Edoardo Monti is the founder of Palazzo Monti in Brescia and curator.
Exhibition view, Sfiorare Fantasmi, Bea Bonafini, NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze, 2021, Florence, Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci
Bea Bonafini, Diver I, 2018, mixed carpet inlay, wood, and pastel, 210 x 90 cm (82.6 x 35.4 in), Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze
Bea Bonafini, Face of the Deep I, 2021, pastel on mixed carpet inlay, 300 x 300 cm (118.1 x 118.1 in), Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze
Bea Bonafini, Bathing Melusine, 2019, stained porcelain, black clay, sea glass, and salted water, 62 x 52 cm (24.4 x 20.4 in), Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze
Bea Bonafini, Mutation, 2021, painted wood, acrylic, and pencil on paper, 45 x 37 cm (17.7 x 17.7 in), Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze
Bea Bonafini, Sealed, 2020, gouache on engraved cork, 25 x 25 cm (9.8 x 9.8 cm), Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze
Bea Bonafini, When we come together we multiply, 2020, gouache on engraved cork, 37 x 31 cm (14.5 x 12.2 in), Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze
Bea Bonafini (1990, Bonn, Germany) lives and works in London. She studied at the Royal College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art in London. The multidisciplinary practice of the Italian artist draws from oneiric visions, overlapping personal and ancient mythologies. It explores possibilities and interactions between painting, tapestry and sculpture. Holistic perspectives develop in close dialogue with architecture, where works expand in space. Her installations, acting as protected spheres, operate as openings into encounters between the earthly reality and another world. Her works have been exhibited at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene (2020); Mana Contemporary, New Jersey (2020); Villa La Berlugane, Beaulieu-sur-Mer (2020); Operativa, Rome (2020); British School at Rome, Rome (2020, 2019); Chloé Salgado, Paris (2019); Bosse & Baum, London (2019); MAC - Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Lissone (2018); Renata Fabbri, Milan (2018); Zabludowicz Collection, London (2017).
Curatorial Essay by Edoardo Monti
I first discovered the work of Bea Bonafini (1990, Bonn) in London, in 2018. A child was playing carefree, lying on Slick Submissions, a huge carpet / tapestry exhibited in a group show at the Italian Cultural Institute of London. Bea doesn't create works of art. She creates emotions, moments, environments.
Over the years, Bonafini's practice has followed an evolution as unpredictable as it is fascinating. The works presented in “Sfiorare Fantasmi” (Brush against Ghosts), take us by the hand, accompanying us in the various stages of the artist's creative process.
In Face of the Deep I, the last carpet made by the artist to be exhibited in the show, Bonafini uses the clippings of fabrics as if they were strokes of color, ready to create shapes that are now abstract, now figurative, familiar images whose meaning it escapes us when we think we have caught it. Mystical and mythological stories, whose nuances are accentuated by light shades of pastels, applied on the lighter sections of fabric, cut and sewn by hand. Only by approaching it, and carrying out the forbidden but required act of caressing it, we deepen another aspect of these hybrid works that lie between tapestries and carpets: each color corresponds to a unique texture. With this tapestry, Bonafini tries to literally give a face to the deepest depth of the Oceans: the skeleton of a prehistoric fish crushed by the infinite pressure of the ocean floor.
In Diver I, the carpet, which Bonafini already tears from its original two-dimensionality with the embossed textures, takes on a fourth dimension, as abstract as memories are. It is difficult for me not to see in this work, which is projected into space and into an imaginary pool, the most famous diver in history, depicted on the cover slab of the famous tomb in Paestum. It is precisely the archaeological museum, and in particular funerary objects and artifacts, that provide inspiration to the artist. Just as archaeologists can only suggest the meaning of a fragmented past, in the same way Bonafini does not impose its own vision, but allows us to understand the complexity of who we are today, telling stories without a determined beginning or end.
Sealed and When we come together we multiply are carved paintings made with gouache on cork panels, revealing Bonafini’s skills in mastering such an unusual material in artistic practices. As in tapestries, the desire to create by breaking down, uniting by cutting returns. The reference to the carved marble floors is immediate, and the cork matches those attributes appreciated by the artist: soft, structured and with almost magical properties.
Mutation, Caran d’Ache on paper, is enclosed in a wooden frame made by an artisan based on Bonafini’s drawing, and painted by the artist with shades of soft colors, which recall the palette of the same design. The composition refers to Melusine, a double presence on display thanks to the multicolored ceramic installed on the wall, the mythological two-tailed water creature, which belongs to the fantastic imagination of southern Italy, a symbol dear to sailors. The figure is two-faced and superimposed on a fish skeleton whose spine merges with that of Melusine.
Finally, we find Bathing Melusine, which belongs to a large body of works made with porcelain and black clay, with the addition in this case of sea glass and salt water. The sculpture seems to come from an archaeological site, as old as the technique needed to make it: the porcelain is colored, layered, cut out. The material, which is fired without protective glaze, creates anthropomorphic forms, inspiring tales between the fantastic and the mythological.
We just have to wait for the result of the next phase of Bonafini, whose personal and ancient narratives overlap within a dream vision, whose intimacy revolves around soft, tactile, vulnerable, fantastic worlds. In the meantime, let us allow ourselves to be lulled and carried along by these works, rifts at the meeting point between the earth and the Other world. It almost seems to brush against ghosts.
NOVO is the project space of Eduardo Secci focused on artistic experimentation and contemporary media, apart from the main gallery. It was born out in 2021 of the necessity for a dialogue between art and the languages of new contemporary. NOVO functions as an incubator of ideas encouraging the work of young artists and their future developments.
Eduardo Secci is an Italian gallery founded in 2013 in Florence with a second location in Milan from June 2021. Both spaces present a double program featuring the exhibitions of the main gallery and experimental works by young artists at the project space NOVO.
NOVO Firenze
Sfiorare Fantasmi - Bea Bonafini
Curated by Edoardo Monti
From September 9 to November 6, 2021
Exhibition walkthrough video with the artist: www.novo.ooo/exhibitions/10-sfiorare-fantasmi-bea-bonafini
Eduardo Secci Firenze
Le contraddizioni della fragilità
Diana Al-Hadid, Alejandro Almanza Pereda, Andrea Galvani, José Carlos Martinat, Matthew Ritchie
Curated by Angel Moya Garcia
From September 9 to November 6, 2021
Exhibition walkthrough video with the curator: www.eduardosecci.com/exhibitions/53-le-contraddizioni-della-fragilita
Piazza Goldoni 2, Florence, Italy
Opening: Thursday, September 9, 2021, 4:00 - 8:00 pm
Hours: Monday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 1:30 pm / 2:30 - 7:00 pm
+39 055 661356 / firenze@eduardosecci.com
NOVO Milano
Radicalization Pipeline - Theo Triantafyllidis
From June 3 to October 2, 2021 (extended)
Exhibition walkthrough video with the artist: www.novo.ooo/exhibitions/9-theo-triantafyllidis
limone limone - Radu Oreian
Curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto
From October 8 to November 20, 2021
Eduardo Secci Milano
Kevin Francis Gray
Curated by Sergio Risaliti
From June 3 to October 2, 2021 (extended)
Exhibition walkthrough video with the artist: www.eduardosecci.com/exhibitions/51
Acustica - Alfredo Pirri
Curated by Laura Cherubini
From October 8 to November 20, 2021
Via Zenale 3, Milan, Italy
Opening: Friday, October 8, 2021, 4:00 - 9:00 pm
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 1:30 pm / 2:30 - 7:00 pm
+39 02 38248728 / milano@eduardosecci.com
www.novo.ooo / hello@novo.ooo
Instagram: @novo_projects / Facebook: @NOVOprojects
www.eduardosecci.com / gallery@eduardosecci.com
Instagram / Facebook: @eduardoseccicontemporary
Press Office: THE KNACK STUDIO / Tamara Lorenzi
tamara@theknackstudio.com / +39 347 0712934
info@theknackstudio.com / www.theknackstudio.com
Sfiorare Fantasmi
Bea Bonafini
Curated by Edoardo Monti
NOVO Firenze
Eduardo Secci
Florence, from September 9 to November 6, 2021
Opening: Thursday, September 9, 4:00 - 8:00 pm
Exhibition walkthrough video with the artist
Exhibition view, Sfiorare Fantasmi, Bea Bonafini, NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze, 2021, Florence, Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci
In Florence, from September 9 to November 6, 2021, NOVO is pleased to present “Sfiorare Fantasmi” (Brush against Ghosts), a solo show of Bea Bonafini. The exhibition curated by Edoardo Monti at Eduardo Secci’s project space explores the latest representations by the Italian artist through the different media distinguishing her practice.
The corpus of works mixes various techniques and materials, such as drawing, handmade tapestry, ceramic, and cork, inspired by mythology, fantasy, and folk tales.
The viewer bumps into the aquatic creatures, dissolving bodies, and hybrid shapes - imagery populated by water fairies as much as grotesque characters resembling medieval tarots. Bea Bonafini’s figures are ambiguous, gender fluid, and sometimes zoomorphic - evanescent silhouettes that recall the magical, encouraging us to investigate the most transcendent dimension of universal human experiences.
The images are fragmented - in cork works, where the color sections were carefully cut out and then reinserted within the composition, or in a large tapestry piece titled Face of the Deep I (2021), conceived as a textile collage - and melt losing the lines of their physical presence, until to collide.
Personal and collective narratives are intertwined, as well as the enchantment and the reality, the spirituality and the transcendent creating a space of almost mystic encounters where we can only brush against ghosts but not grasp them: close enough to become fascinated by this world without being scared.
The exhibition walkthrough video with the artist will be online at www.novo.ooo/exhibitions/10-sfiorare-fantasmi-bea-bonafini.
Edoardo Monti is the founder of Palazzo Monti in Brescia and curator.
Exhibition view, Sfiorare Fantasmi, Bea Bonafini, NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze, 2021, Florence, Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci
Bea Bonafini, Diver I, 2018, mixed carpet inlay, wood, and pastel, 210 x 90 cm (82.6 x 35.4 in), Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze
Bea Bonafini, Face of the Deep I, 2021, pastel on mixed carpet inlay, 300 x 300 cm (118.1 x 118.1 in), Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze
Bea Bonafini, Bathing Melusine, 2019, stained porcelain, black clay, sea glass, and salted water, 62 x 52 cm (24.4 x 20.4 in), Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze
Bea Bonafini, Mutation, 2021, painted wood, acrylic, and pencil on paper, 45 x 37 cm (17.7 x 17.7 in), Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze
Bea Bonafini, Sealed, 2020, gouache on engraved cork, 25 x 25 cm (9.8 x 9.8 cm), Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze
Bea Bonafini, When we come together we multiply, 2020, gouache on engraved cork, 37 x 31 cm (14.5 x 12.2 in), Photo Stefano Maniero, Courtesy the artist and NOVO - Eduardo Secci Firenze
Bea Bonafini (1990, Bonn, Germany) lives and works in London. She studied at the Royal College of Art and the Slade School of Fine Art in London. The multidisciplinary practice of the Italian artist draws from oneiric visions, overlapping personal and ancient mythologies. It explores possibilities and interactions between painting, tapestry and sculpture. Holistic perspectives develop in close dialogue with architecture, where works expand in space. Her installations, acting as protected spheres, operate as openings into encounters between the earthly reality and another world. Her works have been exhibited at Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Guarene (2020); Mana Contemporary, New Jersey (2020); Villa La Berlugane, Beaulieu-sur-Mer (2020); Operativa, Rome (2020); British School at Rome, Rome (2020, 2019); Chloé Salgado, Paris (2019); Bosse & Baum, London (2019); MAC - Museo d’Arte Contemporanea, Lissone (2018); Renata Fabbri, Milan (2018); Zabludowicz Collection, London (2017).
Curatorial Essay by Edoardo Monti
I first discovered the work of Bea Bonafini (1990, Bonn) in London, in 2018. A child was playing carefree, lying on Slick Submissions, a huge carpet / tapestry exhibited in a group show at the Italian Cultural Institute of London. Bea doesn't create works of art. She creates emotions, moments, environments.
Over the years, Bonafini's practice has followed an evolution as unpredictable as it is fascinating. The works presented in “Sfiorare Fantasmi” (Brush against Ghosts), take us by the hand, accompanying us in the various stages of the artist's creative process.
In Face of the Deep I, the last carpet made by the artist to be exhibited in the show, Bonafini uses the clippings of fabrics as if they were strokes of color, ready to create shapes that are now abstract, now figurative, familiar images whose meaning it escapes us when we think we have caught it. Mystical and mythological stories, whose nuances are accentuated by light shades of pastels, applied on the lighter sections of fabric, cut and sewn by hand. Only by approaching it, and carrying out the forbidden but required act of caressing it, we deepen another aspect of these hybrid works that lie between tapestries and carpets: each color corresponds to a unique texture. With this tapestry, Bonafini tries to literally give a face to the deepest depth of the Oceans: the skeleton of a prehistoric fish crushed by the infinite pressure of the ocean floor.
In Diver I, the carpet, which Bonafini already tears from its original two-dimensionality with the embossed textures, takes on a fourth dimension, as abstract as memories are. It is difficult for me not to see in this work, which is projected into space and into an imaginary pool, the most famous diver in history, depicted on the cover slab of the famous tomb in Paestum. It is precisely the archaeological museum, and in particular funerary objects and artifacts, that provide inspiration to the artist. Just as archaeologists can only suggest the meaning of a fragmented past, in the same way Bonafini does not impose its own vision, but allows us to understand the complexity of who we are today, telling stories without a determined beginning or end.
Sealed and When we come together we multiply are carved paintings made with gouache on cork panels, revealing Bonafini’s skills in mastering such an unusual material in artistic practices. As in tapestries, the desire to create by breaking down, uniting by cutting returns. The reference to the carved marble floors is immediate, and the cork matches those attributes appreciated by the artist: soft, structured and with almost magical properties.
Mutation, Caran d’Ache on paper, is enclosed in a wooden frame made by an artisan based on Bonafini’s drawing, and painted by the artist with shades of soft colors, which recall the palette of the same design. The composition refers to Melusine, a double presence on display thanks to the multicolored ceramic installed on the wall, the mythological two-tailed water creature, which belongs to the fantastic imagination of southern Italy, a symbol dear to sailors. The figure is two-faced and superimposed on a fish skeleton whose spine merges with that of Melusine.
Finally, we find Bathing Melusine, which belongs to a large body of works made with porcelain and black clay, with the addition in this case of sea glass and salt water. The sculpture seems to come from an archaeological site, as old as the technique needed to make it: the porcelain is colored, layered, cut out. The material, which is fired without protective glaze, creates anthropomorphic forms, inspiring tales between the fantastic and the mythological.
We just have to wait for the result of the next phase of Bonafini, whose personal and ancient narratives overlap within a dream vision, whose intimacy revolves around soft, tactile, vulnerable, fantastic worlds. In the meantime, let us allow ourselves to be lulled and carried along by these works, rifts at the meeting point between the earth and the Other world. It almost seems to brush against ghosts.
NOVO is the project space of Eduardo Secci focused on artistic experimentation and contemporary media, apart from the main gallery. It was born out in 2021 of the necessity for a dialogue between art and the languages of new contemporary. NOVO functions as an incubator of ideas encouraging the work of young artists and their future developments.
Eduardo Secci is an Italian gallery founded in 2013 in Florence with a second location in Milan from June 2021. Both spaces present a double program featuring the exhibitions of the main gallery and experimental works by young artists at the project space NOVO.
NOVO Firenze
Sfiorare Fantasmi - Bea Bonafini
Curated by Edoardo Monti
From September 9 to November 6, 2021
Exhibition walkthrough video with the artist: www.novo.ooo/exhibitions/10-sfiorare-fantasmi-bea-bonafini
Eduardo Secci Firenze
Le contraddizioni della fragilità
Diana Al-Hadid, Alejandro Almanza Pereda, Andrea Galvani, José Carlos Martinat, Matthew Ritchie
Curated by Angel Moya Garcia
From September 9 to November 6, 2021
Exhibition walkthrough video with the curator: www.eduardosecci.com/exhibitions/53-le-contraddizioni-della-fragilita
Piazza Goldoni 2, Florence, Italy
Opening: Thursday, September 9, 2021, 4:00 - 8:00 pm
Hours: Monday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 1:30 pm / 2:30 - 7:00 pm
+39 055 661356 / firenze@eduardosecci.com
NOVO Milano
Radicalization Pipeline - Theo Triantafyllidis
From June 3 to October 2, 2021 (extended)
Exhibition walkthrough video with the artist: www.novo.ooo/exhibitions/9-theo-triantafyllidis
limone limone - Radu Oreian
Curated by Pier Paolo Pancotto
From October 8 to November 20, 2021
Eduardo Secci Milano
Kevin Francis Gray
Curated by Sergio Risaliti
From June 3 to October 2, 2021 (extended)
Exhibition walkthrough video with the artist: www.eduardosecci.com/exhibitions/51
Acustica - Alfredo Pirri
Curated by Laura Cherubini
From October 8 to November 20, 2021
Via Zenale 3, Milan, Italy
Opening: Friday, October 8, 2021, 4:00 - 9:00 pm
Hours: Tuesday - Saturday, 10:00 am - 1:30 pm / 2:30 - 7:00 pm
+39 02 38248728 / milano@eduardosecci.com
www.novo.ooo / hello@novo.ooo
Instagram: @novo_projects / Facebook: @NOVOprojects
www.eduardosecci.com / gallery@eduardosecci.com
Instagram / Facebook: @eduardoseccicontemporary
Press Office: THE KNACK STUDIO / Tamara Lorenzi
tamara@theknackstudio.com / +39 347 0712934
info@theknackstudio.com / www.theknackstudio.com
