BeAdvisors Art Department presents Italian artist Gianna T’s debut solo exhibition ‘Life is Beautiful’, curated by Hector Campbell. Spanning all three floors of 9 French Place, the exhibition will explore the artist’s idiosyncratic practice through three distinct yet interconnected bodies of work. Alongside his playful paintings and captivating performance pieces, Gianna, a graduate of Accademia di Belle Arti di Urbino, returns to his earliest artistic experiments with film and photography for ‘Life is Beautiful’.
Throughout, the artist injects humour into his survey of the spectrum of life, as with intermittent suffering inevitable at all stages of the ageing process, Gianna’s output and outlook express the importance of levity as a coping mechanism.
A new series of polaroid photographs, Mimmo & Rosa, A Love Story, reflects upon a period during the artist’s adolescence when he worked as a carer for the elderly in his native Pesaro, a small town on Italy’s Adriatic coast where a quarter of the city’s inhabitants are sixty-five years of age or older. Without exception, he found each and every senior citizen eager to impart their wisdom gathered during lives well-lived and was endlessly inspired by their vitality, lust for life and generosity of spirit. So, whereas in 21st-century society senior citizens are often either easily forgotten about, or actively cast aside, in Gianna’s photography documenting the life of a fictional elderly couple, age is but a number and old age something to be spotlighted and celebrated.
Advancing to the second floor of 9 French Place, an installation of Gianna’s painted ceramic tiles looks to the opposite end of the age spectrum. Naive in both their style and subject matter – and rendered in a broad, vibrant colour palette – Gianna aims to recapture the innocence and emotional essence of youth in his expressionistic paintings. Choosing cheap, discarded ceramic tiles as his canvas, often scavenged and recycled by the artist, allows Gianna to embrace a loose, liberated approach to painting, working rapidly and instinctively, detached from daily thoughts, in touch with only feelings.
Finally, Gianna’s new film is an amalgamation of performance documentation and footage from the artist’s own life and lived experiences. Initially born out of a frustration he felt towards painting, Gianna’s performance practice often involved the destruction of his artwork. Paintings are briefly brought to life, imbued with a newfound potential and power as part of performance pieces. Additionally, interspersed between these scenes of artistic anarchy and annihilation, touching insights into Gianna’s personal life
and creative process appear appropriate for our era of relentless reality television and social media oversharing.
Gianna T, Life is Beautiful, Curated by Hector Campbell, Presented by BeAdvisors Art Department
9 French Place, Shoreditch, E1 6JB Thursday 29th September – Saturday 8th October
Art Opening: Wednesday 28th September, 6-9pm Opening Hours: Thursdays-Saturdays, 12-6pm, and by appointment
Gianna T and Hector Campbell would like to thank Mauro Mattei for facilitating the exhibition.
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