PRESS RELEASE
AlbumArte
presents
Iulia Ghiță
HE FAILED TO SAVE THE ONE HE LOVED MOST
curated by Marta Silvi
Opening on Monday 12 April, from 2:00 pm to 8:00 pm
BY RESERVATION
until 26 April 2021
visits in accordance with the COVID-19 emergency health regulations
Monday to Friday 3:00 pm – 7:00 pm
AlbumArte | Via Flaminia 122, Rome
On Monday 12 April 2021, the solo exhibition by the artist Iulia Ghiță entitled HE FAILED TO SAVE THE ONE HE LOVED MOST, curated by Marta Silvi, opens at AlbumArte, an independent space for contemporary art. The exhibition will remain open until Monday 26 April.
Exactly one year ago, AlbumArte issued a press release about an exhibition that the first lockdown would later force to be cancelled, relegating it to the ether of suspended projects. However, Iulia Ghiță’s work was not interrupted, but rather strengthened her questions and enriched the possibility of her answers, exploring themes and topics at the heart of the work itself, making them particularly relevant to the reflections that have arisen in this difficult and extended period.
This is what we wrote, unaware of the storm that would soon befall mankind: “Iulia Ghiță’s work has a strong installation character, even when she uses drawing and painting, as well as photography and video. The artist is interested in the relationship/conflict/tension that is triggered between the limit of human measure and the attempt to give a finite form to incomprehensible things.”
Human scale and incomprehensible things are the defining combination, the two poles of tension that generate the field of research that the artist has always investigated and which, more clearly this past year, has become the horizon and limit of everyday considerations. Iulia explores paths of knowledge that are difficult to accept as such: dreams, revelations, premonitions, prophecies, visions. The artist ponders the form and placement that boundless themes such as trust and knowledge can take.
The exhibition is built around three bodies of work: two multi-channel video installations that capture different aspects of nature, LANDSCAPE2 (2017/2018) and LANDSCAPE4 (2018-20), and numerous drawings on wallpaper that sometimes intersect with the same projections, Life from herself (understood) (2016/20), Closed circle (2018-20), Untitled (2020), There was a beautiful vase at her home/the truth resides in the object, not in the word (2019).
The works, regardless of the medium used, intensify the admiring gaze towards the surrounding nature as an alternative way of knowing to investigation and the claim of empathy. A way of seeing and understanding life “as it is”, which the artist later rediscovered in the theories of the Swiss philosopher Paul Häberlin, who described human existence in the same way.
In addition to the original project, the exhibition has been enriched with a strong pictorial and narrative component that has arisen around the theme of care, of therapy in the etymological sense of the term, inspired by the in-depth study of a figure to which Iulia Ghiță has been turning her attention for some time: Archbishop St Luke, known to the world as Valentin Feliksovič Vojno-Jaseneckij, who lived in Russia between 1877 and 1961, known for his important scientific achievements in the field of medicine and surgery and for the profound pìetas that accompanied his life and actions, which inspires the large canvas THEY BELIEVED THAT THE MERE TOUCH WOULD HELP THEM HEAL FROM ANY ILLNESS.
What can art do in the face of critical situations, of physical need? The artist seems to be asking herself an existential question that is as simple as it is fundamental. The answer is neither obvious nor unambiguous and must indeed be stimulated collectively. Iulia Ghiță was born in Oltenita, Romania, in 1986, and lives and works in Abruzzo. She graduated from the University of Art in Bucharest in 2008 and from the Academy of Fine Arts in Rome in 2011. Among her most recent exhibitions and participations, in 2019: 3650, Ex Elettrofonica, Rome; AlbumArte20x20, 2019, AlbumArte, Rome; AUGUST Life from herself (Understood), Studio Giudecca 860, Giudecca, Venice (solo exhibition); Life from herself (Understood), Alviani Art Space, Pescara (solo exhibition); Tutto a posto tutto bene, Galleria Nazionale di Cosenza, Cosenza; Entasi, exhibition promoted by Arco di Gallieno, Acquario Romano, Rome; Vis-a-vis, La Nube di Oort, Rome. In June 2021, an exhibition by Iulia Ghiță will be premiered at the National Museum of the Romanian Peasant. The installation and the accompanying artist’s book on the museum’s collection are curated by Cornelia Lauf, in a series coordinated by Ilina Schileru. www.iuliaghita.com.
THANKS TO
EXELETTROFONICA
IN COLLABORATION WITH THE
ACCADEMIA DI ROMANIA IN ROMA
ROMANIAN CULTURAL INSTITUTE
ACADEMY OF FINE ARTS IN ROME