Last Tuesday on April 30, Bologna-based MAGMA gallery opened a new exhibition featuring the work of Martina Merlini (IT) and Julie Oppermann (US).
With Afterimages, as the exhibition has been titled, MAGMA gallery continues their ongoing collaboration with Bologna-based artist Martina Merlini while they present for the very first time in Italy the works of Julie Oppermann. The works produced for the exhibition represent for both artists an important turning point in their artistic research.
Martina Merlini engages with new materials and methods. On the one hand she approaches three-dimensionality through common materials such as rattan and straw, which speak of the precious craftsmanship employed, while keeping the focus on the optical. She inserts in this way further movements to her trajectory, modifying the outline of the work itself so it becomes part of the lines drawn.
Julie Oppermann, on the other hand, approaches the oil technique for the first time, presenting completely new works composed of a series of large and medium formats on board and canvas. Drawing on her background in neuroscience, perception, cognitive processes and colour theory, she creates paintings with a vivid and sparkling palette that recall psychedelic, while maintaining a strong conceptual rigor.
Predominantly intrigued by the idea of sensory interference, Oppermann creates meticulously painted patterns that reference cognitive perception through synthetic experience
The systematic and regulated process is accompanied by the impulsive and intuitive approach, which creates subtle tensions within the composition of her work. The consistency of oil painting and the signs and variations of color, create interferences, breaking the illusion of depth and space within the work and bringing the eye back to the surface of the painting, ‘the skin’ that covers the flat canvas.
The works of both artists play with the limits of visual perception; sparkling effects, which emerge through the calculated stratification and overlapping of contrasting colors with patterns of repetitive lines, producing afterimages, an “optical flicker” and disorienting sensations of movement.
Martina and Julie’s works are based on complex rules and systems of lines, colors, borders and motifs to create perceptive abstractions but, on closer inspection, instead, reveal a gestural and intuitive approach. Thick and symmetrical pictorial traits are unexpectedly disjointed by the drive of new thrusts that seem to follow instinctive and primordial impulses.
Afterimages will be on view through may 18, 2019 at the gallery located on Via Santo Stefano, 164, 40125 Bologna BO, Italy.
About the artists
Martina Merlini (Bologna, 1986) lives and works in Milan. From illustration to geometric abstraction; a path that leads the artist to experiment and learn about herself through different expressive contexts such as, among others, street art and installations. She took part in numerous exhibitions, both in Europe and in America and Australia. Among the various international events and festivals in which she takes part are Living Walls, the first female street art festival held in Atlanta (USA) in 2012, and the prestigious Le Mur in Paris, in 2015. In 2017 she exhibited at the Archaeological Museum of Grosseto in a group show with important names including Alighiero Boetti, Michael Johansson, Pennacchio Argentato, Luca Pozzi and many others. In 2018 she took part in exhibitions in Mexico, Hong Kong, San Francisco, Madrid.
Julie Oppermann (San Francisco, 1982) lives and works in Berlin. In 2018 she was among the protagonists of the Mediation Biennial 6 of Poznan in Poland. In 2017 she exhibited her works at the Marjorie Barrick Museum in Las Vegas along with ten other American artists who are redesigning the tradition of Process Art in a profound expression of the practice of the 21st century. There have been several personal exhibitions, such as at the Mark Moore Gallery in Los Angeles, at the Joshua Liner Gallery in New York, and at the Galerie Röpke both in Cologne and Madrid. Her works are included in numerous public and private collections, including the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, and the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego, California.
Author: Fran
Founder and editor of Urbanite. Street Art lover who after the finishing her MA thesis on the Mexican and Norwegian muralist movement in the 1920-50s, developed a fascination for street art and graffiti that eventually led to collaborations with different art blogs, including the creation of this one.
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