Nina Surel - Monuments of Unageing Intellect @ Claudio Poleschi Contemporary Art

LUCCA, Italy - Sept. 5, 2013 - PRLog -- NINA SUREL

Monuments of Unageing Intellect

curated by Christian Caliandro

Opening Saturday September 28th 6.30pm

September 28th – November 30th, 2013
Via Santa Giustina 21 and Piazza San Matteo 3, Lucca

Claudio Poleschi Arte Contemporanea Gallery is proud to announce the Italian solo show of the Argentinian artist Nina Surel. The wide selection of works -set up in the suggestive San Matteochurch and in the gallery’s spaces -comprehends some of them from the new series Madonna with Child and Byzantine, beyond other works of great dimensions and characterized by the accurate fusion of materials, the same thatdistinguishes the poem Sailing to Byzantium (1928) by William Butler Yeats, from which the exhibition’s title derives: “That is no country for old men. The young / In one another’s arms, birds in the trees / – Those dying generations – at their song, / The salmon‐falls, the mackerel‐crowded seas, / Fish, flesh, or fowl, commend all summer long / Whatever is begotten, born, and dies. / Caught in that sensual music all neglect / Monuments of unageing intellect.”

In these paintings the mixed media pushed to their limits configure astrategy oriented to blur the boards between reality and fiction, through the stratification of techniques – photography, painting, digital intervention, assemblage – and of objects: porcelain, buttons, dresses, jewelry.The accumulation confers to these artworks a peculiar and steep trait of decadence, obsession; the artist becomes the object and the subject of this transformation – a material among the materials -, playing the rolesof the different characters within the narrative and constantly changing her features.

The overload lets the works protrude always, with bravery and audacity, their identity towards the kingdom of kitsch, gaining the creation of perturbing worlds that challenge the viewer: duplication, reproduction, mirroring are the main functions of this process.

The resin freezes all the elements and relationships, draining on figures landscapes objects as a wrap: the artificial balance of the levels has definitively crystallized in time and space.

Nina Surel was born and raised in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and lives and works in Miami since 2001. She studied at the Architecture & Urban Planning University of Buenos Aires and The Art Institute of El Teatro Colón, also in B.A, Argentina. Her work has been exhibited widely in institutions, galleries and art fairs both in the United States and South America, including the Naples Museum of Art, The Art & Culture Center of Hollywood, as well as Art Fairs in Buenos Aires, Chicago, New York, Miami, and London. She has been reviewed in national and international publications, and is an Artist-in-Residence at ArtCenter South Florida.

www.claudiopoleschi.com