Galleria Lorcan O’Neill Roma opens the second edition of Street View in the gallery’s secondary space on the corner of Via Orti d’Alibert and Via della Lungara, with the project “All of a Sudden” by Ivan Malerba.

 

On display are nine small paintings (oil on canvas and oil on board) that together form an ideal mosaic of evocative images. The principal theme of the exhibition is the identity of the subject, as interpreted by images of animals and landscapes in which the artist establishes a relationship of affective and emotive “transfer”.

 

Some of the works are inspired by photographic snapshots by the artist, which spring from his observations and exploratory excursions in and around Glasgow – and from the artist’s relationship with animals and with the weather.

 

Other works are “appropriated” from the works and photographs of other artists (from Wolfgang Tillmans to David Wojnarowicz to Juergen Teller). With the transpositioning of the painted medium and in the reduced format, as chosen by the artist, and through the temporal cohabitation that the practice of painting commands, the given subjects – taken from reproductions, books and catalogs, or from the artist’s snapshots – become instruments of assimilation and projection that intermingle with motives drawn from literature and biographical experiences.

 

“Song Thrushes” and “Four Wood Warblers” evidence a process of identification that passes by way of the personal experiences of the artist in the search for and observation of birds, in the capturing of their images in photographs, in the reflections on their charming and endearing appearances, as well as their aggressive and domineering personalities, and the investigation of “reflection” that tests the concept of identity and of “duality”. The title for his painting on board, “Il Sosia” (Doppelganger), is exemplary of this process: the work is at once the recreation of a photograph by Wolfgang Tillmans, a self-portrait, and the illustration of impressions of and reflections on the text “I Sosia” by Theodor Amadeius Hoffmann. All of the works, together, become a painted album, rather than a photographic one, dedicated to these existential themes.

 

Ivan Malerba was born in Naples in 1972. He lives and works in Glasgow (Scotland). He has shown in numerous spaces and galleries, including: Villa Manin – Center for Contemporary Art (curated by F. Bonami, 2004), Spazio Viafarini curated by Angela Vettese and G. Di Pietrantonio, Milan (2003) and the Prague Biennial (2009). He also participated in the “Corso Superiore di Arti Visive” at the Fondazione Ratti (Visiting Professor Giulio Paolini) in 2002. Ivan Malerba’s solo shows include those at: MAR – Museum of Contemporary Art in Ravenna (2008) and the Italian Institute of Culture in Edinburgh (2009).