SONG AND LOVE (with Ola Vasiljeva)

Matthew Lutz-Kinoy and Ola Vasiljeva exhibit for the first time together in Rome at Indipendenza Studio. Invited by Gigiotto Del Vecchio and Stefania Palumbo (Supportico Lopez), the artists conceived a project that intersects their individual production with the possibilities of a chorus of voices, a non declared collaboration, a natural codivision of the spaces.

The exhibition Song and Love is an homage to the drawn, the documented, lived and imagined space of music, pleasure and memory. In a pivotal perspective towards both artists’ work is a shared relationship with staged space and sensuality. Seen through Ola’s work we approach a scenographic perception, where prompted narrative objects populating both institutional and domestic scenarios are distorted though layers of shifted materiality and touch.

In the exhibition anthropomorphic erotic lamps illuminate sculptures which mirror intimately scaled bar room interiors. These structures are charged with overlapping narratives, performative traces, private references and immerse the viewer in an abandoned stage during an intermission, allowing them to rely on their own sense of direction.

Matthew’s large format paintings function in the exhibition as theatrical panels, which are installed primarily on the ceilings of Indipendenza as displaced frescos, drawing the pictorial attention of the viewer upwards and paralleling Ola’s use of the floor as a stable support for many of her sculptures. Hanging on the walls through adjacent rooms are 12 ceramic masks by Matthew, depicting the months of the year.

The faces are assembled out of thrown vessels which are squished, layered and flipped on top of one another. Both artists present a type of sensual portal bridging this world to the next in a scripted pattern of textures moving from room to room.