Margherita Chiarva

Transfert

Body as theatre of the imagination

OPENING : Saturday 14 november 2015 from 4 to 8 pm Exhibition : 14 november – 19 december 2015

Sans titre, 2015, polaroid transfert on cotton and gauzed mixed with ink and tempera, 40 x 50 cm Virginie Louvet Gallery is pleased to present Transference, Margherita Chiarva’s first

solo show in France, a proposition of Carlotta Loverini.

On exhibit are 16 works: polaroid photographs taken in full light, remastered, stripped, transferred on gauze and paper then worked over with inks and tempera to be reborn into a completely new shape. A composition on the back walls made of 17 single pictures completes the exhibition.

A delicate yet powerful series of works where the artist Transfers her stream of consciousness to the body: the soft feminine curves and the cult shape of the Polaroid both of which playing the role of supports of quasi-abstract images, metaphors for daydreams: the ability, according to Freud, to express our imagination as adults, having abandoned children’s games.

“Important is neither reality, nor its representation, but the manipulation of reality in the artist’s mind “Margherita Chiarva

To produce these suggestions, Margherita Chiarva did not rely on traditional photographic techniques, but on shadows, manipulation and a chemical treatment of the surface of the paper, to “write” the images on the polaroid.

A Transfert of her artistic sentiment to the skin of the human body, and the chemical epidermis of the Polaroid film, mediums of manipulations, classic references of the history of art and a fil rouge of the exhibition nested in the intimate space of Virginie Louvet Gallery.

This process makes each work unique, an original that not even the artist could ever replicate, because no negatives of the photographs exist. The classic white frame that protects the image, like a dress protects a vulnerable body, is removed to not

distract the attention from the cult object, the Polaroid still, to its content, the image, because the focus is on the unconscious message conveyed by the image itself.

The stripped polaroid is then mounted on gauze and cotton paper. The work in this form is processed by adding layers of ink and tempera.

This procedure is an endless repetition, so that with every layer the artist can overcome the passing of time. The process stops only when the artist places the original plastic surface of the polaroid, once removed, as the final layer. The last act of the process, which interrupts the manipulation of the images and encloses the work of art in an eternal moment while placing the object in a physical reality, which has place in time and space.

“Printing and remastering gives the image a tactile beauty and a sense of permanence. The photograph is an image, becoming in these works a tangible object” Margherita Chiarva

Acts of artistic re-elaboration that remind one of an entire generation of photographers devoted to artistic intervention on the image, even using means that often conceal the “artist’s hand”. This way of working produces several levels of meaning which, enclosed in the work, create a sense of empathic, intuitive and unconscious connection between the artist and the viewer. The images are felt more than observed.

Margherita Chiarva was born in Milan in 1985. She studied at the Central Saint Martins School of Art and Design and in 2013 founded an artists’ collective with headquarters in Istanbul, Turkey. She lives and works in Milan.

Her latest shows include: 03-15 Chemigrams at Galerie ProjectB, Milan, Italy; 14-14 Modernity’s first Century, PLASMA, Milan, 2014; Numinous-ISTANBUL’74, Istanbul, 2014; Concrete Unit – Istanbul, Bienial, group show, Istanbul, 2013; Action at a Distance – Bursa Photo Fest, group show, Bursa, Turkey, 2013.