Toderini. Artist Catalogue. Gallery Different. 14 Percy Street London W1T 1DR +44(0)

Transcription

1 Toderini Artist Catalogue Gallery Different 14 Percy Street London W1T 1DR +44(0)

2 Table of Contents About Gallery Different... 2 Toderini... 3 A Boot... 4 Cross on the Moon

3 About Gallery Different Located in the heart of Fitzrovia, London, Gallery DIFFERENT presents contemporary painting, sculpture, drawing, print, photography and mixed media from BRITISH and INTERNATIONAL ARTISTS. As well as presenting a dynamic schedule of exhibitions and events, DIFFERENT collaborates with other galleries worldwide to promote and curate exhibitions for its artists. -2-

4 Toderini Valeria Grinfan Toderini was born in Venice. After receiving her degree in Foreign Literatures and Languages at the Venetian University of Caâ Foscari in 1973, she pursued her artistic interests both as a painter, a poet and a playwright. â œin the early Nineties she developed a technique which allowed her to set old Venetian glass beads and murrhines in an acrylic-painted and quite colourful backgroundâ That way her Glasstakes were born, metaphorical shots or takes of a script told through chromatic valences made glossy by fragments of old glassâ Symbolic presences, both refined and fragile set in a pictorial space which doesnâ t acknowledge any border. Because of the chromatic and material rebellion that runs through her work, Valeria Grinfan Toderiniâ s artistic voice stands out as a strong denunciation of the extremely frail borderline conditions that beset the town that gave her her origin, both culturally and genetically. Venice, already immersed in watery abysses agrees to her own metamorphosis into a coralline atoll and, though broken and insulted, she can still project and expand tone-deep phantasmagories and colouring of light, since light is her very essenceâ. Enzo Dallâ Ara, il Corriere, Romagna, She was a close friend of Annette Rowdon, the London sculptor, who in her turn had been a friend, and for a time a pupil, of Henry Moore. Throughout the Eighties and till the time of Annette Rowdonâ s death in 1996, she was often in her studio both in London and in Tuscany, Italy, investigating various possibilities of visual expressions. â œin her work Venice and North Europe coexistâ to summarize her art is a delicate musical composition -3-

5 concealing an aching wound. Her sensitivity refuses any restriction. Each moment of her art is lived with generosity on the borderline between a vast intelligence and an overflowing heart, combined in order to find a balance. This is how Grinfan Toderiniâ s work comes into being: in her wall paintings 18th/19th Century frames are â contaminatedâ with modern acrylic and synthetic resins. Here â ambitiousâ representations are charged to the very limit, even overcharged, with a luminous chromatic material, caught in the knot of the silkenâ scarf which Othello used to strangle Desdemonaâ. Gian Ruggero Manzoni, Lâ esaltazione consapevole del Pernicieux Saveur, Edizioni del Girasole, Ravenna,1999. In the Eighties and Nineties the artist has also followed Bruno Vianelloâ s art decorating and restoring work in his Venetian workshop. â œan artist through and through, Valeria is faithful to a tradition that sees that which is literary, visual, musical, crafted, philosophicalâ united in a single individualâ relying on the exaltation of beauty, of â simplicityâ raised to the status of iconic sumptuousnessâ. Gian Ruggero Manzoni, Lâ esaltazione consapevole del Pernicieux Saveur, Edizioni del Girasole, Ravenna,

6 A Boot 36 cm 16 cm 16 cm Mixed media 3,

7 Cross on the Moon 150 cm 150 cm Mixed media 12,