Sara Bichão – Manon Harrois
SOUNDLESS HARMONIES
curated by Boshko Boskovic
OPENING Thursday, May 15th, 7 pm
May 16th – July 4th 2014, Tuesday – Friday 3 – 7 pm
artopia gallery | via lazzaro papi 2 | 20135 milan
T 02 5460582 | artopiagallery@gmail.com | www.artopiagallery.net
Artopia Gallery is pleased to present Soundless Harmonies a two-person exhibition by Sara Bichão and Manon Harrois curated by Boshko Boskovic. Using very different strategies both artists engage in the tropes of abstraction and the recurring impulse towards the medium of drawing. Manifesting various gestures and silhouettes, Bichao and Harrois feature works that investigate reductive forms and color schemes as well as minimal geometries. The collection of their oeuvre is organized on the basis of visual and conceptual affinities at times resulting in improbable compositions. Their approaches are varied, ranging from re-imagination of the history of abstraction to explorations of organic forms.
Chance, spontaneity and experimentation are qualifiers of Sara Bichão’s work including her newest site-specific installation that draws upon the idea of break and continuity. Her works on paper, often miniature in scale are full of vibrant color containing a myriad of signs, organic figures or circular arcs of geometry. Her patterns pulse with energy by means of graphite, pencil and acrylic paints. Bichão engages with the overlapping histories of modernist design and abstraction to unsettle notions of meaning and authorship.
Manon Harrois subtle gestures explore the limits of material, support, surface and structure. Her most recent work include tracings forms on carbon paper and transferring directly onto the wall, suggesting open ended and performative actions. Inspired by the Tuareg jewelry and weaving techniques Harrois creates a visual language that produces signature blue ink drawings. Her practice is charged with mutability constructing a range of forms and concepts, which fuse into an imaginative universe. Harrois’s opus ranges from sketchbook diaries that explore the artist’s everyday experiences to hybrid sculptural objects and performance.
Each artist’s oeuvre embodies a sense of distinction, articulating patterns that fold into one another yet always embrace the formal language of drawing. Emphasizing the art of delineation, the works of Bichão and Harrois outline an evolution of ideas and compositions providing a unique insight into each artist’s singular yet complementary aesthetic.
Sara Bichão (1986, Lisbon) lives and works in Lisbon, Portugal. In 2011, she completed a Master in Fine Arts at the University of Lisbon. Considered one of the most promising artists of her generation in Portugal, Bichão won the BPI Bank Prize for Painting and was awarded the prestigious Fidelidade Mundial Jovens Pintores Prize. Recent exhibitions include: Eccentric Exercise, Les Gens Heureux, Copenhagen, How to Hold That, Pavilhao Branco, Lisbon, One Things After Another, Quadrum Gallery, Lisbon, Open Gates, Rooster Gallery, New York, Concrete Mirrors, Krypt Gallery, London, Six Apart, Barbara Davis Gallery, Houston, Aduana, Natural History Museum, Lisbon, O Espaco Em Parlaze, Astronomical Observatory, Lisbon, D’aprés Nuno Gonçalves, Museum of Ancient Art, Lisbon and “Anteciparte’09”, Oriente Museum, Lisbon. Works by Bichão are included in the public collections of Fidelidade Mundial and Telo de Morais (Portugal).
Manon Harrois (Reims, 1988) is French pluridisciplinary artist who lives between Reims and Paris. She has graduated from the Ecole Natioanal Superieure des Art Applique in Paris in 2009. Harrois has been recently selected in a short list of French emerging artists to have a solo show at the Premier Regard Gallery in Paris presented by the chairman of the Association of International Diffusion of French Art. Recent exhibitions include Window, during Nuit Blanche in Paris, Contage #2, Window, Paris, Ceux qui restent, Galerie MJD, Reims, This Exhibition Has Everything to Go Wrong, Abrons Art Center, New York, Cartogravie. Corps magnetiques, Aqua forte, Reims. Soi, dit en gravant, Centre d’art Contemporain de Brian, Reims. She has performed at institutional performance festivals such as Frasq- Le générateur, Gentilly, Une nuit, eine Nacht, Le carreau-Théatre de Forbach and the Studio Canaldanse in Paris.
Boshko Boskovic is the Program Director of Residency Unlimited, a New York based residency program for international artists and curators. Previously Boskovic has worked at the Felix Gonzalez-Torres Foundation and Sean Kelly Gallery in New York. He has curated numerous exhibitions such as Videozones at Interstate Projects, New York & Gallerie UQAM, Montreal, Paint Me Sculpturly, Artopia Gallery, Milan, Italy, Ellie Krakow – Bring the Lights Into the Shot, Cuchifritos Gallery & Project Space, New York, Mladen Miljanovic -Good Night – Gallery MC, New York, Neighboring Landscapes, Cultural Centre Belgrade, Belgrade, Serbia & SKC Gallery, Zagreb, Croatia, Amalgamated-Mongolian Contemporary Art, Gallery MC, New York, Monument-Movement, Center for Photography & Moving Image, New York, Not so Distant Memory, Delaware Center for Contemporary Art & National Center for Contemporary Art, St. Petersburg, Russia, Power of the Brand, Contemporary Art Museum in Banja Luka, Bosnia & Hercegovina.
Boskovic has published essays for the following exhibitions: The Joy of Jumping – Beatrice Scaccia, Bosi Contemporary, New York, Expiring Body – Mladen Miljanovic, A + A Gallery, Venice, Italy, Free Time in Labor & Art – Maja Bekan, Cultural Centre Belgrade, Serbia, Amalgamated – Mongolian Contemporary Art, Gallery MC, New York, Indigo Let’s Start From This (A Small Retrospective), Mestna Galerija, Nova Gorica, Slovenia amongst others.
