The exhibition “Estranged from Nature” by Romanian painter Ioan Sbârciu opened yesterday at Zuecca Project Space in Venice, Italy (Squero Castello, Salizada Streta 368, Venice, just around the corner from Arsenale). The exhibition is open for visits, from 4 to 6 pm until July 14th.

"As a painter, Ioan Sbârciu carved a unique path in the history of Romanian art, through this particular ability to orchestrate painting as a continuum field of forces and energies, spread over immense surfaces and complex color networks" - MNAC Bucharest.

"Curated by Maria Rus Bojan and Alessandro Possati, the exhibition offers a coherent overview of his recurrent themes since the nineteen-eighties, inviting reflection on the multiple forms of alienation that correspond to the complex nature of our times" - Sector 1 Gallery.

The exhibition is organized by Zuecca Projects and the European ArtEast Foundation in partnership with Sector 1 Gallery, MB Art Agency, Artewiser Association and it is co-financed by the National Cultural Fund Administration (AFCN) Romania. The exhibition will be followed by an extensive catalogue.

Rhine's women are naked, displaying their flabby folds with passion and desperation. These portraits are characterized by colorful wigs, fanciful genillas, and facial expressions that border on the monstrous and pathetic. The entire exhibition seems like the catalog of a dying and decaying sex industry, but these wild creatures still insist on squeezing out the last drops of their sensuality. In this way, the artist opens the debate on the normative parameters for the representation of sexuality.

More than a questioning of beauty and what a normative body means, Flavia's portraits show a worn-out spirit, how a body exhibits what it has learned in an automatic and unreflective way. Women pose as if they are being watched, so their movements seek to catch the attention of others.

The idea of the worn-out spirit can be expanded to other aspects of contemporary life: the deficit of vital energy left by the pandemic, the bitterness against the advances of fascist governments in the rest of the world, the militancy in networks that seems to replace more and more the presence in the streets. Even so, the works neither judge nor take a punitive attitude. With a tone of humor, in Rin's works in "Gravity", the bodies have erased the habits and obligations that society imposes on them.

One of the strong points of Joaquín Barrera's curatorship is the use of the color palette. As he mentions in his text, the works led him to think of those youth culture heroines of the late eighties that are now coming back and re-versioned, like Jem & The Holograms, to make use of their brightness and aesthetics. Already from the first floor, the light tubes spill their gradient on the walls, making them go from fuchsia to pink, then to lilac and violet, until they end up in the deep blue of the carpet.

In the basement room, the strategy of light is repeated and another element is added to continue and develop this aesthetic proposal with a corrugated aluminum foil that gives the wall texture and turns it into a reflective surface. On top of this assembly hangs a pop rapunzel wearing only a pearl necklace and satin boots while bouncing on a rubber sphere holding her breasts.

"Gravity" is undoubtedly an exhibition that if you are in Buenos Aires you should not miss. Flavia Da Rin demonstrates once again her versatility throughout more than 20 years of career. The artist consolidated a work of art created from performance, theatrical interpretation, photography, digital intervention, and pop culture references.