Ad ampio respiro

About

RITA URSO artopiagallery is pleased to present the exhibition Ad ampio respiro, a dialogue between the artists Bea McMahon (Dublin, 1972), Vera Pravda (Monza,1974) and Caterina Silva (Rome, 1983), invited for the first time to confront themselves with the gallery space located in the courtyard – an ex-factory of the end of XIX century that will become its future home. In this space, deliberately essential and unadorned in the settings, the ethereal element weaves the fil rouge of the exhibition, becoming body-breath in the works on show.

During the opening there will be the performance In through the nose, out through the mouth conceived by Bea McMahon, with the collaboration of Caterina Silva. The artist stages a political environmental situation, focusing on certain actions including checking the quality of the air, breathing in try ing to control the movement of people, and breathi ng out .

Starting from an ethical ecological reflection but also a spiritual one, Ad ampio respiro aims to explore that "silent" communication activity of art and of ourselves in close relation to space The breath of the artwork of the air, and ours in synchrony. The act of breathing develops on the one hand becoming a telescope on a global problem, the atmospheric pollution, and on the other, with a more intimate and introspective viewpoint, meditatin g on the element of spontaneity and on the "letting be" of things.
The three artists interpret the gallery environment, each in their own way, as a communicative filter. Bea McMahon's trees, made of plasticized paper painted in natural colours, occupy the space inflating up to the ceiling thanks to a fan. Vera Pravda's paintings, made with special anti smog paints normally used in construction, literally purify the surrounding air, in the same way a s a forest of the same size does Caterina
Silva's canvase s, created in connection with the act of breathing in yogic practice, and with its rhythm, let the reality beneath the reality emerge on the painting surface and the surrounding environment that naturally and spontaneously enters the work, operating a continuous interchangeability between inside and outside.
Breath takes on an installation form and a presence in the space, involving visitors in an experience of osmosis in which their own breaths and those of the works give lungs to the spac e, and vice versa. The works, like megaphones of vital breaths, show the link between man, environment and art, through the ethereal This is something only apparently invisible behind the concreteness of reality but it is always near and part of us.
The title of the exhibition conceptually includes the expression used in literature, art and music to mean a breadth of vision and vastness of conception, an intention that will increasingly accompany the gallery in the realisation of its new architectur al project and exhibition programme.