Kaye Donachie - Behind her eyelids she sees something

About

RIBOT is pleased to present the first solo show in Italy by Kaye Donachie (Glasgow 1970): a selection of recent paintings specifically realised by the artist for the exhibition.

The title, "Behind her eyelids she sees something", is a quotation from the short novel La Maladie de la mort (The Malady of Death, 1982) by Marguerite Duras, a French writer and director known to the public for her famous novel L'Amant and for the screenplay for Hiroshima Mon Amour.

As in the book by Duras, the works on show evoke a contradiction that alludes to an "other" dimension, one where a dreamlike imagination merges, but also clashes, with reality. More than on the narrative aspect, Donachie concentrates on the writer's ability to dissolve the perception of the space and time in which her stories are set.
In the small-format canvases on show, the vibrant strokes of her painting allude, and not by chance, to the subtle boundary that separates the intimate and sensitive vision of each of us from the corporeal vision of the material.

The nostalgic gaze of the portraits on show is full of light, hazy colour, and superimposed veiling that give the figures a mysterious fascination with an antique flavour. Inspired by modernist and revolutionary icons, Donachie's subjects are female writers, actresses, poets and activists who, in the cultural society of the last century, played a courageous and unconventional role.

The exhibition continues on the lower floor with a series of works created as part of the gallery's exhibition concept which, for each solo show in the gallery, envisages the realisation of a dedicated project. Kaye Donachie offers prints on cotton realised with the historical cyanotype technique, a photographic method invented in 1842. This kind of print is characterised by its typical Prussian blue colour, and is produced through an almost alchemical process of contact between the sensitised support and the light. At first used for the reproduction of notes, diagrams, technical drawings, and blueprints, cyanotypes were later used in the sphere of art, also as a result of the great contribution made by Anna Atkins, by many considered to be the first female photographer in history.

Kaye Donachie lives and works in London. She studied painting at the Royal College of Art in London. She has held solo and group shows in prestigious international institutions and galleries. Among these, mention should be made of Fireplace Project, East Hampton, NY, 2015; Ile-de-France Le Plateau, Paris, 2015; Museo d’Arte Moderna, San Marino, 2013; Tate St Ives, St Ives, 2009; Schirn Kunsthalle, Frankfurt, 2007; Tate Triennial, Tate Britain, London, 2006 , and many others. Today her works are to be found in such important public and private collections as The British Council, London, and the Fonds Régional d’Art Contemporain, Paris. In 1999 she won the prestigious John Moores Award.