Emerging radical art Chrysalid gallery is excited to announce its return after five months of quarantine. September will mark the beginning of the new art season 2020/21 at Chrysalid, which will also
see the unveiling of the curatorial projects that Marth von Loeben has been working with the artists Natalia Grezina and Samuele Canestrari.
The duo solo exhibition will see the culmination of these months-long projects that will delve into two very different topics: while Grezina’s project will be more focused on the environmental importance of water (tied with a historical event relevant within her practice), Canestrari’s project will be more introspective and will focus on the rituals around death
and how the body is treated once it becomes lifeless.
Natalia and Marth have been working since a year and
a half on their long-term project “Hundred Years’ War”,
which is currently comprised of two chapters (one
exhibited at RAW in the spring of 2019 and one exhibited
in Moscow in the summer of the same year), and
Chrysalid will be the frame of the first interlude of the
third chapter, which will focus on the natural elements
and their relationship with humanity. The first interlude
(water) will be comprised of an installation with the
sculptures of Natalia, to which will be added a curatorial
contribution in the form of a poem, sung by Marth
herself. It will be a chapter full of new details for both
parties, which will come together in a multi-sensorial
composition.
Although the collaboration between Samuele and Marth
is more recent, it is no less strong. In the last few months,
the curator and artist have been developing the backbone
of the subject that they will work on in the near and far
future: finding the common interest of death as a research
topic, the two have set off to analyse it and eviscerate it
both from a metaphorical and a physical perspective. For
their first collaboration, the duo has decided to investigate
the materials involved in Christian funerary rituals and
-more into depth- the composition of coffins. Wood,
metal and fabric are all elements that come together
when making a casket for a departed person, and, in that
frame, they have a weird combination of functionality and
frivolity. For September’s exhibition, they will concentrate
solely on fabric, as a material, and the installation will
feature Samuele’s drawings within a distinctive frame.