Oneroom Gallery presents Dark Night of the Soul - a group show curated by Samuele Visentin. Showcasing a diverse array of artistic tropes, the show aims to explore a moment in contemporary history where the very notion of existence is morphing and art is taking notice. Laurence Watchorn, Lisa Ivory, Michael Ajerman and Alice Faloretti present different contemporary perspectives surrounding nature and humankind, the unknown, the other... a search for meaning in artistic forms that although different, strike a common cord with what it feels to be alive in our day and age.
Laurence Watchorn (UK) is interested in a reflexive path leading into the unknown thick of things. Instead of an immediate confrontation with resolution, his paintings often turn back on themselves privileging the nature, rather than the meaning of things. In this way, the final outcome is subordinated to the eventualities of a present moment. Laurence Watchorn aims to express humanity’s true place in nature - not in a position of control toward preconceived ends but instead allowing life, in this case the picture, to happen as an animistic and inconsequential element of nature’s balance.
Alice Faloretti (Italy) explores the relationship between man and his immediate environment. The landscape is conceived as something perceived, interpreted and displayed as an expression of both personal and collective elements, tied to memory and imagination. For Faloretti, the pictorial medium opens the doors to a new way of seeing reality through a personal lens, where the real and the imagined trespass and penetrate each other’s boundaries. Her ambiguous language reflects the indeterminacy of its content, constantly shifting between inclusion and disorientation, turmoil and attraction.
Lisa Ivory (UK)’s imagery employs the allegorical figure of the Wild Man as both myth and symbol. Savage and sublime, he embodies the multi-layered cauldron of contradictions that now more than ever seem to hold society and its constituents hostage. Savage Women and Feral Children complement the figure of the Wild Man, creating a visual language for the irrational and the animalistic impulses within us. Ivory’s aberrations are exiles from this dark, unsettling sensibility. This body of work is in a natural conversation with the Innocence and Experience of William Blake’s Lost Girls and Boys.
Michael Ajerman (USA) paints private moments of quiet domesticity and inner landscapes, pursuing the depiction of the complexities and feelings that animate individuals - humour, wit, affection, anger... The artist’s depiction of objects and bodies in flux employ a gestural style focused on colour and brushstrokes. Frequently populated by both real and fictional subjects, Ajerman’s paintings are both funny and sinister, luscious and intimate.
