All installation views – photography by Simone Stanislai

SEEDS | SEMI

Sabine Pagliarulo | ceramic sculpture
Olga Niescier | installation in alabaster

art installation
Palazzo dei Priori, Volterra
12 June – 8 August 2021

“Nature has neither kernel nor shell, she is everything at once.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Nature blossoms and generously renews herself, in a hidden and intimate space within the ancient walls. The double solo show SEEDS | SEMI, featuring works by Sabine Pagliarulo and Olga Niescier and curated by Kalpa Art Living Gallery, takes place in the beautiful Sala del Giudice Conciliatore, on the ground floor of the Palazzo dei Priori in Volterra. The exhibition enjoys the patronage of Regione Toscana and the Municipality of Volterra, and the support of Locatelli Saline di Volterra.

SEEDS | SEMI asks the viewer to reflect on the idea of the seed and sowing as a driving  force of life, a beginning without closure, a message for the moment. The slow breathing of Nature, almost without motion, animates the double installation of Pagliarulo and Niescier.  SEED | SEMI is a four-handed creation, an encounter of two artistic sensibilities  inspired to give birth to a work that elegantly and delicately wins over the space. The result is an organic intertwining of silver wires studded with myriad alabaster flakes flowing and extending between the walls. At the core of the installation is Pagliarulo’s work of a refined, soft-colour sculptural group.

Video by Vittorio Marrucci

PULSES is a nucleus of ceramic sculptures that recalls the fluid and never regular forms of Nature. The fragile, mouth-like parts of the hardened clay, tell us about the artist’s hidden intimacy and her physical encounter with the material itself. Pagliarulo’s series is born out of the clay and together with the clay itself pursues the unexpected, seemingly casually while yet controlled. Inherent in the creation of these works is a slow and visceral artistic process, where matter is no longer just an external shell, rather a surface traversed by vibrant and vital impulses. “The hand imprints on the clay both the shape and the most unconscious thoughts. – declares Pagliarulo – This immediately and indelibly happens since the clay has a memory of its own that can hardly be erased.”

On this occasion, Niescier’s pictorial and material research climbs out of the constraining frame of the painting to become three-dimensional, embracing the very ‘matter’ of the material in a dialogue with the ancient alabaster stone. In KERNEL, the artist’s gaze becomes a living vein of the plant, interpreted as an organic structure of myriad pieces that harmoniously live together. Like a convoluted blade of grass, the various filaments in KERNEL vibrate in the air stirred as people pass through the room, sparkling in the light reflected by the white mineral gems. Alabaster itself becomes the protagonist of this installation. “As an artist who has recently moved to Volterra” – says Niescier – “it is impossible not to be fascinated by this ancient material. Finding new interpretations of alabaster and  addressing its history is a way to honour the land that has welcomed me.” 

In SEEDS | SEMI the viewer is invited to enter a novel space and to silently savour the fruits of this enchanted garden, slowly approaching its centre along the artists’ prescribed path.

ARTISTS

French-Italian artist Sabine Pagliarulo (Rome, 1967) has a lifelong career in figurative art and all its applications. After having studied law, she dedicated herself exclusively to ceramics and sculpture. Sabine nurtures herself with Nature. From organic forms she draws purity, gravity and simplicity. While combining all of this with her French origins, she is inspired by an aesthetic métissage that awakens the spirit, and the search for harmony and equilibrium in the small things. Recently Sabine has been involved in various contemporary art exhibition projects in Rome, particularly: Pietro Canonica – Villa Borghese, Casina delle Civette – Musei di Villa Torlonia, Museo delle Mura, Museo Orto Botanico. In addition to many other Italian cities, her works have also been exhibited in France, Finland, Switzerland and Japan. Among her most recent exhibitions, the Biennial of Contemporary Art Ceramics “Keramikos 2020” at the Duca di Martina Museum (Naples, 2020) and the International Ceramic Competition of Carouge “Hortus. Le jardin envahit la table ”, at the Musée de Carouge (Genève, 2019).

SABINE PAGLIARULO  – read more…

Olga Niescier (Bialystok,1978) is a Polish artist, designer and curator. She obtained her diploma in Fine Arts and Fashion Design at the Academy of Fine Arts in Lodz and specialised in Fashion Design at the Polimoda Institute in Florence. Since 2001 Niescier has been carrying on an intense interdisciplinary artistic activity, integrating design, fashion, visual and performative arts. Painting is the field in which the artist expresses herself with most passion and dedication. Niescier’s artwork is a meditative exploration of Nature’s structures and rhythms, an insight into botanical micro-universes, a personal encounter with Zen philosophy and abstract expressionism; micro and macro representations of Nature become the artist’s inner journey toward a sense of self consciousness and reconciliation with the Universe. Since 2013 Niescier has regularly exhibited his works in some of the most fascinating locations in Tuscany: Florence, Siena, Bagno Vignoni, Pietrasanta, Volterra and San Gimignano, where she lives and works. Her latest solo show, “Structura Naturalis” (2019) was held at the Cesare Olmastroni Gallery in Palazzo Patrizi (Siena); among her most recent group shows are “Naturellement Elegant” in Reims in 2019, “WART, Florence Total Contemporary Art”, at Palazzo Medici Riccardi in 2016 and “Biancoscuro” at Art Innsbruck in the same year. Niescier is also the founder of the Anima Silvae Cultural Association, the Kalpa Art Living and Pignano Art Gallery galleries, all dedicated to reconnecting the artistic experience with an awareness of the natural world.

OLGA NIESCIER  – read more…

SEEDS  |  SEMI

12 JUNE – 8 AUGUST 2021

Palazzo dei Priori, Piazza dei Priori, Volterra (PI), Italy

open every day 10:00 – 19:00

for information:  info@kalpa-art.it  |  +39.338.117.9741

Organized by:

Sustained by:

Special thanks to:

ALABASTRI PECCHIONI

Patronage: