Stefania Carrozzini explores: Beauty in Art, Art in Beauty
Rebecca Seefen-Soliman
Exhibition view of "The most beautiful thing I ever saw" currated by Stefania Carrozzini at the Berliner Kunstprojekt.
What is beautiful? How do we even attempt to create a criteria? And if something fits that prescription, can it still be beautiful?
The exhibition "The most beautiful thing I ever saw" explores this question: "What is the significance of focusing on the meaning of what is most beautiful to us?" Stefania Carrozzini asked photographers to document their image of beauty; the result was on display at the Berliner Kunstprojekt. The exhibition, which was curated by Carrozzini and organized by D´Ars / IEP International Exhibition Projects, presented artwork from 11 Italian artists. The attempt was to offer neither a classification of universal standards nor a portrayal of great art traditions. On the contrary, the works aim to show how individual artists from different backgrounds re-imagine and re-present beauty in their own ways.
Is it a nude female? An innocent child? An idyllic landscape? A wash of color? No surprise that from artist to artist, the interpretations were varied, and the mediums used to depict the results were diverse. Marcello Diotallevi invoked a classical definition of beauty in art, displaying a series of female nudes in black and white. He exposes the original and natural form of the human body. By focussing on nakedness, he gives the impression that to be naked is to be natural. Thus, for Diotallevi, to capture the body in its natural, or perhaps, archetypal state, is to discover true beauty.
The artwork Marino Ramazzotti contributed to the exhibition consisted of little, black and white squares. On each square is a colored print of either a pretty, spotless flower or shrivelled and moldy vegetable. Nature has once again become a definition of beauty. However, Ramazzotti represents nature as a process, a series of stages, a cyclical power. Is he arguing that each stage, from delicate bud to withered leaf, is a variety of beauty? Or, by displaying these two, very different objects, is he juxtaposing a beautiful thing with something that is not? Do we assess beauty by comparison?
Several artists explored attraction–when it emerges, when we suppress it, and when, to our surprise, we are attracted to some individual, object or abstract that does not correspond to the standard ideals of beauty but is radiant, sensuous.
The exhibition inspires re-discovery. The definition of beauty might rest in the eye of the beholder. However, the artists of "The most beautiful thing I ever saw" shape the ways in which we see.
