Contemporary Tales

Elisabeth Strigini. Selected works 2004-2012

 13th July – 13th September 2012

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Opening times           from Tuesday to Sunday 10.00 – 13.00 and 14.30– 18.30; closed on Monday

Ticket free entry

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Fantasy, American Story, Portraits. These are the three themes that correspond to the same paths treated during the first Italian exhibition of the artist Elisabeth Strigini, who is present to Permanente’s Museum of Milan from 13th July to 13th September 2012 with the exhibition called Contemporary Tales.
The exhibition, rich in more than thirty works among oils and mixed techniques on canvas realized in the last decade, is made up of a work called Binky, , which represents Walt Disney’s Bambi: the most famous fawn of the infant and fairy-tale imagination, and it will be donated to the children of the pediatrics department of Fatebenefratelli Hospital in Milan, managed by Doc. Luca Bernardo.
Ottavia Landi di Chiavenna with the organizing coordination of Sara Mesiano and with the administratorship of Chiara Gatti and Angelo Crespi has planned the exhibition that analyzes the refined and introspective research of Elisabeth Strigini – smart and reserved personality in the panorama of the international figure.
Of French birth, but of English adoption, Elisabeth Strigini lives and paints between New York and London, and in the last few years she worked a series of works that treat themes of existential nature, based on a language between surrealistic and pop. Fascinated by the teachers of the past, by the italian Renaissance and the Flemish school, Elisabeth is the author of images in which childhood memories dialogue with northern atmospheres, with reference to Bosch and Bruegel, with her unforgettable, frozen and quiet snows, in addition to baffling inserts inspired by the world of cartoons, by comics and by the culture relating to mass media. A mixture of elements that return the visionary nature of a cultured and, at the same time, vaguely underground painting , in which the use of a dark palette with shades of dust, fog and darkness refers to restless meditations about man’s destiny, about the great themes of identity and loneliness.
The path of the exhibition will be also based on the popular and contemporary culture, read by the inner experience of the artist, whose meditations will follow the visitor in three great labyrinthine rooms, divided in as many macro periods, in order to get in touch with the dear reasons of her reflection like education, mass media, wars, fear, religion; core of Elisabeth’s existential research and her relationship with current reality, interpreted as a painful fairy-tale. So, the aim is to create, thank Peter Bottazzi’s display, a dream – vision which trasform the imagines in a sort of surrealistic hypertext, able to deal the reality to a dreamy dimension. A contemporary tale (that’s why Contemporary Tales) with the aim of producing on the canvas a secret relationship between observer and painter that turns on the attention on subjects giving strong emotions and an immediate involvement.