Photographs showing vaporous coloured clouds like the ones taken by New York-based artist Kim Keever of paint pigments and liquids suspended in water can be visually striking and incredibly inspiring also from a fashion point of view (as you may remember from a previous post, Iris van Herpen moved for example from Keever's images for some of the designs in her S/S 19 Haute Couture collection).
Yet there is a trend also for coloured smoke pictures: artists Sara Goldschmied and Eleonora Chiari use for example smoke bombs to create experimental explorations of forms and shapes.
The artists have currently got an exhibition on at Galleria Poggiali (located in two different spaces in Pietrasanta, the Project Room in Via Garibaldi 8, and the Ex-Fonderia d'arte Luigi Tommasi in Via Marconi 48).
Entitled "Artificial Landscapes" (until 6th October 2019) the event is a follow-up to "Eclipse", an exhibition by Goldschmied and Chiari that was on at the Museo Novecento in Florence before the summer and that focused on natural phenomena such as eclipses, dawns and sunsets.
"Artificial Landscapes" studies how Goldschmied and Chiari developed since 2014 their "Untitled Views" series, releasing smoke bombs in their studio and then trying to grasp their textures and colours (usually selected on the basis of harmony, tone and structure) in their photographic compositions.
The unpredictability of the process is the added value of their art: some images look like fluffy clouds from a dreamy landscape; others seem to portray dark omens of a nuclear apocalypse, evoke the consistency of fabrics, or form in the air mysterious creatures.
The images are then applied onto glass or mirror surfaces that open up architectural dialogues with the spaces where they are displayed and where they are activated by the presence of the visitors.
By standing in front of these artworks the observers end up becoming part of the pieces: seeing themselves reflected onto mirrored surfaces surrounded by intangible polychromatic clouds, they become indeed the protagonists of a vision.
Yet once the visitors change perspective, the surfaces assume the aspect of dense and colourful paintings. By reflecting themselves in the mirrors, the artists hope the visitors themselves will create their own temporary image, combining together the reality of the experience in a gallery or museum with the fantasy landscape created by the smoke bombs.
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