Poisoned Ivy
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About Barbara Agreste
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Poisoned Ivy
Barbara Agreste, post surrealist artist, her artwork takes the viewer into a dreamy world full of tricky tiles, falling flowers, and sharp shards.
She blends poisoned ivy to the image of Ophelia, showcasing a doll as the best example of her strange way of conceiving beauty: never flaunting, discreet and androgynous, part of a concealed world immersed in thriving nature and cold swamps, a fragile universe of subtle ethereal pain and melancholic moods.
Barbara Agreste disseminates fallen petals, disconnected shiny leaves, and fragments of mirror along impervious paths, leading the viewer of her video art, and short films to a journey characterized by the instability of walls and floors, and by the dazing alternating colours of unsteady tiles. There is always danger in these adventures, uncanny places of hidden eyes, or architectures built with the special purpose of causing accidents to the passengers. It is nature the tricky environment, full of leaves and blood, but this natural lanscape is also magnified and remoulded: it is not a totally true vegetation that we see, but rather a genetiacally modified one, a distorted natural proliferation, reminiscent of the cinematic settings, assembled like a labirinth hiding too many things, leading to a previously arranged scene.
Never trust your eyes.
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Poisoned Ivy
About Barbara Agreste
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Rain Blood
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Rain Blood
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This is a film frame from Rain, the short film by Barbara Agreste. This particular frame shows the shot in which some multicolored leaves fall from the sky, and their branches are violently shaken by a mysterious and frenetic wind. This wind seems to be upset, like if it was sent from a angry God wanting to punish humans for having misbehaved, or mistreated the Earth.
Fairy Doll
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Fairy Doll (Ophelia Series)
90 x90 cm
Oil on canvas
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Fairy Doll
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Dolls
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I love dolls.
If I could I would buy an entire collection of them: dolls of all kinds.
It was very interesting to discover that there are so many dolls out there in the market, just by searching on the internet I found entire forums on dolls, not Barbies, but many versions of the most refined, strange, and unusual dolls for collection.
Three years ago I bought a doll from Korea, a beautiful piece of art, and with it I made a lot of digital and oil paintings. I am still doing it, my research with the doll seems to have no end, I have infinite questions for the doll, therefore I keep photographing it.
Filmmaking
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Filmmaking
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Barbara Agreste’s Filmmaking
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In my artwork I always alternate the figure of a real woman to the one of a doll. Reptilica is a good example of it: the real woman is always appearing in fast cuts, and close ups, small parts of her body, usually feet, legs and hands are shown in the frame.
The doll on the other hand appears in her entire figure: there is a rich variety of objects that can be put beside her, and it is very easy to create a setting using miniature elements, it also becomes more interesting to to look at weird reproductions, or distorted reflections of what surrounds us, like if the film frame and what it contains became a parody of the real world.
Animation: Reptilica transferred on film
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Barbara Agreste’s animation short “Reptilica” has been recently transferred to film.
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Reptilica was made in 2005.
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To produce this animation Barbara Agreste rented a digital camera, and built a box about one meter long and eighty centimeters high using wood sticks, plywood sheets, and painting a sheet of paper to make a multifaceted floor. That way Reptilica begun, with “fimo” plastic that was used to sculpt worms, and a lot of dry leaves, flowers, and seeds thrown at the set to decorate a sinister and surreal closed environment.
Sublime dolls and deceit
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Sublime Dolls
Barbara Agreste, post-surrealist artist, much appreciated abroad for her VideoArt, is presenting for the exhibition “The sharing of difference” four paintings that dwell on the subtle dreamy line that separates life and death.
Her figures have no peace, and are representative of the uncertainty and anxiety of the contemporary human soul.
Alice’s Inverted Reality
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Alice’ inverted reality
Barbara Agreste‘s art can be defined as a multifaceted philosopher stone. Her creations are an intense and almost infinite work of layering thin petals and other transparent material one on top of the other, closely looking into reconstructing lost patterns, and existing forms with new colors, as if behind every object an unidentifiable amount blood is about to flow.
Puzzle art: Walking on tiles
Recognizing a puzzle.
Mosaics like a puzzle are there because someone needed to reconstruct a complete visible picture with tiny fragments of color found in the soil coming form an ancient world.
Chessboards are like mosaics in Barbara Agreste‘s work: walking into the right tile bends the space of a dream to a safe exit, and stepping into the wrong spot opens the door to a repellent trip, a place infested with insects and worms.
Abrasive Light
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Abrasive Light
Barbara Agreste has been making art since when very young: she used to live with her family in a house up on the hills in an far land surrounded by a forest; her drawings were inspired by fairy tales and by the vegetation and the creatures living in that landscape. When she attended the art college in the closest town, she learned life and architectural drawing techniques, and her work became more structured.
Looking at You
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Looking at You – Drawing series – Woman face 2
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