The die is cast
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The die is cast is a new series of paintings by Barbara Agreste.
This time I was able to do what really was in my mind, having discovered technically how to make sure that my oil pastels would imprint themselves into the canvas (smaller size watercolor paper) in a way in which they could dry, and be secured beneath a shiny layer of transparent acrylic medium. Basically plasticized and packaged. No more insecure smudgy surfaces.
I said to myself: “I want to be free with my subjects, and represent through them, and through these images my real self”. It has been injected into these figures, as they tend to be contemplating a game of dice (or chess as a returning theme in my artwork), and cards, the impression that they seem to be wanting to hold or catch the time it takes for the thrown dice to reach the end of its journey. They stand still, waiting for the end of the gamble. It’s the state of uncertainty that I have come to immortalise in these images: they’re completely out of time, the space is expanded, and they live an eternal awakening, stepping into the spotlight.
“Will I make it through the evening?”; “Will I make it to the next day?”: these are the questions that these characters are asking themselves, while the moon light, or a strangely orange sun, unveil their fear, which becomes a form of a courage when overtly confronted.
It’s a photograph of the very moment when someone realizes that there is nothing to fear at all, maybe that state of tension is itself a trap, it is that fraction of a second in which from being attached to that kind of subtle pain they take the step forward towards wanting to really see if it’s true that the future is so gloomy, so adverse. In that very moment we take that future in our hands, we step into a place of slow observation. Having come close to the mirror of fate, we really see its nature: however the events will unfold, the end of the journey of the dice is not so important after all as it gives us just two possibilities, and we’re waiting without distinction for one or the other.
Virginia Woolf
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Virginia Woolf
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Virginia Woolf
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Drawing Series, Woman’s face 3,
pastels and acrylics on acid-free paper
by Barbara Agreste.
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Virginia Woolf and her story.
I will never understand Virginia Woolf‘s story, I mean the way it ended. As with Ophelia, the fictional character from Shakespeare, I will analyse Virginia Woolf’s suicide this time. Why am I interested in it? Because it is something I fail to understand completely, and surely to imagine how such an act of removing oneself’s life is possible, I would have to dig deeply into the reasons beyond it.
Reptilica
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Reptilica
Reptilica is partly animation and partly a film where real people perform. It Starts with a doll which is animated with the stop motion technique, she is searching through the many dry leaves that rest on the floor, something she has seen or felt passing by, but she can’t seem to find it.
Other scenes in the movie introduce small pink worms falling on a group of ivy leaves, these are the disturbing presence that bother the doll as they sneak under the leaves, never letting themselves to be seen.
Cyanide
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Cyanide: running towards the void
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My film Cyanide has had a peculiar beginning. It originated from a period of my life of extreme depression, and uncertainty, and it was an action I was performing every day that made me think about developing the more predominant images of this film.
The Checkered Tunnel
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The Checkered Tunnel
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The Checkered Tunnel is a animation made entirely with 3D software. This short movie represents a fragmented space made of a checkered tunnel where the squares that fill its walls, floor, and ceiling alternate from red to white (the colour red is a metaphor for trauma).
At the opening of the piece the point of view of the spectator (the camera) is turning on itself in a chequered room with a missing wall leading to a black void.
16 mm
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16 mm by Barbara Agreste
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I remember I was in the laboratory, it was a bright day of March or April, maybe May, the weather was warm, and I was with my friend Alex working on those very large tables in a wonderful printing facility room in KIAD college of Art. I was unrolling a long 16mm transparent film strip, and close by on the table I had collected and placed down carefully so many petals, Continue reading
The Tower Trilogy
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The Tower Trilogy
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The Tower Trilogy has three titles that originated in Italian: “La Torre, Le Formiche, Lo Specchio” and they translate this way in english : “The Tower, The Insects, The Mirror”. This animation is made with 16 mm film, and DV video, and it is very abstract although some figures appear on the screen at some points.
Rain
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Rain Synopsis:
In this video the Rain is made out of blood: a constant red rain falls on the vegetation of the town.
Here the concept of violence is not expressed literally with scenes of cruelty, but it is symbolically represented by the never ending rain that exists through the all duration of the film. This video does not present a resolution to this sad scenario, there are only few moments in which the rain stops, and leaves violently shaken by the wind moving in slow motion inhabit the screen.
Pictures Book
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My idea to put old photographs from 1919 into a Pictures Book
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The animation “Pictures Book” was commissioned by Curator Enrico Tomaselli to be part of the “100×100=900 Video Art Project, One Hundred Artists to tell a century” which is presenting one hundred videos each inspired to one year of the 20th century.
Ruby Red Hair
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Ruby Red Hair, Tao,
and Playing Cards.
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Ruby Red Hair: Drawing Series – pastels on acid free paper.
This is a drawing of a woman with Ruby Red Hair, or vivid dark red hair: she is the icon of wild nature when the human meets with the darkest and most enigmatic side of the earth. The carmine, vivid crimson colour of her hair represents a particular moment in time when her menstrual cycle is in the bleeding phase. This phase is very strange: the hair of the woman hasn’t always been red, but when the bleeding time comes, her hair turns suddenly carmine,
Women are not Objects – Stop Violence to Women
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Women are not Objects –
Stop Violence to Women
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Women are not Objects – Stop violence to women. This drawing is contributing to the cause against violence to women. It is the portrait of a woman in the exact moment before death, when she wouldn’t expect to be betrayed in such a horrifying way as to be murdered…
