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.
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,
Blue Mermaid
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Pastels on
acid free paper
24 x 35 cm
Blue Mermaid
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A mermaid (Blue Mermaid) is a legendary aquatic creature with the upper body of a female human and the tail of a fish. Mermaids appear in the folklore of many cultures worldwide.
Lella Grace
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Lella Grace
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Lella Grace – In the last two weeks I haven’t been able to speak to anyone about my feelings, nor to write anything, now I took the courage, and I’m finally letting out my thoughts.
I knew you since long time, but I only really knew your heart and mind recently. From that point on I never stopped dreaming about spending more time with you, never forgetting the happiness and freedom I felt the evening I met you by chance, and the potential of the two of us combined.
Dark Pop Surrealism
Dark Pop Surrealism
Dark Pop Surrealism
Dolls are surreal, dark and today they have come to represent perfect, endless, but also lifeless beauty. I must also add “voiceless beauty” too, since a doll doesn’t speak. I have used dolls several times in my images in the attempt to emphasize the fact that a woman in many situations is seen and treated as a doll. But, if a doll is voiceless, would images of dolls speak any sort of truth about them?
Nigredo Blackness
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Nigredo Blackness
The Catharsis of Ophelia
Nigredo Blackness. Today I looked at some of my digital paintings from the Nigredo series, and I found out that many of them were left unfinished. I was especially interested in one of those images, the one that best represents the Nigredo phase, one that has actually a lot of black matter in it, an almost entirely black and white piece.
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.
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.
