Jamais Vu

Published December 17, 2018 | By Barbara Agreste

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Jamais Vu (never seen)

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This evening for the exhibition organized by Agnes Casolani “Jamais Vu”, at the Rose est la vie Rose Garden, in Thaulero 12 Rd, Barbara Agreste will present a selection of her new paintings from her “Spine Flowers” series. The exhibition will be up until the 9th of August.

Barbara, born in Pescara, emigrated to London at age 22 to further her contemporary dance studies. There, she worked with several dance theatre companies until she decided to go to University to study Art.
After her degree in Visual Communication from Kent Institute of Art & Design, she got a Master’s degree in Fine Art at Central St Martins College in London, and since then she devoted much of her time to painting and video art.
She has collaborated to the realization of several films, such as “trip in 2002 in the historic centres” by Luke Kristic, where she filmed paintings underwater, and in 2005 “Atlantropa” a film by Michel Morels and Harald Rauser, where she played the role of the voice from the Italian radio.
Barbara has played a leading role in many exhibitions since 2004, between London, Italy, several states of Europe, and even in the United States.
Only the last few months she was part of an Video Art event in Rhode Island, USA: “Pixilerations v7”.
Barbara also gained a lot of attention from the press, both in printed magazine and online journals. Not to mention the numerous short films she produced.
Barbara Agreste is also a journalist and a writer, having published several reviews about art in journals and magazines of different sizes.
An eclectic personality therefore, that of Barbara Agreste, and an unclassifiable one for the many nuances that characterize her works, where we can find a bit of Pop-Surrealism interpreted in a completely original key.
In these paintings on show, the mild pastels are interspersed with strong and dominant colours: the diaphanous fairy’s red hair is in great contrast with her pearly face and seraphic traits.
The slender tiny body of another androgynous female character in her work “Black Bough”, is as white as snow and hidden in the intertwining of dark branches with flourishing green leaves. Barbara bends the photographic medium through a dark ritual, blending poisoned ivy to the myth of Ophelia. In her depiction, the hair of the main character intersect floral elements and blend with them creating a mesmerizing visual vortex, enchanting with its continuous movement.
Barbara’s energetic personality is part of that generation of accomplished artists common to our age: these are quite capable people who are not scared to engage with any job, they are not content to be just painters, or just directors or set designers, they want to do everything, and they do it with originality.
Ilaria Paluzzi