Barbara Tavella
Ein Flügelschlag entpuppt meine Körper
26.08.
31.10.23
Ortisei
With the exhibition title that translates to “A wingflash uncovers my bodies”, Barbara Tavella unfolds a new way of reading her paintings. The mostly stretcherless and delicately painted canvases are distributed flowing and freely hanging in the exhibition space. They invite us to interact with them and to pass between them.
In order to understand what the statement in the title is all about, the artist has to take us closer to her painting process. The beat of the wings measures the time it takes for the caterpillar’s body to turn into a butterfly, like the blink of an eye. Without necessarily painting butterflies from now on, this association brings about a new basic knowledge of how to read her images.
For what is hidden in them is not what they hide from us, but rather what they want to show us from now on. The metamorphosis in the painting process, which includes all the layers of painting and their figures, testifies to their understanding that everything human, plant and animal can be seen in one. Because we breathe the same air as we drink the same water. The cosmic memory of the earth, which we encounter daily in the cycle of life and which redounds us to metamorphose, is united in all of our bodies. Only with this basic understanding of being one in everything and at all times do the images begin to open up to us when we look at them.
