Artissima 2022: Advisory Selections
This year's edition of Artissima takes place between 4–6 November at Oval Lingotto in Turin. With over 100 Italian and international galleries participating, including Capsule Shanghai, KÖNIG GALERIE, Mazzoleni, and SMAC Gallery, the fair unveils works by emerging artists alongside established trailblazers of contemporary art.
Ocula Advisory provides a selection of artwork highlights showing at Artissima ahead of the fair opening.
Nova Jiang at Union Pacific
It's a joy to see Nova Jiang in Union Pacific's Artissima presentation.
We first came across her work earlier this year at Liste Art Fair, the annual hub for artist discoveries. For Artissima, Nova Jiang will be presenting four paintings, each as surreal and exquisitely rendered as the next.
Deftly painted in oils on intimately sized wooden panels, it was Jiang's smooth, delicate handling of paint that made her works particularly memorable.
The shadow formed behind the unusual blade was what made Armor (2022) stand out among the rest. Within this staged arrangement, the shadow appears to take on a life of its own, standing as though a figure ready to fight.
Chen Zuo at Galerie Urs Meile
Nightwalker in Pines (2019–2022) is one of two works by the Chinese artist Chen Zuo who graduated from the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 2021.
Technique is at the forefront of this young artist's practice, borrowing the over-dyeing technique of classical painting. Building up his canvases with a mix of translucent and natural colours, Chen Zuo's works arrive at a layered, tactile effect.
'This series of snow-scene paintings started last winter. I moved to a studio in an urban village, and there was no heating in the winter, which made my memory of that experience fresh. The winter in the north is bleak and lonely, but for me from the south, it seems to have a different kind of romantic colour', Chen Zuo explained.
Miriam Cahn at Jocelyn Wolff
Miriam Cahn is a Swiss figurative painter renowned for her fragmented nude portraits that explore themes of bodily image, sexuality, power, and oppression.
Iiegen (1995) belongs to a series of work that explores the image of the body. Featuring obscured anatomical details and eyes that often maintain a blank but direct gaze, Cahn's paintings unpack the different ways identity can be fragmented, surpassing the restrictive discourses of the gender binary.
Made from glue, pigments, and pencil on paper, Iiegen depicts a ghostly silhouette of a figure lying down. Blending muted blues with hints of pink and red, Iiegen demonstrates the Basel-born artist's incredibly refined colour palette.
Jocelyn Wolff will display Miriam Cahn's works alongside those of artists William Anastasi, Santiago de Paoli, Francisco Tropa, and Katinka Bock.
Salvatore Astore's sculpture will not be travelling far for Artissima, with the artist having called the city home from a young age.
Astore's sculptures have been defined as 'organic minimalism', fuelled by experimentation with techniques and materials related to the urban industrial context.
Active within the Italian and international art scene since the 1980s, Astore's seamless forms recall the stripped-back nature of Isamu Noguchi's galvanised steel sculptures, which often crossed into the realm of industrial design.
Sconfinamenti, which translates to 'trespassing', is one of a series of new bronze works of the same title, a material only recently used by Astore for the first time.
Alongside Astore, Mazzoleni will be showing works by a number of other Italian and international artists including Andrea Francolino, Rebecca Moccia, and Shigeru Saito.
Main image: Miriam Cahn, liegen (1995). Glue, pigments, and pencil on paper. 50 x 65 cm. Courtesy the artist and Galerie Jocelyn Wolff. Photo: François Doury.
