ÁNGELA FERRARI

In the bucolic setting of the Académie Conti, the paintings Àngela has produced for the exhibition create a pictorial passageway—the two long walls of the main gallery are host to compositions in which perspectives are disrupted and scale tossed to the wind for a bestiary and lush flora, along both ten- meter-long spaces. A thematic and spatial dialogue between the two wings of the Académie Conti unfolds on either side of the main space in the huge paintings—full-blown pieces of pictorial bravura—augmented by a considerable number of small format works with details of horse heads, birds with sharp beaks, and coiled flowers.

Through her compositions, in which animal bodies are in a state of tension — dogs baring their teeth, horses rearing up — the artist conjures a segment of European art history. Her canvases evoke artworks depicting exploits and armed feats as well as idyllic and mysterious wildlife scenes, echoing in particular the paintings of Douanier Rousseau.

Here, the artist appropriates the codes of Western iconography — in which animal and human realms have long been kept apart — upending them in order to examine the relationship between nature and culture.