Mariella Bettineschi began the series titled The Next Era (L'era successiva) at a very precise historic moment in 2008, when financial markets worldwide collapsed with the economic crash: this crisis marked the end of an era and it was precisely at this very delicate moment that Bettineschi decided to shift her attention from the present to the future, to what comes next, thus naming her subsequent photographic series The Next Era.
Taking famous portraits of women, Bettineschi manipulates the iconic images through careful crops, digitally duplicating their eyes, and rendering them in black and white. The Next Era focuses on the representation of female subjects, in particular the celebrated models who in the past posed for Raphael, Leonardo da Vinci, Titian, Veronese, and Bronzino, whom the artist's eye now investigates and brings up-to-date by taking them out of context.
Intriguingly doubled female gazes observe us–they are famous women we have heard about in museums and art history books; their names are Simonetta, Lucrezia, Giuditta, Cecilia, Margherita, Violante. We know almost everything about the men who made these masterful portraits, whereas we know almost nothing about the lives of their models, lovers, and muses.
At the unveiling of Dior's A/W 22 collection by Maria Grazia Chiuri this March, gilded frames showcased Bettineschi's works, tessellated around the walls of the show space–which resembled a traditional art gallery or the walls of a plush private residence–with multiple sets of eyes. Their cut up, stacked eyes question the judgment that has conditioned–and still conditions–women past and present. The gaze is reversed to suggest another reading of art history.
Mariella BETTINESCHI (b. 1948) has probed, through different methods and materials, the possible relationships with reality, focusing particular attention to women's condition, through a multidisciplinary approach dedicated to painting, sculpture, architecture. Photography and digital image have played a crucial role for her, thanks to their possibility of manipulation. After finishing art school in 1970, she graduated from the Giacomo Carrara Academy of Fine Arts in Bergamo. In 1988, she participated in the 43rd Edition of the Venice Biennale, and one year later she moved to Berlin, where she worked until 1995. She currently lives and works in Bergamo, Italy.
Press release courtesy Richard Saltoun Gallery.
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