We are pleased to announce that ‘Blaue Nacht’, Raphaela Simon’s solo exhibition, will open at Fondazione Giuliani on Wednesday, May 10, 2023. This will be the artist’s first institutional exhibition in Italy.
Raphaela Simon is known for her paintings of deceptively simple, non-distinct forms set against dark monochromatic backs. To make these, the artist works in several stages, overpainting and modifying elements in a slow, continuous process. Simon generates forms of palimpsests, with colours shining through the different layers, adding nuances to the compositions. Often evoking portraits, Simon’s works are titled after ordinary objects and motifs, thereby suggesting a latent figurative potential; through this action, the artist plays with the desire of the viewer to imbue abstract forms with meaning.
The work of Simon plays generously with a contemporary reading of Pop Art, implanting her canvases with disproportionate images of plates of pasta, ice cream cones, lifebuoys, or single items of clothing. More recently, her paintings have also assumed a darker tone, with enigmatic, unsettling phantasmagorias of irregular human heads and images of resistance – walls, grates, fences.
Simon has also begun creating elaborate sculptural objects and figures in fabric which, when carefully staged in the exhibition space, develop their own narrative and dialogue with the works on canvas.
For Raphaela Simon’s first exhibition in Italy – and her first ever solo exhibition in an institution – the artist will present both artworks from the last couple of years, and new pieces produced specifically in occasion of the show. These works will include both her signature paintings on canvas, and a new corpus of sculptures.