CONTRASTS & CONFLICTS curated by Veronica Regini is an exhibition held at East Gallery in Brick Lane, East London, from September 8 to 18.

The show brings together the work of four artists for whom contrast and conflict represent a key element within their artistic research. Each artist investigates the contrast from a different perspective: the formal and material aspect, the verbal and non-verbal communication in love relationships, the inner struggle to discover ourselves and accept our essence, and the tantalizing relationship between artist and spectator.

During the opening evening there will be a series of live performances by the Italian artist Massimiliano Mirabella.

OPENING:
September 8,  2011 – 6pm – 9pm,
East Gallery
214 Brick Lane,
London, E1 6SA

Continuing daily until Sunday 18 September: 11am – 7pm (Thursday until 9pm)°°°°°°°°°°°
STEFANIA BOIANO explores the contrast between the feminine inner strength of each woman and their fears to pursue their aspiration to become a complete human being in their full femininity. Her paintings, which not by chance are black and white, reveal the struggle of the artist to discover herself and accept her essence. Each painting is one step in the battle the artist has started with herself, the battle to acknowledge her talent, to engage with her female identity and to be fearless of being. The struggle is perceivable, the female figure is constricted by veils (metaphorically we could call them doubts, fears, or maybe comfortable lies), we cannot see her, is she tying or un-tying herself? Are we the person we want to be or the one we feel we ought to be? How free are we to desire to really be ourselves?
The artist fully embraces the challenge and abandons herself to the un-known, suspended between the final defeat or the long-awaited achievement of inner peace. Stefania for this series of paintings meaningfully has chosen to use only one colour, a white pastel. Against the ‘black-unknown’ of her emotions (represented by the black canvases) she is tracing lines of light which will take her to the final steps of her discovery. The pastel is intensively used and manipulated, the more she explores her feelings the more her fingers smooth and fade the intensity of each stroke of white.
www.stefaniaboiano.net

MASSIMILIANO MIRABELLA seems to be looking at us from the other side of the canvases.
We cannot be sure if the artist is placing us, the spectators, under the spotlight asking us to be art or if he is just provoking us to engage into an artistic dialogue.
The red stroke, in this new series of ‘paintings’, is a synthesis of Massimiliano’s long artistic research. It represents the red lava of the Vesuvius volcano which Massimiliano lives close to, the magma that destroys but also brings new life, the blood, ours or the artist’s, the wound, symbol of passion, suffering, obsession…
But these red strokes are more. Massimiliano has always been interested in communication and its visualization, especially when the communication breaks down because the other party is not listening, is not looking or is unwilling to understand.
So the artist catches our attention with a gesture – think about the Italian gesticulation – and fixes this cry for attention with something tangible, visible: the red stroke.
The artist is eager for us to engage with all the different meanings of his red gesture, in one picture he even covers his face with the red mark to allow us to be unchallenged by his sight.
Nothing is more important to this artist than communication and dialogue as they are life, hope and happiness. But here is the contrast and conflict that is tantalizing the artist; he knows that we can decide not to look. As in his previous painting we, the spectators, can be faceless. We can decide to interrupt the communication and put the artist into a cage of silence. Or is he putting us in a cage judging our silence?
www.miramediastudio.com

RAE OLD-HALL’s work is concerned with directional change. As the artist explores the move
from city professional to artist. Rae uses square board/canvas deliberately to represent the city. The use of shapes, textures and colour provide the language within the compositions to express the theme of conflicts and contrasts.
The overplay of square within square is both used to talk to the idea of image and identity but also to challenge the idea of conformity versus non conformity by the use of pattern and colour change. Objects in nature are used as metaphors for self reinvention that look to challenge the notion of image and identity within the compositions as fixed. These concepts are transitory, ever changing like the wind. Pictures and natural objects are used to renegotiate personal identity from collective identity.
www.raecreate.com

With no fears GALI SZENKIER analyzes all the creases of a love relationship, with lucid courage she unveils and portrays the complexity of the lovers’ verbal and non-verbal communication.
Playing with words that sometimes suggest that the artist distracts the spectator from the real situation in a piece by making herself the protagonist of the story – the result of the painting is a consequence of her mood, as a main point or distracting point, and not the conflict in the piece itself – this distraction is the only way our mind can bare the contrasting feelings of our realities, the only force that keeps us sane. Without distracting words the lover’s heart will be torn apart, there will be no protection from the truth that our love walks hand in hand with betrayal, incomprehension, hate, disgust, submission… and sometimes there is no escape.
For her, conflict is represented by the love-hate state affecting a person’s mind and action. The struggle which grows out of two opposing forces, in this case, man versus woman.
The artist has a great ability of mixing the family cosiness represented by bright happy colours in a mixed media technique with the metaphoric representation of the unspoken world of our deepest feelings.
She uses elements of ethnic art inspired by cultures from around the world in contrast with deliberate brush marks so as to create visual interest, sexual tension and drama; she also sometimes introduces feminist symbolism representing the female point of view within a relationship.
www.galiszenkier.com