Highlights from the Yolk exhibition with the Taurisano Collection
Each human begins as an egg but what came first? the chicken or the egg; the collector or the collection?
The exhibition YOLK curated by Mollie Barnes founder of She Curates features 21 works from female identifying artists from the acclaimed Taurisano Collection.
The exhibition works as an open discourse about female identifying artists, by female identifying artists, discussing their place within the context of wider art history and in belonging to a traditional Italian collection. Set against the backdrop of the traditional, white-washed, male dominated, history of collecting, ‘Yolk’ contemplates a rebirth and establishment of women artists in collecting and the importance of forward thinking in modern and historical collections. The exhibition addresses the issues of the contemporary gender imbalance in the art world, alongside the collection’s development and promotion of contemporary artists.
Artists in the Taurisano Collection are not afraid of losing the aura of eternity: they talk about everyday topics, even those that are uncomfortable. Through harvesting works focussing on salient social and political issues, the collection examines contemporary society, and reflects it back at the viewer. Rebellious in nature, the engaged works include pieces from Zandile Tshabala and Zoe Blue M. Exhibiting established artists alongside emerging, ‘Yolk’ works to expand knowledge of the Taurisano Collection, as well as the profile of each artist.
The exhibition will take place online from Sunday November 7th to December 5th with a physical exhibition launching in 2022.
“I was so honoured to be approached by Sveva to put together this showcase of the collection. In a circular way (like a yolk!), Sveva purchase Amanda Ba’s piece from my May exhibition with the Daniel Raphael Gallery. To then re-exhibit the work in Yolk is such a beautiful thing. It felt like fate.” says Mollie Barnes.
Among the works selected I made a focus on five of them that particularly caught my eye. Enjoy the show.
Sol Calero
Sol Calero is an established mid-career contemporary artist, from Venezuela. I love how she creates a composition in which one can recognize some of Matisse simple lines with her very own universe taken from her memories of her home country.
Rusudan Khizanishvili
There is something enigmatic in that portrait where the face is cut and the focus is on the vest of the figure. It attracts the eye even more on the painting structure and the brushstrokes.
Zandile’s work challenges the art history canon by painting the Black female figure “I do want narratives of us being more than just servants and inferior (as it was previously depicted) to be carried forward and internalized and thus have chosen to re-represent the black woman in a more confident, sensual, beautiful manner touching a bit on the importance of being able to dream, to be and celebrate and embrace the self as is, unapologetically so” said the artist in a previous interview.
Georgina Gratrix
Georgina Gratrix’s playfully grotesque portraits and still lifes feature thickly impastoed surfaces, a bright, saturated palette, and expressive faces and figures. I love the contrast between the bright pink sofa an the tortured face of the person lying on it.
Jana Schröder
Her art-making practice seeks to question the validity of traditional painting gestures. It evoques the work of Cy Twombly and it questions the concept of what is art?
In some paintings, she uses the indelible pencil, with its absurd chemical nature (it irrevocably fades when exposed to sunlight), serves as the perfect platform for expressing gestures freely and as a finalizing act.
