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CARLA VIPARELLI : MIMESIS

1,270 views · Published 12 November 2018 · 5:33 · Indexed 23 September 2026

Channel: ERIC MINH SWENSON ART FILMS · 2018 · Education

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A new film by Eric Minh Swenson.

Artistry in motion
“Mimesis,” with painting and video animation by Carla Viparelli, opens in Manhattan Beach
by Bondo Wyszpolski

Simply put, most local art venues feature local artists. However, working with the Manhattan Beach Art Center, curator Homeira Goldstein has turned this idea on its head in a big way: Carla Viparelli, whose solo exhibition “Mimesis,” opens this Friday, is from Naples, Italy. Viparelli has previously shown in Little Tokyo, Culver City, and Lancaster, with one work in the Culver City gallery catching Homeira’s eye. It was an animated video, which Homeira then purchased.

“I’ve seen a lot of video animation,” Homeira says, “but this one was altogether different and innovative and new.”
Viparelli’s videos don’t feature cartoonish characters with lots of color, scene changes, and rapid movement, but have a kind of gravitas. Homeira compares them to microscopic cells, the encounter between sperm and egg is how she phrases it, because there is a gradual converging and interweaving of the visual forms.

The forms that glide and rotate towards one another and intermingle are compositionally different. One may have strong, clearly defined geometric patterns while the other may resemble a water lily. The effect is somewhat kaleidoscopic, and like a somber dance and perhaps marriage between the architectural and the organic. Two becoming one, before separating.There are four wall-sized videos in “Mimesis,” each newly created for this show.
Past glories, present timeViparelli lives in a country saturated by reminders of its artistic glory, especially during the Renaissance era, but the artist herself emerged from an altogether different discipline: She has a degree in philosophy from the university in Naples.“My work is more philosophic than artistic,” she says, noting that art is best felt or filtered through philosophy and, conversely, “that art is the best way of being a philosopher.”If we can describe Viparelli’s work as visual philosophy then this would imply that we have to focus and pay attention while immersing ourselves in her work. Each video is on a loop, and they’re about two or three minutes in length. As we watch the forms meet, integrate, and separate again, there’s plenty for us to ponder.“The show is about the invisible,” the artist says. “Invisibility doesn’t mean that something is invisible in itself, simply that our perception” doesn’t allow us to see it. What appears to our senses is just part of the larger spectrum, similar, perhaps, to our seeing the tip of an iceberg but being cognizant of the fact that so much more of it remains hidden.

And, as Homeira points out, it’s in the juxtaposition, and the converging, that the impact of the work is greatest. We are invited to contemplate it in ways that differ from painting or sculpture.
Each video also has its own soundtrack or soundscape, confined as much as possible to the vicinity of the specific work.
Viparelli says she began as a figurative painter and notes that contemporary Italian artists have to come to terms with the country’s rich heritage. Some artists may try and reject this heritage altogether, but that’s not the case with Viparelli: “I like to play with the figurative and update it, but not lose it.”


EMS Legacy Films is a continuing series of short films produced by EMS on artists and exhibitions. 
His art films can be seen at https://vimeo.com/channels/76542

Instagram : @ericminhswenson  Website : emsartscene.com

Eric Minh Swenson also covers the international art scene and his writings and photo essays can be seen at Huffington Post Arts : http://m.huffpost.com/us/author/eric-minh-swenson/

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