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LUIGIA MARTELLONI : THE JOURNEY BACK TO EARTH

204 views · Published 29 August 2016 · 6:29 · Indexed 20 October 2026

Channel: ERIC MINH SWENSON ART FILMS · 2016 · Education

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Film by Eric Minh Swenson.

Year 1986. Accompanied by the rhythmic revolution of the wheels carrying her through the expansive territory, Luigia Martelloni, a young accomplished Italian artist, embarked on her beginnings in North America. Bringing her longstanding academic inquiry into the Modernist Primitivism, along with its relationship to Jungian symbolism of the collective unconscious, the journey’s focus came to naturally rest on indigenous Native American folklore that framed understanding of the land’s natural energy pathways. The exploration of esoteric, symbolic codices and the language of numbers implored by the native traditions, in turn, began to reveal an intimate vision of Earth to the journeying artist, inspiring a life-long relationship with the soul of the land. 

The Journey Back to Earth, a Projects Room installation, will feature a collection of works by Luigia Martelloni that reflects her  relationship with the subject. The presentation will further examine techniques and themes in the aesthetic of assemblage developed by the artist throughout her career and into the present moment. As she molds concepts into physicality, Martelloni begins formulating each work by bringing objects in conversation with materials, symbolism and images. In utilizing salvaged and recycled objects, the act of collecting and juxtaposing becomes an inextricable part of the artistic process and of the resulting work. Informed by the Arte Povera movement of the Italian avant-garde, her artistic lexicon purposefully discounts the product-induced comatose of the contemporary mass culture in favor of the found and the organic.

Enlisting material as her narrator, Martelloni captures the ephemeral and affixes the transient into enduring works that transcend artistic subjectivity and find new meaning within a spectator, while her oeuvre becomes increasingly concerned with the space-object relationship, and the richness of perceptual experience.

Luigia Martelloni was born in Rome, Italy. 
She received an MFA from the prestigious Academia di Belle Arti di Roma, where she developed her unique visual aesthetic, which rooted in the modern avant-garde, is largely ascribed by detachment from convention. Recognized for her frame of concept and multidimensional expression, Martelloni’s work has been exhibited across the United States and Europe. One person exhibitions of her work have been presented by Museo Laboratorio di Arte Contemporanea, University of Rome La Sapienza and Spazio Italia Gallery; in group presentations by Santa Monica Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA, Instituto Italiano di Cultura, Los Angeles, CA, XII Quadriennale Nazionale d'Arte di Roma; featured in the Biennale d’Arte Contemporanea, Italy, (2003), and at the “Italiaan Pavilion of the World” during the 54th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, Venice, Italy (2011).

For more info on Eric Minh Swenson visit his website at thuvanarts.com. His art films can be seen at thuvanarts.com/take1

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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