Galleria Monteoliveto

Monteoliveto Gallery is pleased to announce the INTERNATIONAL CONTEMPORARY ART..group exhibition that will close the exhibition programme of GalleriaMonteoliveto in Berlin at Infantellina Contemporary from October18 to 31, 2012 with the aim of proposing after the solo exhibitions of Italian artists, a wide panorama of some actual international works in the various categories, from painting to photography, sculptures and video installations. 

Opening Thursday, October 18 at 6 p.m. with the artists:   

Ayla AKSOYOĞLU, Turkey, born in 1968 in Ankara, graduated from the Faculty of Art at Gazi University, she had her first solo exhibition in 2006 and then participated to many art competitions, to the Florence Biennale and to 15 solo exhibitions in Turkey and abroad. Living in Turkey, she writes for art magazines and is member of Plastic Arts Clup of Black Sea, United Painters and Sculptors Associations. In her work she uses traditional and international plastic characters, colours and deformation.

Sieglinde  BATTLEY, born in the town of Gumbinnen in East Prussia, once part of Germany (now called Gusev and belonging to Russia), the artist has studied Graphic Design at Kuntschule Westend under Carlo Ruppert, Frankfurt am Main, where she was trained as a graphic designer and has a Germany Diploma in Fine Art, at Claremont School of Art, WA. She has  lived and worked in Norway, Indonesia and Iran before settling in Australia in 1978. ”I paint what I see, hear, feel and think every day and at night. I make up stories about this concoction and put it on paper and canvas. I often depict animals that become symbols of my own fears, hopes and desires as well. Often I am surprised what looks back at me from my canvas”.

Karla BLANCHARD, Venezuelan, with a career in architecture and a strong sense of structure still pervasive in her kinetically  contemporary works with a style she calls “deconstructionist  abstract expressionism”, explores humanity’s interactions within the urban  environments breaking through the two dimensional barriers normally associated with painting. Polystyrene sheets applied to the gridded surfaces in richly textured movements engulfed in waves of ethereal colour, shattering the works’ rigid pixilation as they blend and breathe beyond the blackness. Enigmatic numbers and text emerge from the thick surfaces, hinting at the codes, demographics and categorizations so pervasive in modern life.   

Violaine BLANCHET born in France in 1980, the young artist lives and works in the region of  Gard (30) at Aigues- Vives. Graduated in ceramic decoration in St Victor les Oules in 2003, she realizes intriguing sculptures in ceramic, sometimes foolish, always very stunning on the theme of the women inspired by the everyday life. A solo exhibition in Naples (Italy) with the gallery, many participations to events and art fairs where she has received many distinctions and prizes. OKTOBERFEST is inspired by the Beer Festival in Munich! She is in white faïence enameled and decorated with liquid gold.   

Astrid CASTILLO QUESADA, Spanish origin, living in Germany, with international orientation the topic of her work is curiosity about man. Inquisitive, Curious and Inquiring man, her pictures reflect people in their current role in society, as she personally perceives it. “Many years ago the topic of homosexuality awakened a great deal of interest in me regarding the ability to change, the conflict with society, but above all the sometimes considerable, internal conflicting feelings of homosexuals. I wanted to deal with this curiosity in my current works. In English, *gay* also means "happy, jolly, fun loving". Driven by curiosity, I would like to capture these different facets in the picture!”

Nandita CHAUDHURI (India), MA Visual Art Camberwell, University of Arts, London, Research Center for Transnational Art identity and Nation (TrAIN) London; post graduate diploma of Fine Art Chelsea. Her works, mostly abstract with strong emotional elements with a transational context riche in texture, have been selected for several auctions, the Royal Academy, Museums and outdoor installations in London. “It is through archaeological incision that we can dig deeper behind plastic manacled veneers to perceive elusive and invisible entities”.

Cristina CIANCI, born in Italy, attended the Accademia di Belle Arti in Naples in 2004, with a specialization in Graphics in 2005.  She is realizing a great series of works that are part of the “Magna Mater” Project, to represent the symbolic expression of the archetype of the Mother: the form becomes the symbol and the rhythm becomes a structuring through the organization of the visual forms.  In Berlin she presents a new installation/ video performance where the sea, its waves and its sound have the major place.

Charlotte ENGELHAART (Norway), After Graphic studies in Sorumsand and Art School in Oslo, the artist education continued at the National Academy of Fine Art  in KHIIB and from 2003 she had many solo and group exhibition in different galleries in Norway. The artist presents an installation with several small pieces of paintings played with different possibilities on how to read the image.  Each painting is a part of the composition where figure, colour and the pure material of painting distorts or influences the context of the image in multiple ways.

FOCUS KOREA: Inkyo Back, Nayeon Jasmina Han, Bokyung Becky Kim, and Misoon Park are all born in South Korea in the eighties and they live in Seoul, USA and Japan. Project KOREA proposes a series of installations, digital and graphic works and colour representation paintings realized with a singular philosophy and through innovative representation techniques and use of colours in all different themes.  The colours are the main protagonist of Inkyo BACK installations: tape, tubing, yarn, clay, wire, tile and other materials create a dynamic and visually interesting space that captures the viewer in a web of colour, a controlled chaotic display of pattern, shape and colour. The graphic works of Nayeon Jasmina HAN are directly influenced by hyperrealism and performances. She represents in a very fresh and funny way some crazy moments of the everyday life, in a form that recalls magazine and advertising representation. Bokyung Becky KIM modern colour painting works - using intense colours in flatness instead of shade and black as a contrast element - follow 3 major features of Korea's traditional folk paintings: the planar configuration by diagramming, the simplified expression and the decoration. Portraits mainly consists in  the digital graphic works of Misoon PARK, where inspiration starts to wriggle from the mysterious movement and impression of human being and animals that either exist or not rather than real in appearance. Whatever the characters in the painting really are, they have new identity and persona in the frame.

José GALLEGO (Spain), born in Hellín (Albacete), graduated in Filología Románica (Murcia), licenciado in Literatura Moderna (Pau, Burdeos), is an active professor and has exhibited his photographs frequently throughout Spain and in the United States. His works have appeared in major publications such as National Geographic, El Pais, and Digital Photo. Member of Photographers Professional Europe and Award-winning Spanish photographer, the artist presents the fascinating action of man over nature creating different, borderland spaces, where neither nature nor man feel at ease. A reflection upon our own role in nature. The work vaguely recreates a surrealistic atmosphere close to abstraction, a urban scene devoid of personal connection, as vacant modern buildings. “I still consider photography as a means of showing a different reality but starting from real material …to establish a dialogue between the real and the absurd.”

Asli KUTLUAY (Turkey), Searching for the reflection of transparency games and discovered shapes on the main form, the artist tries to catch “one moment” with sketchy linear shapes following and emphasizing most exciting forms. Strong colour in opposition with the limpidity work, the character occupies all the space. “My Atlantis character is representing a woman figure with her special hand detail, depicted with lines and transparent patches with the detail of Mutant who has the abilities to change into a fish woman.”

Vito MATERA, born in Italy in Gravina  in Puglia during August 1944, a childhood in bottega, classical studies, graduated in Philosophy at Bari University with a thesis Aesthetic entitled “The question of the pictorial space”. His artistic path begins with the classic world and the series of the Deliadi, where he begins to take the distance from the traditional image of a painful South and recover its fantastic and cultural identity. In his paintings he uses all techniques from drawing to aquarelle, china, acrylic and his Tabulae Pictae have been exhibited in Barcelona, Lisbon, Paris and Salisbury, Turin, New York, London.

Fred MOU (Switzerland), architect, studied at the Institute of Architecture in Geneva and subsequently at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and at the Art Institute of Milan. Besides its core business as an architect, his travels and encounters between the Asian world and the western countries have allowed him to appreciate and understand the world and its symbols. His training as an architect reveals at the first glance in the elegance of his work and his unique way to combine nature and symbols gave birth to the "Animasymbolism". In his artworks, the artist explores the tension of the forms, the balance of lines and realizes a bridge between the aesthetic gesture and the archetypal essence he wishes to reveal.     

Umeko OKANO born in Japan, Hiroshima in rich and cultivated environment, a master in Oriental History, she discovers in 2003 the light of Malta island. Winner of many prizes among them the Gold Prize of “Onomichi Painting exhibition”, the “Fine Art Award of painting Japanese Nature”, she participates to many exhibitions: Japan, United States, Turkey, Malta, Spain. Her work: “An airplane making its way in the sky, the nature. It looks rather lonely with clouds appearing around it, which looks as if these were to catch the small thing and take it in. However it does nothing but flying leaving a trail around, aiming for its destination in the continuous unforeseen moments and a kind of an atmosphere of tension and dynamism without any holders. My imagination was fired up by the look and I was moved.

VAL, French artist grown up on the French Riviera, lives and works in Paris.  After undergraduate studies in semiotics and literary science, she obtained a master in modern literature and became a journalist. In 2007 a gallery owner noticed her work and thus began her new full-time career. Her technique is based on working with various sheets of metal. She cuts her raw aluminium sheets, building worlds where contemporary urbanity blends in with pictorial abstraction and various traditional symbols and directly covers the metal with acrylic paint, finishing it with an epoxy coating that helps saturate the colours, emphasize and enlighten everything.

Teresa YOUNG (Canada) started painting in oils at the age of eight and expanded her skills with a strict discipline of drawing. Moving from realism into abstraction and from oils to acrylics, she was able to develop techniques to create a vivid style that is detailed, visually appealing and technically disciplined.  The work Carnival presented in Berlin after a successful exhibition in Paris 2011 is a flowing painting that evokes joyous abandon and emotions. As an expression of the beauty in the world around us, it successfully captures feelings that the viewer can connect with.

SPECIAL GUEST Olga ANTONENKO – LAMOUREUX (Ukraine/France)  

Olga Antonenko, Ukraine born, Paris has seduced her. She won the contest in Chicago, where her fresco on the walls of the airport, has opened her the gates of Europe. A work always in progress, never satisfied with what has already been achieved, this is the definition of Olga Antonenko’s artistic creation. After having used only painting, she now incorporates in her paintings many different materials using bright touches to illuminate her works “When it snows, I paint the sun.When it rains, I paint the sun. When night falls, I paint the sun. I paint the sun even when it shines.I think in color.”

Jean Lamoureux, born in Paris, where he is a teacher, in his career the precedence is given to education, contact with young people and adults a taste of French he tries to pass on to others.

The words of Jean Lamoureux give to the works the dimension of poetry where the images take shape.  Between him and Olga, a covenant is sealed for the best and the worst: brush and pen complement, intertwine, sometimes inspired, exchange sensitivities to discover common and complementary flavors or to emphasize different approaches.

In Berlin is exhibited a wide and singular representation full of details of the FOUR SEASONS.