Burn Breathe
MARINA BERIO
LIDIA SANVITO

The Otto Zoo gallery presents Burn Breathe, an exhibition with the drawings of Marina Berio and the sculpture of Lidia Sanvito.

Marina Berio (Boston, 1966), a photographer by education and by instinct, is showing her drawings for the first time in Italy. They are made in charcoal on paper as reproductions of negatives of her photographs; she captures quick snapshots which reflect visual impulses and interior images. They represent indistinct nature: woods, bushes, glades and hillsides as well as highways, tunnels, guardrails, and common objects. Transposing them onto paper, these anonymous elements become abstract, and they acquire a deeper symbolic meaning – like the lamp images taken in her friends’ artist studios: the Burn Breathe series. With these works, Berio celebrates the time spent in these spaces: “the darker sides of creative practice” such as “isolation, fears, ambivalences”.

Lidia Sanvito (Napoli, 1970) is working on an idea of sculpture always conceived in relationship with the space in which they exist. She does this from an architectural and environmental perspective, which takes into account space, shape, and relationship at the same time. Her work reflects the idea that perception is led by memory. An uncontrollable store of items in memory shape her intuition and creativity. This is seen in her sculpture produced out of foam or paper. These are small cubes that seem to converse with the emptiness created or that separate two spaces.

Fragile lines, invisible angles, odd directional arrows, all shape the space. Her compact masses and closed-off corners demonstrate a spirited rationality focused on the production of idealized forms, which may at first seem cold and raw but which become tender, vibrant and ironic.

There is a curious net of subtle relationships and hidden strains between the works of Berio and Sanvito, although the two artists differ greatly from one another.

In fact they both share a formal rigor and an insane passion for a burnt matter, such as charcoal and foam, which produces a dense sign.

Charcoal, foam, repetition, and planning impose a methodological grid for both artists. It is as if they can’t get rid of it; but at the same time they can’t artistically breathe without it. And only through this oppressive grid can they authentically express themselves.