Gallery Hopping in Milan: Inked coochie cushions, home is where the art is, and painted boho fabrics
Most galleries being closed on my monday trip didn't stop me, so let me take you along for a tour through some recent Milan art shows.
Sang A Han: BLACK FLAME
Sang (Millenial, South Korean) sews fabric into puffy cotton-stuffed cushions. Their forms shift from symmetry into irregular shapes, some abstract, some referencing animals, humans, and plants.
Sang paints these pieces with Meok, which is an ancient Eastern Asian ink wash painting technique. The black ink is sprinkled and softly dispersed with a brush, calligraphically following the outlines of hazy forms.
Female figures merge with orchids, lillies, and flamingo flowers. Their bodies dangle like charms in a windchime, the plants replacing their heads as in Void Pagoda 18 (2024). In Black Summer 2 (2024), one bare-breasted figure is kneeling surrounded by large lillies. Oddly, this paradise set up reminds me of the exoticised Tahitian women in the paintings of Paul Gaugin (1848-1903, French).
The spread legs in Black figure 3 (2024) reveal more plants representative of their vajayjays … which I have mixed feelings on. It’s a move we’ve seen often. From Giorgia O’Keeffe’s (1887-1986, American) painted floral close-ups that plenty interpreted as genitals to smut book covers featuring flowers as erotic symbols. What is original about this analogy? And beyond originality: Is it empowering?
Not all pieces keep a timeless mythical aesthetic. Sang gets a bit tumblry with it in a couple works. Fragment 4 (2024) is a piece of four hands pointing towards a black star or spark. One pair seems to hold knitting needles and two hands in between are clasped together in the center (just like the praying hands emoji). With those black nails, the aesthetic is very much 2014 grunge.
Galleria Fumagalli, Via Bonaventura Cavalieri 6, 20121 Milan, through September 13, 2024
Where Thou Art - That - Is Home
Osart Gallery is on the outlook for emerging artists from Africa. Five positions were showcased in the most recent show focussing on feeling and being at home.
Ikeorah Chisom Chi-FADA (Gen Z, Nigerian) exposes an intimate moment in Last Night I Dreamt We Were Going Back to Tuesday (2024). Two people embrace, I take on the POV of the one caressing the woman’s hair as she lies on the other person’s lap. It feels as if I’m looking down on her, gently asking about her dream that she just shared. Ikeorah adds a small flame to his subjects. A spark, an energy radiating from the person.
Franklyn Dzingai (Millenial, Zimbabwean) paints collaged portraits set against bright patterns. The faces are taken from photographs that he attaches to the painted bodies, surrounding them with personalized snippets. I’m convinced that the face of the man in Monet Studio (2023) is snatched from an Idris Elba snapshot, change my mind.
Feni Chulumanco (Millenial, South African) puts people in a box. Literally. His subjects are not only enclosed by the canvas but in translucent containers aswell. The separation from the interior spaces is subtle, apparent only through the yellow contours of the edges.
After Church (2023) is a triptych, matching the title well. One man each occupies a wing of the altarpiece. Although in Feni’s signature boxes, they are facing each other as if engaged in a conversation. The three women in the centeral piece are lively discussing among themselves, their gazes locked in a triangle that doesn’t allow intruders. Altough the five people share the same room, they are sealed off in their own worlds. Feni used real carpet for the interior floor and fabric for the man’s jacket seam on the left, bringing this altarpiece back into the physical space of the gallery.
Sethembile Msezane (Millenial, South African) uses antique mirrors for her photographic prints. She embraces their desilvering decay, inserting her photographs right into the opaque void like a vision or mirage. In her piece Sokulinda UzuBuye (2018), two women draped in fur, one of them wearing a beaded mask, gaze out in the distance, a cityscape revealing itself on the horizon. The work is part of a series in which Sethembile depicts doppelgängers which, in combination with the mirror, seem to reveal a deeper psychoanalytical level.
Katlego Tlabela (Millenial South African) paints 3D interiors. C.R.E.A.M II (2022) features a light high-ceiling space with a person highlighting its large scale. Two artworks hang in this room, sticking out literally as they are attached on foamboard. One of them is his own litograph Untitled (Fist) (2016). A red book lies on the sofa. It’s a copy of Listening to Distant Thunder (2011), a book on the art of Peter Clarke (1929–2014, South African), who was an important representative of South African art. The details sticking out have something of a 3D postcard to them, playfully leading the eye to what’s important.
Osart Gallery, Corso Plebisciti 12, 20129 Milan. April 2 through June 1, 2024
Caterina Sammartino: The Sun At Its Zenith
I was lucky to see Caterina’s (Gen Z, Italian) show eventhogh it technically closed a while ago. The exhibition focuses on her textile pieces, working with such fabrics as cotton, linen, and hemp while adding natural colors.
Her work 96AIV (2024) doesn’t feel like a painting. It much rather looks like linen table cloths left in the garden after a summer night dinner with friends. Rosy petals, earthy pollen, and golden dust settle in its rough sruface. Her larger installation with fabric casually slipping down from a wooden drying rack is just so cottage core.
The way the oily paint in her work Di Marzo (2023) stains the hemp reminds me of Helen Frankenthaler‘s (1928-2011, American) soak stain works while the outbursts of gold are almost imitating noble brocade. They are just about to turn into the curtains or wallpapers of a Baroque Italian palazzo.
Era Gallery, Via Gioacchino Rossini 3, 20122 Milan, April 15 through May 18, 2024
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I hope you enjoyed this tour through Milan. If you want to know more on Milan shows, check out my last review on Harm Gerdes’ (Millenial, German) show. In any case, feel free to leave a like or a comment and share with whoever you think might enjoy this review aswell. Thank you!
See you soon!!!
Jennifer
The Gen Z Art Critic