Amor Vacui – Martina Merlini’s exhibition and residency opening
On 11 January 2024 from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m., we will open the exhibition Amor Vacui by the artist Martina Merlini in the artist residency of the same name at SuperOtium.
The exhibition consists of 5 works by the artist that tell her journey through engravings, material works and prints.
The exhibition will be on display until 15 February 2024.
The exhibition will be an opportunity to get to know the artist’s work and to take part in the mapping of the places to which lived experiences, memories, emotions are linked, representing a “void” from which Martina Merlini will produce a new work guided by the artist Teresa Cervo, for the use of papier-mâché, and assisted by the Cerasa collective ceramics workshop.
Martina Merlini’s work, starting from her research on the limit and its overcoming, on randomness contained in precisely defined forms, on the rational and the irrational, in Naples will be confronted with a profound research on “void” in a city where emptiness is something far removed from everyday experience (visual and perceptive) and is often feared.
To promote the meeting between the creative community in Naples and those coming from outside, we invited a dense network of realities linked to the world of cultural art to collaborate: Altofest (an international live art festival in close contact with the inhabitants whose private spaces become the place where performances take place and develop), Attiva Cultural (which develops projects related to the dissemination and promotion of contemporary art such as the Art Days – Napoli Campania and the Magazine Ōpēra), l’Arsenale di Napoli (a cultural startup that generates a Museum of Culture and Immaterial Arts of Naples and Campania), Open House Napoli (an original format that allows citizens to discover architectures and themes of the past the present and the future of the city), Silent Art Explorer (a project for the promotion and support of contemporary art and art workers), Studio Cervo (the studio of artists Erika Nevia Cervo and Fabrizio Cicero that opens up and meets with the city through the organisation of exhibitions and projects), Underneath the Arches/AquaAugusta (a site-specific contemporary art programme in the archaeological site of the Augustan aqueduct, in the Borgo Vergini-Sanità area).
During the residency period it will also be possible to make studio visits by appointment to view his portfolio and learn more about his work and research.
BIO
Martina Merlini, born in 1986 in Bologna, is an Italian artist who lives and works in Milan.
Her work starts from the influence of 1960s and 1970s graphics, from the simple and functional forms of the logos and patterns of those years; it passes through editorial graphics and is influenced by the imprint imposed by the design of exhibition spaces, ultimately posing itself as an artistic production in constant evolution. Her works range from illustration to graphics, from street art to land art and tell of her harmonious relationship with nature. Martina explores new techniques and materials – developing and refining her technique in recent years through the use of wax and enamel on poor substrates such as wood and paper – reflecting her search for formal balance and geometric harmony, while at the same time attempting to define a rawness that recalls the typical randomness of nature, but also the invisible rules that run through it.
Natural representations and abstract images coexist in her art in a continuous search for dynamic balance, achieved when rigorous, geometric lines are juxtaposed with the flow of natural instincts and impulses. As a careful researcher of human nature, Martina plays with geometric lines, investigating the notion of limits in a subtle and refined way. Perennially poised between the rational and the irrational, the artist uses dense and symmetrical pictorial strokes by nature to pursue her research.
Le opere di Merlini sono state esposte in tutta Europa e negli Stati Uniti, in Messico, Australia e Brasile. Ha partecipato a diversi eventi e festival, tra cui Living Walls, il primo festival di street art realizzato da donne, ad Atlanta, negli Stati Uniti nel 2012; ha preso parte al prestigioso Le Mur di Parigi nel 2015; ha realizzato una residenza a Queretaro, in Messico, in collaborazione con la Galerie Libertad nel 2017 e un progetto con il Consolato italiano in Brasile e il Museu Naciolal de Belas Artes di Rio de Janeiro nel 2019.
https://martinamerlini.com/
SuperOtium is a house in the heart of Naples designed to welcome tourists, artists, travellers and creative people. A meeting place where artists’ residencies, meetings, exhibitions and accommodation coexist, to inspire artists and creative people and question travellers’ assumptions, proposing new perspectives through which to look at the city.
SuperOtium’s residency programme has featured, among others, Kensuke Koike, Pietro Gaglianò, Massimo Uberti, Hypereden, Bianca Felicori (Forgotten Architecture), Paz Ortùzar (in collaboration with the Cervantes Institute of Naples) Giovanna Silva (in collaboration with Lorenzo Xiques), Nuvola Ravera (in collaboration with Made in Cloister), Blase (in collaboration with ShowDesk), Yasser Almaamoun (in collaboration with the Goethe Institut), Khaled El Mays (in collaboration with Edit Napoli).
www.superotium.it