MAGICAL MYSTERY WOOD

Nicoz Balboa solo artshow

a cura di Roberta Fiorito

11th december 2010 / 11th january 2011
vernissage: 11 december 2010

La galleria d’arte Fabrica Fluxus sempre a caccia di “Nuove Visioni”, di originali e stimolanti percorsi artistici, è lieta di ospitare l’esposizione personale di Nicoletta Zanchi, in arte Nicoz Balboa, talentuosa artista italiana trasferitasi in Francia da quasi dieci anni. Alle spalle esposizioni in importanti gallerie di Milano, Berlino, New York, Parigi, Los Angeles e Roma oltre che numerose pubblicazioni su magazines nazionali ed internazionali tra i quali: KULT magazine, Juxtapox, XL di Repubblica. Chiudete gli occhi e lasciatevi trasportare nel misterioso mondo di Nicoz. Come succede quando si ammira il paesaggio sfuggente da un finestrino di un treno in corsa, l’artista cerca di congelare in un istante effimeri scorci di una realtà parallela desiderata, di un sogno pronto a perdersi nell’oblio. Scogliere appuntite a strapiombo sul mare, ricorrenti nel suo lavoro, le carezze del vento e l’ebbrezza di orizzonti lontani diventano per l’artista nuovi punti di riferimento, così come gli uomini-animali, presenze tanto gentili quanto mute. Con grazia e delicatezza, nonché una tecnica meticolosa, le  pirografie di Nicoz ci accompagnano nella sua personalissima cosmogonia, in cui la Natura e  il mondo animale tornano ad avere un potere ancestrale, salvifico e rigenerante, indicano la strada, sono fonte di saggezza e conoscenza per le protagoniste indiscusse delle sue opere: donne senza età, dai fluenti capelli al vento, dolci, aggraziate nei loro abitini a palloncino retrò, allo stesso tempo innocenti ma dominatrici, così  ammiccanti e fasciate nelle loro maschere sado-maso, pronte ad amare ad uccidere e a morire.
Si ringrazia Luisa Catucci e Cell 63 Art Gallery per la preziosa collaborazione.

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In Nicoz Balboa’s Illustrations there are living girlies with red airs, vintage-style boots and balloon-sleeved dresses and skirts and SM leather masks. This Girlies are mysterious, silent and quite often good friends with anthropomorphic animals, also very silent. Nicoz likes to create a world which doesn’t exist, but in which she would like to live in…. and also many of us. She imagines herself travelling on the back of a magic three-eyed white bear or with a deer of the Enchanted Forest, she sees these Girlies, dressed like a bunch of SadoMaso Alices in Wonderland going to the King’s ball.

Luisa Catucci of Cell63 (www.cell63.com)

“For years I’ve tried to write long stories that had a beginning, middle, and end. From comics to illustrations, I felt incredibly frustrated because the only thing I could relay was my own life. So I started to close my eyes, listen to myself, and look… and I realized that I wasn’t interested in relaying stories.

I don’t want to follow a train of thought (at least not intentionally). My paintings are bursts, brief glimpses like when you look at a landscape from the window of a moving train, instants frozen in time, of a dream we will never dream again. They are fleeting glances at a parallel reality where animals know all. Nature lives and protects and the little girls can decide to love, kill, or die.

 

At the moment I’m not interested in relaying a sequential story, what I want to do is pin down the memory of these places, these animals, these little girls. Because images go by too fast and I don’t want to forget them.

This strange land, inhabited by semi-ordinary creatures and little girls who are too elegant for our times, is the place where I’d like to wake up every morning and it’s the first place I see at night upon closing my eyes. The peaked cliffs by the sea fill my heart, that’s why they’re so recurrent in my paintings. For such a long time I had chosen the road of self-destruction (physically and pictorially) and now I want to put my faith in nature and its regenerative powers. The caress of the wind and the exhilaration of a distant horizon have become the new points of reference in my paintings. As well as the animals, these kind and mute presences.

In my paintings, nature and animals are solid and present and they will always remain even when the little girls have become women, then elderly ladies, and finally ashes. They will always remain even when that land has been deserted.”

Nicoz Balboa