September 27 - October 20, 2019
Giulia Piera Livi– Come Sit
Painting & Installation
Frable Gallery
Opening Reception
Friday, September 27, 2019
6:00 - 9:00 pm
Free and Open to the Public
Closing Artist Talk
Sunday, October 20, 2019
2:00 pm
Free and Open to the Public
Artist Statement
I interpose objects of the everyday to distort our sense of space, explore our ability to inhabit rooms, and merge the dreamlike with the rigid. My geometric objects and paintings focus on materiality to investigate light, form, and the weirdly functional. I think of paintings as they exist in the home, decorating our lives, using us to give them purpose. And inversely, objects become paintings to question abstraction and reality. My work focuses on the acute and the polite, the domestic and the utilitarian.
My current studio practice deals with the issue desire and consumption. I work to understand how we find art objects to be aesthetically pleasing, how we choose to live among them in our homes. We live in a time when we rarely accept appliances that only serve one purpose, which prompts me to investigate how paintings can be multifunctional to highlight the absurdity of convenience. This question of domesticity comes from a curiosity of the curated home space, how the imperfections of home life can be contrasted with the polish of interior design. By paring abstraction with accessibility, I aim to critique these spaces, both the home and where we shop for the home. What is the role of the artist in a society with an aspiration to be modern?
My forms reference specific furnishings from memory, but if they were to start as tiny points in space and slowly grow into the practical objects by which we call upon them.
Pick out your painting. Where will you put it?
Brief Biography
Giulia Piera Livi is an interdisciplinary artist originally Philadelphia, now living and working in Baltimore City. She earned a B.F.A. from Penn State University and an M.F.A. from the Mount Royal School at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). Her work in painting and installation is an investigation of interior space and design, focusing on abstraction and accessibility. Her immersive rooms employ color and form to work out ideas of multifunctional art objects and curated domesticity. Livi has exhibited both nationally and internationally with recent solo shows at 13|U Art Windows (Washington, D.C.), VAE Gallery (Raleigh, NC), Arlington Arts Center (Arlington, VA), and School 33 Art Center’s Project Space (Baltimore, MD). She received an Individual Artist Grant from the Maryland State Arts Council in 2019 and the Trawick Young Artist Prize from the Bethesda Contemporary Art Awards in 2017. Livi is currently a Gallery Manager at C. Grimaldis and an Adjunct Professor at MICA.
More information: giuliapieralivi.com
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