New exhibition: Ida Barbarigo, "Cafés"
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Axel Vervoordt Gallery Hong Kong is pleased to announce the opening of “Cafés” by Ida Barbarigo. The exhibition marks the first presentation in Hong Kong since the artist’s passing in 2018 at ninety-seven years old. The exhibition, made in collaboration with the Archivio Barbarigo-Cadorin-Music and with the artist’s Estate, includes twenty-two works from the late 1960s and 1970s that were kept in the artist’s Venetian home for nearly fifty years, have been recently restored, and are revealed to the public for the first time.
The subject of chairs is a prominent feature. Omnipresent in her oeuvre, it remained her leitmotif and became a personal script, a form of handwriting. As in all her series, she worked obsessively for months, sometimes several years. Barbarigo's reproductions of chairs capture the energy of the unseen. In seemingly conscious and unconscious ways, the chairs serve as a primary motive to access deep emotions, only to transform, and evolve into something else entirely. She sensed the atmosphere and vibrancy of life on city squares and aimed to express this materially. Her expressive work gives body to the energy surrounding the chairs at the cafés on the public squares in Venice or Paris, where she loved to sit for hours observing people.
For more information, visit www.axel-vervoordt.com/gallery/exhibitions/ida-barbarigo-cafes
