Like a ballet The Dream Follows the Mouth brings together works by Louise Giovanelli, Leonor Serrano Rivas and Sofia Silva that repurpose classical aesthetic forms and poises.

 

Entrée

 

A tryptic of blown glass sculptures by Leonor Serrano Rivas are suspended fluctuate in the space. These enhanced bodies of glass with their metal bones are static but their dynamic shadows dance in the space through a programmed lighting sequence. Light brings life, and animates the bodies of the mute dancers, inhaling and swelling their bellies to define the rhythm of silence.

 

Adagio

 

Louise Giovanelli’s pair of paintings follow on to the scene – ambiguous images that recall renaissance sculpture or Oriental Buddhas. The artist observes and collects, appropriates and transforms. Light has its presence in these works too: the colour and its opacity give an ethereal atmosphere to the paintings, varying repetitions like a fading memory. Giovanelli leaves a track behind: painted shards reveal to us that what we are viewing has already been looked at, and filtered for us.

 

Variations

 

Sofia Silva’s turn now. The lines populating the surface reveal figurative subjects. The scene is still, but the recurrent motif of the stairs and the use of vertical lines give a sense of direction, a movement. There is a another mute character in the painting. With its eyes closed he listens, and dreams…

 

Coda

Louise Giovanelli
Billyo and Billyo II
2018
oil on canvas
55 x 40 cm

Louise Giovanelli
Billyo
2018
oil on linen
55 x 40 cm

Louise Giovanelli
Billyo II
2018
oil on linen
55 x 40 cm

Leonor Serrano Rivas
The Dream of the Mouth (10)
2018
metal and blown glass
115 x 45 x 260 cm

Leonor Serrano Rivas
The Dream of the Mouth (8) & (9)
2018
metal and blown glass
115 x 45 x 260 cm

Leonor Serrano Rivas
The Dream of the Mouth (8) & (9)
2018
metal and blown glass
115 x 45 x 260 cm

Sofia Silva
Nontiscordardimé (Forget-me-not)
2018
ink, graphite and spray paint on paper, aluminium frame
50 x 65 cm

Sofia Silva
Sweet Return
2018
ink, graphite and spray paint on paper, aluminium frame
65 x 50 cm