Project Room #4 | Anna-Bella Papp. A better view

From March 30 to May 19, 2017, the Foundation hosts the exhibition of Anna-Bella Papp (1988), a Romanian-born artist living and working in Antwerp, whose raw clay works freely move between abstraction and figuration. This event is one of the official appointments of “Art Week,” the program promoted by the Municipality of Milan on the occasion of Miart.

The exhibition — the first of the three Project Room 2017, with the scientific project curated by Simone Menegoi — presents a group of works, all previously unseen in Italy, distinguished by their strongly figurative character: these are reliefs depicting faces and details of construction workers’ bodies and their tools, almost fragments of a contemporary celebratory frieze of labor, which raise questions about working conditions in our neo-liberal economies, the identity of those who perform the work, and their visibility in the social scene. Alongside these works, which feature a particular nuance of realism, others with a more abstract character will be exhibited, where references to architecture can still be perceived.

The coordinates of Anna-Bella Papp — Menegoi states — can be summed up in a few words: a modest material — raw clay, more commonly associated with hobbies than contemporary art — and a format that is almost always the same — square or rectangular tiles just a few centimeters thick, mostly displayed horizontally on tables. The range of variations that Papp manages to produce within such narrow limits is surprising: on one hand, she creates compositions whose simplicity recalls the abstract sculpture of the 1930s or minimalist sculpture; on the other hand, there are bas-reliefs portraying faces and human figures with detailed precision. Between these two extremes, Papp has created a body of work that subtly explores the boundary between abstraction and figuration, image and material, with iconographic and compositional references drawn from both the fine arts and applied arts, archaeology, and architecture.

With the Project Room initiative, the Foundation offers its spaces and expertise in the conception and realization of artistic projects to young artists under 40, also promoting a series of educational activities organized by the Educational Department to guide even the youngest in discovering contemporary art.