LAMB Arts is proud to present I’m Rosa, a group exhibition by Patricia Camet (b. 1967) and Mai-Britt Wolthers (b. 1962) to welcome and celebrate the arrival of the summer season. Intended to be a playful and joyful exhibition, the artists explore the feeling of serendipity, drawing connections between our inner child and its presence within our contemporary time. At this purpose, pink/rosa is elevated to a metaphorical bridge connecting the memories of our childhood to our current condition of grown up humans, inevitably arguing against the common trends of our consumerist times.
Both Camet and Wolthers with their ludic-like works tend to convey immediate feeling of serenity through their wide use of strong colours and definite shapes. Nevertheless, such playful connotations are only means to draw conclusions on the situation of our mass consumerist society far away from a recycling-oriented mind and a general sense of caring towards the earth.
The two floors of the gallery hosts ten paintings and a sculptural work by the Danish rooted artist Mai-Britt Wolthers, living in Brazil since 1986, who with her primitive brushworks and vivid colours is able to convey limpid scenarios in between abstraction and conceptualism. Wolthers develops her research towards tidy and almost flat atmospheres that seem to draw back to mythical and folkloric scenes of our childhood while putting in plan an interplay between the conscious and unconscious. The sporadic but consistent presence of pink in her paintings suggests the actual presence of hidden meanings over the apparent easiness of perception. In fact, what could be interpreted as a child-like drawing is actually a humorous account on the savings of means.
Savings of means, also known as recycling, is what best ties the artistic practice of Patricia Camet within this exhibition. The Peruvian artist develops her research on stripping objects and materials away from their original meanings in order to recreate new sculptural works within a re-contextualized notion of art. Such works are named Huacamets and the term comes from the pre-Colombian sculptures Huacos, traditionally used within funerary and sacred places (Huacas). Starting from plastic packaging like bottles of beverages or cleaning products, Camet through the making of plaster molds, casts and fires them. Later she uses varnished engobe (a pre-Colombian technique) and glazes them partially. Finally, these are fired three times between 600-1050 °C. Such procedure respects the equal one developed in pre-Colombian time, one of her main artistic references. The result of such technique is a mass production and everyday object recycled to become a unique work of art. Camet’s Huacamets are hosted within the cave that is fully painted in pink. This space represents the final connecting bridge between the practices of these two artists and will offer a calming space in which the viewer is invited to lay down and relax while contemplating Camet’s installation.
I’m Rosa takes its name from the pink colour that has been demonstrated to have calming effects on the busiest minds. The exhibition is to be viewed and approached as a moment of apparent calm. In such atmosphere the viewer can experience the oxymoron of our fast-paced life in contrast with our inner desire of calm and serenity.
Manuela Mesrie