The Year of Magical Thinking - Viewing Room

The enigmatic characters who inhabit Cathy Josefowitz’s paintings emanate from the memories and the elusive dreams of a young woman driven by intuition and a never-ending exploration of her inner self. Untiled, 1974, depicting the delicate and evanescent portrait of a young woman was realized when Josefowitz’s was just 18 years old. The dreamlike and fluid group of figures floating in the abstract background of Untitled, 1992 ca., recalls the tones and movement of the Renaissance’s masters and bears witness to the influence of Italian art on Josefowitz's work.

Sarah Charlesworth (1947–2013) is best known as an established figure of the Pictures Generation, as well as a prominent conceptual photographer of the 1970s and 1980s. Charlesworth’s influential body of work deconstructs the conventions of photography and establishes the medium’s centrality in our perception of the world. Charlesworth stages volatile worlds, isolating objects on monochrome backgrounds to reveal the constructed nature of visual culture and question systems of image distribution.

Concentration: Silver Goblets,1992-93 by Sarah Charlesworth is part of her major body of work Natural Magic which was the first series to be shot in a studio. It required renting an array of photographic equipment and learning new technical skills, including how to perform magic tricks and stunts. Magic of all sorts fascinated Charlesworth, and the series title evokes aspects of the occult. The theme of magic connected with her consideration of what the camera could do in terms of augmenting and altering our perception of reality as well as producing magnificent and unpredictable spells.

Claude Cahun employs self-portraiture and disguise as tools of introspective expression and freedom in representing the self. In her Auto-portrait (don't kiss me I'm in training), 1927, the artist performs herself as an androgynous gymnast, neither masculine nor feminine. Exploring different identities and genders, her work bears witness to the struggle with her own self-representation as well as the social regulation of the female body and identity. Through her rejection of an overtly female identity and rather appropriating a gender ambiguous one, Cahun separated herself from the expectations of the gender norms of her time.

The historical work The Soft Sphere (Head of Plato), 1989 by James Lee Byars combines the geometric form of the sphere with the luxurious material of white marble from the Greek island of Thassos. Byars’ aesthetic research was guided by the exploration of spirituality, truth and beauty, combining influences of orientalism, minimalism and Western philosophies. Born in 1932 in Detroit, Michigan, Byars moved to Kyoto in 1958, where he became fascinated by the rituals of Shintoism and Japanese Nō Theatre, which remained two main references in his work.

Benni Bosetto’s multi-layered sculpture CocoonYXX#1, 2021, made up of a series of carved and composed drawings on paper whose shape evokes that of a body or a garment, accompanies the observer to place himself in different realities linked to time, space and the body. From practices of fabrication of the self present in ancient and contemporary rituals, to states of semi-consciousness implemented in meditation and sleep, up to the observation of matter as a witness of invisible transformations, the artist continues her exploration of the possibilities of a renewed relationship with ourselves and with reality in order to go beyond the usual methods of knowledge.

The surrealist landscapes and dreamlike figures who inhabit Amelie von Wulffen’s paintings belong to the confrontation, and sometimes the clash, between our collective subconscious and the external world. Imbued with humour and the ironic employment of kitsch that characterises Von Wulffen’s oeuvre, Untitled (Maya the Bee), 2020, is the sculpture of the iconic cartoon figure sitting in a pool of her own piss in front of a contemplative and abstract painting. The installation tackles the relationship between humans and nature, which continues to be permeated by a dreamy and romantic atmosphere, even in the face of environmental collapse.

For enquiries please contact cora@campolipresti.com