- Bea Bonafini
Full Moon (Empty Stomach)
Renata Fabbri arte contemporanea is pleased to inaugurate the new season with Full Moon (Empty Stomach): Bea Bonafini’s (Bonn, 1990) second solo exhibition at the gallery. On show are a series of new works, characterised by heterogeneous techniques and languages: including inlaid tapestries, paintings engraved on cork and pastel drawings.
Two years after her last exhibition at Renata Fabbri, the artist develops a labyrinthine landscape in which both human and animal beings are interwoven, evolving into hybrid and amorphous representations. As the title suggests, the exhibition revolves around the coexistence of two diverging existential states, personified by a full moon and an empty stomach, allegories through which the artist gives life to oneiric and abyssal imagery. During a full moon, the attractive force of celestial bodies choreographs the tides of the seas and the oceans, whose depths have fed human imagination with occult and often hostile fantasies since the beginning of time.
Taking inspiration from surreal narrations of ancient oriental mythologies and from the arcane scenes of prehistorical cave paintings, Bea Bonafini invades the gallery spaces bringing spectral and haunting figures back to life: the remains of mysterious creatures swimming in the recesses of our subconscious. Skeletons of colossal whales carry, inside their empty stomachs, a floating assemblage of human bodies, bones and other detritus. Surrounded by a sea of stars, anthropomorphic scorpions suffocate each other in an infinite cycle of death and rebirth, and fleshless fish chase each other in an endless spiral. Both exhilarating and perturbing, Bea Bonafini’s cosmos displays its erotic and visceral nature, overwhelming the spectator in a voracious vortex of ever-changing images and sensations.
Full Moon (Empty Stomach) invites viewers to dissolve their conception of physical and rational boundaries in order to feed the primordial instinct of losing and finding oneself within an interior journey lingering between reality and fantasy, fragments and empty spaces waiting to be filled. Bea Bonafini invites us to enter tactile and sensual worlds, seductive and wild, questioning the intimacy of a work of art and our physical and psychological relationship with it.
Renata Fabbri arte contemporanea is pleased to inaugurate the new season with Full Moon (Empty Stomach): Bea Bonafini’s (Bonn, 1990) second solo exhibition at the gallery. On show are a series of new works, characterised by heterogeneous techniques and languages: including inlaid tapestries, paintings engraved on cork and pastel drawings.
Two years after her last exhibition at Renata Fabbri, the artist develops a labyrinthine landscape in which both human and animal beings are interwoven, evolving into hybrid and amorphous representations. As the title suggests, the exhibition revolves around the coexistence of two diverging existential states, personified by a full moon and an empty stomach, allegories through which the artist gives life to oneiric and abyssal imagery. During a full moon, the attractive force of celestial bodies choreographs the tides of the seas and the oceans, whose depths have fed human imagination with occult and often hostile fantasies since the beginning of time.
Taking inspiration from surreal narrations of ancient oriental mythologies and from the arcane scenes of prehistorical cave paintings, Bea Bonafini invades the gallery spaces bringing spectral and haunting figures back to life: the remains of mysterious creatures swimming in the recesses of our subconscious. Skeletons of colossal whales carry, inside their empty stomachs, a floating assemblage of human bodies, bones and other detritus. Surrounded by a sea of stars, anthropomorphic scorpions suffocate each other in an infinite cycle of death and rebirth, and fleshless fish chase each other in an endless spiral. Both exhilarating and perturbing, Bea Bonafini’s cosmos displays its erotic and visceral nature, overwhelming the spectator in a voracious vortex of ever-changing images and sensations.
Full Moon (Empty Stomach) invites viewers to dissolve their conception of physical and rational boundaries in order to feed the primordial instinct of losing and finding oneself within an interior journey lingering between reality and fantasy, fragments and empty spaces waiting to be filled. Bea Bonafini invites us to enter tactile and sensual worlds, seductive and wild, questioning the intimacy of a work of art and our physical and psychological relationship with it.
Bea Bonafini, Everything is Alive, 2021Pastel on Sennelier card, 65x55 cm. Ph: Alberto Fanelli.
Bea Bonafini, I Carry You Inside Me, 2021Pastel on mixed carpet inlay, 200x400 cm. Ph: Alberto Fanelli.
Bea Bonafini, Eclipsed, 2021Gouache and Caran d’Ache on engraved cork, 60 cm (Ø). Ph: Alberto Fanelli.
Bea Bonafini, Stripped to the Core, 2021Gouache and Caran d’Ache on engraved cork, 50 cm (Ø). Ph: Alberto Fanelli.
Bea Bonafini, My soul losing itself in other souls, 2020Pastel on mixed carpet inlay, 200x125 cm. Ph: Alberto Fanelli.
Bea Bonafini, Tumble-Dry, 2021Pastel on Sennelier card, 66x55 cm. Ph: Alberto Fanelli.
Bea Bonafini, Prey, Pray, 2021Pastel on Sennelier card, 66x55 cm. Ph: Alberto Fanelli.
Bea Bonafini, See Through, 2021Pastel on Sennelier card, 66x55 cm. Ph: Alberto Fanelli.
Bea Bonafini, Air Unrevelling, 2021Pastel on Sennelier card, 66x55 cm. Ph: Alberto Fanelli.
Bea Bonafini (Bonn, 1990) lives and works between London and Rome. She received a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 2014, and a MA in Painting form the Royal College of Art, London, in 2016. She works across painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, tapestry and textiles, expanding their corresponding formal interrelationships. Bonafini’s interdisciplinary practice draws from oneiric visions, overlapping personal and ancient mythologies. Her tactile, intimate worlds center around sensuality, vulnerability and fantasy, forming swirling scenarios that are fragmented and multi-layered. Figures are evanescent and transcendental, referencing spiritual imagery where fluid bodies collide, disperse, swim, fly and fall, openings to encounters between the earthly and the otherworldly. Holistic perspectives are developed in close dialogue with architecture, where space is approached as an extension to the work to envelop the viewer. Bonafini’s solo exhibitions include Nosbaum Reding, Luxembourg (2022); Bosse & Baum, London (2022 and 2019); Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Rome (2022); Setareh Gallery, Berlin (2022); LAAA (Laboratorio de Arte, Arquitectura y Arqueología), Mexico City (2022); Renata Fabbri, Milan (2021 and 2018); Eduardo Secci, Florence (2021); Operativa, Rome (2020); Chloe Salgado, Paris (2019); Lychee One Gallery, London (2018); Zabludowicz Collection, London (2017); and Fieldworkds Gallery, London (2017). She has participated in group exhibitions at JARILAGER Gallery, Cologne (2022); Cob Gallery, London (2021); Larsen Warner, Stockholm (2020); Rolando Anselmi, Berlin (2019); Renata Fabbri, Milan (2018), amongst others. Residencies include: Palazzo Monti, Brescia (2021); Rosa Lee Travel Grant, British School at Rome (2020); Abbey Scholarship, British School at Rome (2019–20); La Berlugane-Maleki Residency and Commission Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France (2019); Platform Southwark Studio Residency, London (2018), Fibra Residency, Colombia (2018); Fieldworks Studio Residency, London (2017); Villa Lena, Toiano, Italy (2016); and The Beekeepers Residency, Castro Marim, Portugal (2015).
Bea Bonafini (Bonn, 1990) lives and works between London and Rome. She received a BA in Fine Art from the Slade School of Fine Art, London, in 2014, and a MA in Painting form the Royal College of Art, London, in 2016. She works across painting, drawing, sculpture, ceramics, tapestry and textiles, expanding their corresponding formal interrelationships. Bonafini’s interdisciplinary practice draws from oneiric visions, overlapping personal and ancient mythologies. Her tactile, intimate worlds center around sensuality, vulnerability and fantasy, forming swirling scenarios that are fragmented and multi-layered. Figures are evanescent and transcendental, referencing spiritual imagery where fluid bodies collide, disperse, swim, fly and fall, openings to encounters between the earthly and the otherworldly. Holistic perspectives are developed in close dialogue with architecture, where space is approached as an extension to the work to envelop the viewer. Bonafini’s solo exhibitions include Nosbaum Reding, Luxembourg (2022); Bosse & Baum, London (2022 and 2019); Museo di Roma in Trastevere, Rome (2022); Setareh Gallery, Berlin (2022); LAAA (Laboratorio de Arte, Arquitectura y Arqueología), Mexico City (2022); Renata Fabbri, Milan (2021 and 2018); Eduardo Secci, Florence (2021); Operativa, Rome (2020); Chloe Salgado, Paris (2019); Lychee One Gallery, London (2018); Zabludowicz Collection, London (2017); and Fieldworkds Gallery, London (2017). She has participated in group exhibitions at JARILAGER Gallery, Cologne (2022); Cob Gallery, London (2021); Larsen Warner, Stockholm (2020); Rolando Anselmi, Berlin (2019); Renata Fabbri, Milan (2018), amongst others. Residencies include: Palazzo Monti, Brescia (2021); Rosa Lee Travel Grant, British School at Rome (2020); Abbey Scholarship, British School at Rome (2019–20); La Berlugane-Maleki Residency and Commission Beaulieu-sur-Mer, France (2019); Platform Southwark Studio Residency, London (2018), Fibra Residency, Colombia (2018); Fieldworks Studio Residency, London (2017); Villa Lena, Toiano, Italy (2016); and The Beekeepers Residency, Castro Marim, Portugal (2015).
- Bea Bonafini
- Bea Bonafini
ALA Art Prize 23 goes to Bea Bonafini with the project “Acque Amare”
- Bea Bonafini,
- Andrea Martinucci,
- Serena Vestrucci
Oct 14 – 16, 2022
Main Section
Pav. 12 – Booth H7
- Bea Bonafini
Feb 1-4, 2019
Main Section
Pav. 25 – Booth A57
Renata Fabbri is delighted to announce that the artist has been chosen to create a project for the Croatian pavilion at the Sixtieth Venice Biennale, to take place April 20 to November 24, 2024.
