Il mio Telaio, la tua Laura

Chris Rocchegiani was born in 1977 in Jesi (Ancona), where she currently lives and works. She graduated in figurative arts from the State Institute of Art in Jesi and obtained a degree in Graphic Design from the ISIA in Urbino. She is an artist, art director, graphic design teacher at the ACCA Academy, and Basic Design lecturer at the Department of Design and Architecture at the University of Camerino.

She is the Co-founder of CH RO MO alongside Roberto Montani, a research duo focusing on visual languages in design and art; and the Founder of Pensiero Manifesto, a collective of creatives including artists, graphic designers and illustrators, who use posters as a public utility tool, cultivating practices of listening and giving back to the community.

Through various pictorial techniques and executive solutions, Chris Rocchegiani’s practice reflects on the compositional aspects that arise from the overlapping of line and color. Her paintings are characterised by the coexistence of sections of diverse nature: figurative, human, and animal elements blend with informal and synthetic parts, dictated by the predominance of line and action, and free colour fields, with a more lyrical and evocative character. Thus, multiple narratives, both real and potential, corporeal and transcendental, coexist on the surface of her paintings, like suspended fragments of a poem in transformation. Rocchegiani’s language is pluralistic and intentionally nonlinear, where error, contradiction, change, and contamination are necessary attributes of a painterly experience that opens up to the possible and the manifold, aspiring to the sensory experience of the sacred.

In the field of design, her projects have been awarded at the European Design Awards, at the Aiap Women Design Awards, by ADI (entering the shortlist for the Compasso d’Oro award), and by the Cariplo Foundation for Cultural Innovation.
Recent exhibitions: Pittura italiana oggi, Triennale Milano, Milan (2023); Linea 1201, MAXXI L’Aquila, L’Aquila (2022); Jumelles culturelles, Château de Mayenne, Mayenne (2022); La ripetizione, Projecktraum 145, Berlin (2021); I know you know that you know, Galleria Yudikone, Brescia (2020); Total Recall, Galleria Bianconi, Milan (2020); Libere Tutte, Casa Testori, Novate Milanese (2019); Diagrammi, Cripta747, Turin (2019).

Sophie Westerlind (Stockholm, 1985)’s artistic research focuses on the exploration of body language and human relationships. Created from real-life posing sessions or inspired by photographs, her oil paintings reflect the sensitivity the artist dedicates to people, their ways of expressing themselves, relating to others, and inhabiting places. They range from depicting human figures caught in moments of ordinary life to suggesting stark yet dense with personal experience environments.

In particular, the genre of portraiture allows Westerlind to delve into the depths of human relationships through the rendering of details that reveal the inner lives of the subjects depicted and simultaneously hint at the intimacy the artist has established with them. These individuals are friends, family members, or acquaintances who, for various reasons, cross paths with Westerlind and become her close interlocutors in a completely spontaneous and intuitive manner. Through an empathetic language, the artist conveys the tenderness perceived in their faces, expressions, gestures, and attitudes, transforming the painting activity into an intimate reflection of shared emotions and experiences.

This sensitivity is emphasised by a strongly textural expressive style, in which the brushstrokes, intense and rich with impasto, layer and blend on the pictorial surface. The swift stroke, fluidity, and spontaneity of the mark give her paintings a sense of immediacy and vitality that recalls the dynamism of human emotions and relationships. The vibrant use of light and colour, as well as the attention to bodily expressiveness, draw from the influence of the great Renaissance masters, such as Titian and Tintoretto, from whom Westerlind has drawn inspiration since her arrival in Venice.

If, on the one hand, Westerlind’s paintings stage an intense and close confrontation with the subjects portrayed in an attempt to grasp the emotions encapsulated within their bodies, on the other, they manifest the urgent search for a “physical engagement”with painting and its matter. This profound interaction with the pictorial medium translates into dense and substantial works, in which color appears to “exceed” the surface, imparting “corporeality” to feelings and fleeting moments.

Sophie Westerlind studied in London, where she graduated from Central Saint Martins (2011) and the Royal College of Art (2013). Her strong interest in anatomy and the Venetian Renaissance led her to Venice, where she earned her degree from the Academy of Fine Arts (2018).

In 2019, she was awarded a national grant for her drawings inspired by Tintoretto by the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Stockholm. She has recently completed a residency at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris.

Recent solo and group exhibitions include: Spring Salon, Liljevalchs Konsthall, Stockholm (2024); She affects us, indeed, Swedish Institute, Rome (2023); You danced on the carpet and waited for her, Galerie Norbert Arns, Cologne (2023); Venice Time Case, Monitor Gallery, Rome (2023); Orbe, Galerie Ariane C-Y, Paris (2022); Think of Knut!, Casa Testori and Teatro deSidera, Milan (2022); Yes, I used to be a great dancer, Spazio NEUTRO, Reggio Emilia (2022); Venice Time Case, Galleria Tomaso Calabro, Milan (2021); Premio Combat, Livorno (2021); Dialogues 01, Center for Recent Drawing, London, UK (2021).