miart

Sophie Ko (Tbilisi, 1981) lives and works in Milan. At the core of her artistic practice lies the concept of time, which is explored in its intense symbolic interaction with the materials she employs – mostly ashes of burnt images and pure pigments – and the images created. The change and instability of materials in relation to the flow of time are some of the constants of her artistic research. The Temporal Geographies, for example, provide an exemplification of a series of works eternally suspended between the act of creation and that of destruction, where the image is constantly subjected to a continuous process of modification through the slow and relentless collapse of the material of which it is made. Conceived through a conceptual and formal negotiation between sculpture and painting, these works stage “a bond made of weight, pressure, gravity, and the destruction of time on images, but also of formation, depth, return, and rebirth with respect to the passage of time.” Meaningful  metaphors of the caducity and mutability of existence, her works recall the trajectory of life that we trace, parallel to a slow but persistent collapsing movement.

Recent solo shows include: Postmasters Rome, with Marta Kucsora (2023); Museo Marino Marini, Florence (2022); EAST Galerie, Strasbourg (2022); Galleria de’ Foscherari, Bologna (2016 and 2021–22); BUILDINGBOX, Milan (2021); BUILDING Gallery, Milan (2020); Ca’Pesaro – International Gallery of Modern Art, Venice (2019); Renata Fabbri, Milan (2015 and 2018); and The OpenBox, Milan (2018). She has participated in group exhibitions at Palazzo Ducale di Gubbio (2022); Fondazione Malvina Menegaz, Castelbasso (2021); Albergo delle Povere, Palermo (promoted by RISO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Sicily, Palermo) (2021); Palazzo Barbò Torre Pallavicina, Bologna (2021); MAC – Contemporary Art Museum, Lissone (2021); and Renata Fabbri, Milan (2020), among others. In 2016, Sophie Ko won the Lissone Prize for Painting organized by MAC – Contemporary Art Museum, Lissone. 

The work of Giovanni Kronenberg (Milan, 1974, lives and works in Milan) comprises essentially sculptures and drawings: unusual or rare objects and natural artifacts – like rocks and stones, minerals and precious crystals, horns, bones, furs, sea sponge and ostrich eggs – which the artist defines as “not worn out by gazes”. Often collectible objects, Kronenberg operates on them with minimal insertions and transformations that bring together distant times, often unreachable. Through actions like twisting, occluding, replacement, and superimposition – but also, on the contrary, using slight and temporary interventions – the artist crafts unexpected objects with an eccentric, magnetic, and at the same time disturbing presence. The creation of a “combinatorial grammar” is the operation at the core of his work: a language that effects the slow sedimentation of the evocative qualities inherent in objects, on their subsequent alteration, through forms of intrusion. This relation between objects and reality, mostly ambiguous and elusive, also represents a key to Kronenberg’s drawings. Here, the image, suspended in an abstract dimension, gives rise to a space without references that seems to translate the figure’s presence into a kind of epiphany or apparition. 

Among his recent solo shows: z2o Sara Zanin, Rome (2016, 2019 and 2022); Renata Fabbri, Milan (2017 and 2020); Quartz Studio, Turin (2020); Galleria Fuoricampo, Siena/Brussels (2014); and Studio Guenzani, Milan (2006, 2007 and 2012). Recent group exhibitions include: Museo Civico Villa La Rinchiostra, Massa (2021); Museo Diocesano, Foligno (2021); z2o Sara Zanin, Rome (2020); Renata Fabbri, Milan (2020); Civic Medieval Museum, Bologna (2020); Basilica Palladiana, Vicenza (2013); MACRO – Museum of Contemporary Art of Rome (2012); The Polish Institute of Rome (2012); Nomas Foundation, Rome (2012); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin (2011); Castello Colonna di Genazzano, Genazzano (2010); Peep-Hole, Milan (2009 and 2010); Museum of Contemporary Art, Lugano (2009); MAXXI – National Museum of XXI Century Arts, Rome (2007); Galleria Comunale d’Arte Contemporanea, Monfalcone (2008); Arte all’Arte X, San Gimignano (2005); Viafarini, Milan (2004 and 2005); and Fondazione Antonio Ratti, Como (2003).