BEYA REBAÏ & MARCO LA ROCCA
Flowers and Something

September 29th 2023/November 30th 2023
Opening: Friday September 29th 2023 @6.30PM

Flowers and Something is the double solo show by Marco La Rocca and Beya Rebaï, curated by Martina Corbetta and Chiara Pozzi, which will open on September 29^th.

Marco La Rocca’s artistic research is based on thoughts related to life and divertissement. It is almost an understanding of living and existence. For him, paint means pushing beyond the notions of representation or abstraction and tuning feelings and emotions. His work wishes to trace the ways in which he observes the world. Through his turbulent brushstrokes, he seeks inner meaning in the everyday, creating a complex and interwoven portrait of human nature. The medium on which he paints varies according to the artwork, usually he works on canvas with oil and acrylic, spray and airbrush but also sub-crystalline colors on ceramic, a material that he loves which allows him to collaborate with a highly esteemed master. In general, the subjects are based on the reality that surrounds him, in particular the stark ordinary routine, but at the same time he is fascinated by the representation of still lifes, especially flowers. Now protagonists of Flowers and Something. Conquered by the still life paintings made by great artists such as De Pisis and Matisse, Zhang Enli, Jennifer Packer, Cornel Brudascu and Tursic&Mille, it is the concept of passing time that has inspired him to tackle this theme. Thanks to the desire to represent still lifes – flowers – La Rocca develops a method in which, like a ritual, every morning at 6, in his studio in the dark, helped by the light of a projector – which facilitates it with guidelines, proportions and chiaroscuro – paints bouquets and vases. No sketch, no gesture or intention precedes the morning work, the artist decides this condition as an unpredictable fact. The concept expressed is that of the unexpected, of surprise, the condition that comes closest to the life of the human being. A daily life made up of unknowns and mystery that generate a desire to know, to know oneself and the other, understood as everything that surrounds us.

Marco La Rocca_Untitled, 2022. Mixed media on canvas. 90×70 cm

Beya Rebaï interfaces with Marco La Rocca through her most representative poetics. For Rebaï, nature plays a role of fundamental importance. Her works, made in the artist’s limited palette of crayons, are a figuration full of personal nuances of the places that surround her. In her artworks, culture and nature collide and pay tribute to mother nature as a living force, through which we are able to connect to the grandeur of the universe. Constantly inspired by her travels, Rebaï transforms the few colors she has chosen – the starting point for each of her artworks – into representations using chromatic blocks and essential signs that have their roots in the post-impressionist group Le Nabis, whose aim was to innovate art through a new use of color. Beya Rebaï effectively collects the artistic testament of the movement, placing the focus of her research on a minimal painting based on infinite chromatic potential. For the exhibition, a walk in the Parisian parks, where the high sun and elegant clouds form the curtain on an atmosphere to be painted, is the starting point. The fresh air and the scent of flowers. Rebaï just wants to sit down, close her eyes, listen – the birds rummaging through the dry leaves, passers-by chatting and children playing – and imagine her painting full of colors with the most varied shades of green, pink and some touches of red. The next day she will return to sharpen the marks to be imprinted on the paper.

Beya Rebaï_Untitled, 2023. Crayons on paper. 14,8×21 cm