Oblong Contemporary Gallery celebrates internationally renowned female artists with its current group show titled Women Expressions which presents a mix of styles, techniques, and cultural perspectives. The participants are Annalù Boeretto and Roberta Diazzi (Italy); Serero Pop Art, Valérie Breuleux, and Young Kyoung Cho (France); Isabelle Scheltjens (Belgium); and Yana Rusnak (Ukraine). The exhibition will run through 31 August 2023.
The show pays tribute to the unifying spirit of art and shows how artists from different countries share common ground through their creativity. In their art pieces, each of the artists weaves a tapestry of emotions, stories, and visions, thus enriching the global art scene. The key aim of Women Expressions is to inspire visitors by giving them examples of how artistic expression transcends geographical borders and can help overcome cultural differences.
About the participating artists
Annalù Boeretto (b. 1976, Venice, Italy) resides in Italy. Her art practice involves drawing, painting, sculpting, and creating installations. Fascinated by metamorphosis, the sources of her inspiration are nature and ancient Italian art techniques. Employing a variety of materials, such as fibreglass, bark, bitumen, cement, Murano glass, resins, and paper, Annalù produces 3D artworks in which she aims to freeze a particular moment in time and space. Her creations contain new realities, new worlds, and imaginary architectures full of alchemy.
Roberta Diazzi (b. 1973, Modena, Italy) has developed her unique visual language working with crystals from Swarovski® specially made for her. Using coloured crystals of different sizes placed upon black acrylic glass, her vibrant 3D paintings portray popular icons and endangered animals: big cats (lions and jaguars), peacocks, and eagles. Light is crucial when it comes to Diazzi’s works: it creates reflections and shades that enrich the dynamism of the depicted shapes.
Serero Pop Art creates digital reworkings which she enriches using resin, beads, sequins, precious stones, acrylics, and enamels. The artist turns the pop icons she depicts into kings and queens by adding a crown to their images. She sheds new light on the famed people of the past and the present: Salvador Dalì, Frida Kahlo, Marylin Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Brigitte Bardot, Batman, Chanel, and other characters.
Valérie Breuleux (b. 1968, Nice, France) is a painter and photographer. In her creative process, photography serves for painting and vice versa. The subjects of her sensual portraits are depicted in various emotional states. These artworks are dedicated to exploring physical and psychic identities, feelings, and femininity.
Young Kyoung Cho (b. 1971, South Korea) has been living and working in Nice since 1998. Influenced by its free spirit and overall enjoyment of life that one feels there, she creates sculptures of vivacious girls full of spontaneity. They depict mischievous and tender moments in childhood and adolescence. The artist works with different contrasting materials which include resin, terracotta, and bronze.
The art of Isabelle Scheltjens (b. 1981, Antwerp, Belgium) is rooted in Op Art and Pointillism. Playing with colours, light, and shadow, her stunning portraits of women are composed of numerous hand-cut pieces of coloured glass placed in a specific order. The glass pieces form an abstract image up close, but when the artwork is viewed from a distance, they are fused into one solid singular portrait. Every work is made of about 20, 000 various glass plates. Through her art, Scheltjens aims to tell the story written on someone’s face. “[…] A very expressive face [showing] an incredible amount of emotion is the beginning of my work,” she says.
Yana Rusnak (b. 1993, Cherkasy, Ukraine) utilises painting and photography to create art pieces consisting of multiple triangles in which the figurative and the abstract are combined. Most of them depict animals, while some portray female figures. Her work is based on the concept of “dialogue with the universe”. Inspired by “Music, Light, Nature, [and] the Galaxy”, the artist’s paintings serve as an allegory of how human emotions and character are interconnected with the animal world.
To learn more about Women Expressions, please visit the exhibition’s official web page.
You might also be interested in visiting Jameel Prize: Poetry to Politics.
