Sabrina Mezzaqui

Galleria Massimo Minini, Brescia
Through November 20

The work of Sabrina Mezzaqui is distinguished by a slow, steady gesture, repeated with almost obsessive precision. The artist draws freehand grid patterns onto large sheets of paper. In the white squares and along the length of the frame, drawings and writings emerge from the colorful marks of pencil and paintbrush, allowing simple shapes and elementary geometric forms to flourish like the words of a poem.

The artist emphasizes the conceptual symbolism of this repeated gesture in her drawings: like Penelope in front of her loom, or a Zen monk in meditation, Mezzaqui considers the act of artistic creation a moment of humility and restraint, of contemplation and soul-searching. This emerges in her work from the observation of the minutiae of banal daily occurrences: a three-hour, real time video recording of the shadows cast by the window in her own bedroom is a good example.

This video installation contributes to the exhibition’s most contemplative corner, in which the visitor is invited to reflect with the artist on the passage of time. Next to the wall onto which this work is projected, stands a monitor showing another video, Un motivo al giorno (A Design a Day) in which the artist’s hand, moving very slowly, is daily captured creating a new pattern with the grid of a small graph-paper notebook. To arrive at this corner, however, it is necessary to make a virtual pilgrimage of initiation across another an exhibit.

At the entrance to the gallery, two large drawings are redolent of the craftsmanship involved in Indian carpet-making (Tappeto) and in embroidery (Cancellato): with a stroke of paintbrush and pencil, the latter being partially erased, these works leave us to only imagine the dedication and attention to detail required to complete such a laborious process. At the back of the room, two curtains are inscribed with an extract from a text by American author bell hooks. The words, in both Italian and English, are reproduced using black and white pearls. The visitor is encouraged to pass through these worded curtains into a small space, in the corner of which stand two large pages from a graph-paper notebook, sculpted in plaster. The atmosphere is almost sacred and the scale of the sculpted sheets “consecrates” these objects that so symbolize learning to write as a child.

Blown up in the drawings at the start of the exhibit, the grid-patterns on these pages are the show’s key element, forming a basis for the writing and, in particular, the repeated gesture that Mezzaqui deems the font of wisdom and enlightenment on life’s daily realities, both simple and essential.




Elena Di Raddo