LIGHTSTAGE GALLERY PRESENTS “ORIGIN”, A SOLO EXHIBITION BY FRENCH ARTIST OPHELIA JACARINI EXPLORING VISIBLE AND INVISIBLE ASPECTS OF THE HUMAN FORM, HER ENDURING INSPIRATION FROM INDIA, AND THE INEXTRICABLE VITALITY OF MOVEMENT INFORMING BEING:
LIGHTSTAGE Gallery is pleased to present “ORIGIN”, a solo exhibition by French-born and Hong Kong-based artist Ophelia Jacarini opening 23 February through 3 March 2017 at LIGHTSTAGE Gallery on 218 Hollywood Road.
The exhibition includes two series of paintings completed 2014 – 2017, organism and subconscient, as well as a large-scale installation comprising two works on fabric the artist painted earlier in February during her in-studio show “ATELIER OPHELIA”. Curated by gallery director Kalina King, “ORIGIN” marks Ophelia’s debut exhibition and first formal art presentation in Hong Kong however established she may be in other spheres of dance and fashion design.
“ORIGIN” is a distillation of her enquiries into the seeds of humanity and visualization of birth and biological creation, the complex relationship between our active mind, our subconscious understanding and our physical bodies in movement, the daunting multiplicity of ways to express the life-force of an organism. Ophelia wields a colourful palette of vivid pinks, oranges and blues and an intimacy with the language of human form and movement to challenge the influence of societal judgements on our perception. Drawn and painted free-hand, her visual works share a practiced looseness and vitality with integrity born of the undoubtable, indelible and ethereal influence of Ophelia’s classical ballet upbringing. Her brushstrokes dance with the cryptic power of kinetic energy, as practiced in her own body and drawn by keen observation of the carriage in others.
“ORIGIN’ moreover cues the personal importance attributed to Ophelia’s origination points in Asia, the watershed of her artistic beginnings. For ORIGIN is inextricably tied to India, whose land first welcomed Ophelia’s feet to Asia in 2013, whose people and energetic vitality captured and has held Ophelia’s heart and interest, and whose vibrant colours, pigments and textures have shaped the visual lexicon of this portfolio of works.
She takes her colour palette directly from the Indian landscape for her acrylic paintings in organism – her brushes drift organically to favour bright orange and clear pink hues, details in complimentary pastels, rendition after rendition of the human form in Chakra colours and a mélange mirroring celebrations of natural light, Holi festival paint on skin, the energy of life in dance.
In subconscient, Ophelia seeks to represent the subconscious mind in visual form, capturing an amorphous slice of a temporal living entity in each work. Here Ophelia channels the intuition of the body and the intelligent structure of the subconscious mind in her process. The artist guides herself into a trance state to create each subconscient piece, resulting in blue pigment affixed in fragile yet permanent blooms, thrown freehand in a communion with the wind onto a white-glazed canvas. These pigment-based artworks are similarly influenced by the intensity, abundance and raw luminosity of colours in Indian markets: piles of saffron, heaps of pure cerulean blue pigment, overflowing bowls of ochre seeds. Fascinated with Indian pigments, Ophelia explores how to fix these pigments, traditionally mixed with water, to canvas without diluting nor abrogating their distinct physical properties in powder form.
The feature installation comprises two long canvases ‘mouvement’ and ‘emote’ painted in 2017. The concept of ‘falling’ liberated of spatial perspective becomes the scaffold for these works, Ophelia’s gift to these canvases is the freedom of falling into dance, the dual state of suffering and blissful flight, whispered into each figure and face. To move is to become is to be is to be moved. These scroll-like progressions harness Ophelia’s own ‘movement’ to transition between energy states and states of being, simultaneously building substance of form.
Invoking the significance of movement to Ophelia’s practice, there will be a series of solo dance interventions performed at LIGHTSTAGE during the course of the exhibition.
In today’s politically-charged climate, the compassion and uplifting message of Ophelia’s ORIGIN is ever more welcome. Far from scolding or shocking, hers is a message that beckons with poise. While her oeuvre may take the shape of a figurative form, Ophelia is painting the human form as she sees an individual’s inner light, with an Asian temporality and approach to space and perspective. Is this one individual across time and place and character dimensions, or the present-moment interaction of multiple entities? And finally, does this question matter? Ophelia’s works strum the chords of inherent and fundamental beauty, a silent subconscious chime to awaken this recognition of the familiar human, our shared humanity.
For more information, please contact gallery@lightstage.co .
SOLO EXHIBITION ORIGIN
OPENING Thursday, 23 February 2017 18:00 – 21:00
DATES 24 February – 3 March 2017 12:00 – 20:00 daily
PERFORMANCE EVENTS Thursday, 2 + Friday, 3 March 2017 19:00 - 21:00
Performers: Sarah Xiao, Jessie Jing, Siobhan Dumigan. Wine in partnership with BottlesXO.
LOCATION LIGHTSTAGE Gallery
MEDIA + PRESS ENQUIRIES Kindly contact Director Ms. Kalina King at gallery@lightstage.co .
LINKS + MORE INFORMATION
#ORIGINonstage #OpheliaJacarini #LIGHTSTAGEgallery #LIGHTSTAGEHK
Event Website: https://www.lightstage.gallery/ophelia-jacarini-origin/
Facebook Event for Exhibition: https://www.facebook.com/events/249833362121268/
SHOWING ORIGINAL WORKS BY ARTIST OPHELIA JACARINI
ARTIST STATEMENT: OPHELIA JACARINI
Ophelia Jacarini is a French artist residing in Hong Kong whose primary concern and artistic inquiry is the Human, and hers is a quintessentially humanistic and vitalistic approach. Ophelia explores life, form, structure, colour, feelings, vitality and movement in many visual and conceptual mediums from fabric sculpture and dance movement to painting and works employing pigments on paper and canvas.
Ophelia grew up in Paris and her early life revolved around a visually-rich mélange of fashion, arts and dance. Following in the footsteps of her mother who had been a ballerina with the opera company of Northern France, Ophelia trained in classical ballet with nearly two decades of rigorous, daily dance classes and performances. She studied design at University in Paris and joined John Galliano under then creative director Bill Gaytten as a textile designer.
Her first journey to India in 2013 was the inflection point of significant life changes and precipitated a breakthrough for her artistic practice. Her trip was meant to be an interlude between designers; she was originally intended to join Yves Saint Laurent upon her return to Paris. What started as one month in India spilled into another month through Burma and ultimately ten months of free-form journey overland and predominantly on her own across Central and Southeast Asia. Back in Paris, Ophelia realized she would not stay. Her imagination and her daily rhythms had been so shifted and expanded that the oeuvre and environment of her childhood Paris now felt narrower, a container of her previous self, and she felt restless and insatiably ready to continue learning and changing. Ophelia made plans to relocate to the vibrant colours, patterns, materials, festivals, languages, traditions, crowds, of Asia, and became a resident of Hong Kong in September 2014 and is currently based in Hong Kong with frequent travel in India and France.
“ORIGIN”: the ‘organism’ series, and long-canvas progressions ‘mouvement’ and ‘emote’ highlight Ophelia’s ongoing fascination with bodies in movement and in figurative forms evoking states of being freed from societal judgment. Ophelia paints with expressive brushstrokes and vivid colours to express her struggles and emotions. The grace of these frozen yet fluid bodies is ever influenced by her life-long career in classical ballet. Other works extend beyond the physical body. In ‘subconscient’, a series of abstract paintings with blue pigments applied directly onto canvas, Ophelia seeks to represent the ‘invisible’ parts of a human, such as memories, our unconscious identities or life forms, with these unmediated colour pigments and their resulting fractal depictions. Dancing between both representative and abstract inclinations, Ophelia paints a nuanced, perceptive and strikingly imaginative vision of what it might mean to be human.
Ophelia has collaborated on artworks and commissions for Shangri-La, Galliano, Graff, and other European fashion houses. Her work has been shown in Taipei, Taiwan (Oct 2016). Earlier in 2017, Ophelia completed an in-studio show ‘ATELIER OPHELIA’ at LIGHTSTAGE in Hong Kong presenting the elliptical, messy, exuberant process of artistic creation to the public.