LIGHTSTAGE GALLERY PRESENTS “ATELIER OPHELIA”, SHOWING FRENCH ARTIST OPHELIA JACARINI IN-STUDIO AS SHE CREATES A FIFTEEN-METER-LONG PAINTING; MARKS LAUNCH OF “ATELIER” SERIES:
“My inspiration came through frustration: constantly asking why and being told ‘because this is the way it is’, my observations of societal norms and implicit judgements, dreaming of removing restrictions or divisions between people, and liberating human movement. Without all the questions I have asked myself, I wouldn’t have started on this investigation.” – Ophelia Jacarini
LIGHTSTAGE Gallery is pleased to present “Atelier Ophelia”, a solo atelier show featuring French painter Ophelia Jacarini. The artist will participate in an exhibition at LIGHTSTAGE later this spring.
Opening 1 – 8 February 2017, this studio show shares Ophelia’s painting process with the public and illuminates the visceral, experimental energy of artistic creation.
The artist will enter and build her ‘pop-up’ studio in the front hall of LIGHTSTAGE with tens of meters of canvas and accompanied by her tools and her talismans of inspiration and artistic reference.
In a week of free-form artistic progress including erasure and revision, Ophelia will work to realise her vision of a finished 15-metre-long canvas painting of liberated and faceless human bodies in movement.
The bright and lively colours – pinks, orange, cerulean blues – of Ophelia’s painting practice draw in the viewer yet belie the more somber artistic proposition underlying her artworks. Ophelia’s project intention for ‘Atelier’ explores her ongoing fascination with the human condition, our bodies, what is visible versus less-seen, and the oft-intertwined states of beauty and suffering. A former ballet dancer who has studied kinesiology, movement, health from both scientific and artistic lenses, the French-born artist suggests that we may reframe our perception of beauty, of grace, when we detach our observation of a human body from societal ties or unwittingly strict perspectives.
Thus freed of identity, time and space, the figurative forms represent a celebration of the dance of life without judgement.
The public is invited to participate in multiple ways. Whilst Ophelia is in-studio, visitors may enter to silently and respectfully observe the artist. Each evening for a 30-minute session, Ophelia will answer questions and invite open dialogue during an artist walkthrough (schedule to be updated online and at LIGHTSTAGE). The entire journey will also be shared on social media platforms.
LIGHTSTAGE LAUNCHES “ATELIER” SERIES
“Atelier Ophelia” marks the launch of a series of “ATELIER” studio sessions at LIGHTSTAGE with contemporary artists being invited to re-envision the LIGHTSTAGE gallery as their studio space for one week or longer, with the curatorial goal of collaborating with promising young artists to fully realise or make significant progress on an artistic creation or project which will benefit from the size and space of LIGHTSTAGE, and also provide an opportunity for the Hong Kong public and arts community to observe the journey and process of artistic creation in new ways.
For curator and gallery director Kalina King, ‘ATELIER’ stems from the heart of the LIGHTSTAGE mission: “So often in Hong Kong, we miss out on the process of creation. Real estate prices and a retail-driven economy means that on the streets we rarely see the makers, meet the artists, touch anything but a finished product. I worry about that distance between the creation process and the consumer. From the start we envisioned this experimental and experiential theatre, a stage for creative collisions, tangible, approachable. And we have happily seen so much support and engagement from our community at events onSTAGE as well as looking in through the glass windows in these past years.
I am thrilled to be initiating Atelier with Ophelia and taking this formal step to open the studio doors, and invite the public in to interpret and participate in the raw and free-form process of artistic investigation.”
For more information, please contact Kalina King gallery@lightstage.co .
ARTIST-IN-STUDIO ATELIER OPHELIA
STUDIO OPENING Wednesday, 1 February 2017 11:00 – 21:00
STUDIO CLOSING RECEPTION Wednesday, 8 February 2017 19:00 – 21:00 (open to public)
ARTIST WALK-THROUGHS 1 February – 8 February 2017 daily (30 min between 18:00 - 20:00; schedule to be posted). Walk-ins welcome, or rsvp to RSVP@lightstage.hk
STUDIO DATES 1 February – 8 February 2017 daily hours per artist wishes
LOCATION LIGHTSTAGE Gallery
MEDIA + PRESS ENQUIRIES Kindly contact Ms. Kalina King at gallery@lightstage.co
LINKS + MORE INFORMATION #AtelierOphelia #OpheliaJacarini #artistinstudio #LIGHTSTAGEatelier #atelierseries #LIGHTSTAGEgallery #LIGHTSTAGEHK
Event Website: http://lightstage.hk/portfolio/ophelia-jacarini-atelier-ophelia/
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. 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 paints with expressive brushstrokes and vivid colours to express her struggles and emotions. She has an ongoing fascination with bodies in movement, and in figurative forms evoking human suffering or different states of being. Other works extend beyond the physical body. In 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.