Erika Verzutti – Man Ray com Peixe / Man Ray with Fish, 2019, Bronze, cast aluminium and oil, 70 x 57 x 10 cm, Unique work in a series of 3, © Erika Verzutti. Photo: Eduardo Ortega. Courtesy Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel, São Paulo/Rio de Janeiro.
The short-lived publication Documents (1929 – 1930) – edited by Georges Bataille – exemplified a shift in much visual art in the early 20th century towards drawing from and combining influences from wildly differing sources both within and far beyond the arts. It is a tendency towards a heterogeneous aesthetic which has become so ubiquitous that nowadays it informs first principles in most art schools from foundation level on. And whilst it lends an air of research facility to the average artist’s studio, it can also, through the collision of dissonant sources, muddy the task of judging the quality of the artwork produced.
In such an open field as the visual arts have become, one difficulty is to consolidate disparate elements skilfully. Erika Verzutti produces painted bronze and papier-mâché wall-mounted reliefs which stretch the territory between painting and sculpture. The surfaces might be pummelled and gouged playfully, then cast in bronze, then painted irreverently in common acrylic. The artist’s process spins 360 degrees from kitchen table craft through industrial fabrication and back without pitting the base and the exalted medium against one another. In Verzutti’s work there is humour but not the ham-fisted variety, allusion without explication, and beauty both superficial and profound.
Carne Sintética @ Fortes D’Aloia & Gabriel
Two previous articles on Erika Verzutti on theglazelondon:
theglazelondon 