Elisa Sighicelli

Gagosian Gallery is pleased to present The River Suite, the second solo show of Elisa Sighicelli in London.

The River Suite is an installation consisting of eight individual video works. Focusing on the representation of a river at night, Sighicelli continues her exploration of light and darkness, space and time.

In the video projections of the left and right banks of the river, the camera travels in one long shot along the river bank at night; from the darkness very few lights emerge to reveal buildings and fleeting glimpses of life, which immediately disappear into blackness again. Our voyeuristic instinct is frustrated by the continuous changes of the image in space.

In the other five video works, the camera is fixed on a single detail of the river bank, a red building in the distance, a blue house, or a mysterious warehouse. Like moving photographs, these fixed images evolve in time, each passage is revealed by the shifting reflection of light in the water. The stillness and silence of these videos creates a feeling of expectation about what may happen but the suspense is trapped in a continuous loop.

The video Nocturne (Trajectories) is shot from above. From this perspective the river becomes a black empty space, where illuminated boats trace trajectories of light, hovering between reality and abstraction simultaneously. The work explores the edge of the image. From the border the lit boats come into sight, and disappear from a different edge, like in a choreographed drawing made out of light.

Fluctuating between stillness and motion, video and photography, Sighicelli's work scrutinizes ordinary things, in an attempt to make them intensely ordinary. In her work images are revealed thorough light; darkness transforms reality and allows the image to be open and suggestive.

Elisa Sighicelli was born in Italy (1968). Today she lives and works in London and Turin. Since receiving her MFA from the Slade School of Fine Art in London Elisa Sighicelli has exhibited her work in a wide variety of public institutions including: Palazzo delle Papesse Centro Arte Contemporanea, Siena (2005); Fondation Salomon, Annecy (2003); Centro Galego de Arte Contemporánea, Santiago de Compostela (2000); MCA, Sydney (2003); Hertzliya Museum, Tel Aviv (2001).

The artist has also participated in various solo and group exhibitions in Milan, New York, Los Angeles, London, Paris and Turin.

Pressetext

Elisa Sighicelli
The River Suite