Rebecca Agnes • Sono stata qua
Careof continues the collaboration, started in October 2012, with the investment bank of the Crédit Agricole group in Italy, with the aim of deepening the dialogue between art and business. Every four months, the spaces of the Milan branch hosted during 2013 – and continue to host this year as well – the work of artists selected from among the many present in the DOCVA Documentation Center for Visual Arts contemporary art archive.
After the solo exhibition of Marco Belfiore, Careof and Crédit Agricole selected Rebecca Agnes (Pavia, 1978. Lives and works in Berlin).
Interested in narration as a tool to create new realities, the artist’s research focuses on the intersections between art and science, reality and fiction, weaving delicate embroideries rich in references to historical, scientific, and travel literature. Rebecca Agnes works with words, exploring the qualities of a place in the imagination and the stories that revolve around it, concentrating her attention on the relationship with inhabited space, whether imagined or real. Thus, her works—which range from video to installation to embroidery—take as subjects places that have disappeared over time or were never reached by human presence, yet remain real in collective memory due to the function and value they have acquired.
At Crédit Agricole CIB, Agnes presents three closely connected works: the series of 12 Pianeti (2012) reproduces the surfaces of the planets of the solar system, through the forms they acquire in the cinematic or literary imagination surrounding them, rather than through scientific observation. In the work Nettuno, for example, the artist embroidered the mathematical calculations used in 1846 and 1847 by John Couch Adams and Urbain le Leverrier to hypothesize the position of the planet, the first discovered without direct scientific observation.
On the adjacent wall, the large embroidery Gibbosa Calante (2012) presents the shape of the lunar crater based on the phases drawn by Galileo Galilei. Its dark side is filled with a selection of science fiction novels in which the satellite orbiting the Earth is the protagonist.
Completing the exhibition in the reception area, the video I was here (2012) recalls the constant attempt to document our presence in a place. Surreal landscapes follow one another, whose shapes are once again inspired by literature.
Bio
Rebecca Agnes (1978, Pavia) lives and works in Berlin.
Recent solo exhibitions selection: 2013: Habitat #1, curated by Zara Audiello, CLANG, Scicli, Sicily. 2012: Planeten, VBM 2O.1O contemporary art and design, Berlin. 2011: Urania, Lithiumproject, ex NOTgallery, Naples; Geschwister, curated by Barbara Fragogna, KHtacheles NEWgallery, Berlin.
Recent group exhibitions selection: 2014: Lost Space, curated by Susanne Lek, João Cocteau, Berlin; Reflection on Art and Literature, curated by Artemis Potamianou and Thalia Vrachopoulos, in collaboration with Lo and Behold, Rosalux, Berlin; Drawing Show II: Connecting Dots, curated by Yujin Lee, aquabitArt gallery, Berlin.