ILEX Gallery
Art Paris 2019

For the first time in its 10 year history, ILEX is pleased to embrace art forms beyond the realm if its beloved photography.

With the occasion of Art Paris, the gallery will be unveiling large-scale oil paintings and intimate sculptures from Silvia Codignola, large scale ceramic mosaics by Nathalie Daoust and intimate still life photography by Giovanni Cocco.

A knowing stillness tends to reign over the subjects in Silvia Codignola’s work. Both figures and landscapes are architecturally present. Branches on trees are sculptural and the leaves in the forest do not necessarily blow in the wind. In “The Hammock” (2019), the first work in Silvia Codignola’s latest series La seconda casa (The second home), the central figure is the definition of languor - of summertime - of that other place we go to when its time to reconnect with our souls. In this case, it’s the hammock in the woods, and the figure is à l’aise, so much so that she has discarded her clothes. Movement comes from the sunlight on the trees which nonetheless shimmer in the quietness. A figurative work which hints to that essential state where there is harmony in – just - being.

This taking on of souls connects with the works of both Nathalie Daoust and Giovanni Cocco. Nathalie Daoust's large-scale portraits belie an intimacy in its exploration of female fragility. The series China Dolls (2010-2012) forms a body of work that serves as a perspective on the young women of China, struggling to find their identity in a rapidly changing country. Fleeting and delicate, the work delves further - attempting to shed light on the role of women in 21st century China. The duplicitous elements indicative of her work are evident; strength/weakness, fantasy/reality, beauty/vulgarity, past/future. As their stories and emotions unfold through their expressions, the women reveal a clear sense of the past and tradition, with a suggestion of a new contemporary woman emerging, coming into focus and out of the shadows, bridging the continuum between past and present. The two mosaics portraits presented at Art Paris are black and white prints hand-colored and transferred and printed on ceramic tiles to form a mosaic of 36 tiles (Portrait n.1) and 16 tiles (Portrait n. 2). The ceramic tiles re-enforce the notion of the fragile and delicate ‘China Doll’, reflecting the care that is needed to ensure a role in their country's future.

Giovanni Cocco turned his eye to photographing plants, because they represent a kind of aesthetic, behavioral, architectural and vegetational exoticism of the entire physical place. Cocco manages to convey a certain mystery to his subjects while giving movement to still life in this eloquent series, PLANTARIUM Piccolo Atlante Botanico della Garbatella. An exotic and unique area of Rome - La Garbatella and its flora are a well-kept Roman secret. Giovanni Cocco offers a glimpse of an exotic and unique area of Rome as he portrays the neighbourhood's flora and vegetations - in enthralling still lifes.

Taking us full circle from figure in nature to figure to nature as figure.