Dance Macabre

Artist: Elisa Bertaglia

“Dance Macabre” is Elisa Bertaglia's solo show at Residency Unlimited, New York, that opens on July 2023. In a very cohesive and linear exhibition, the artist presents a brand new organic and substantial research. Quoting the concept of simulacrum—image, semblance, ghost, illusion—as well as the Medieval leitmotif of the dance of the death, the artist summarizes the common theme that unites the body of works created during her artist res... more >> “Dance Macabre” is Elisa Bertaglia's solo show at Residency Unlimited, New York, that opens on July 2023. In a very cohesive and linear exhibition, the artist presents a brand new organic and substantial research. Quoting the concept of simulacrum—image, semblance, ghost, illusion—as well as the Medieval leitmotif of the dance of the death, the artist summarizes the common theme that unites the body of works created during her artist residency at RU. The symbols and the metaphorical language have always been the basis of Elisa Bertaglia's artistic research, but the idea of the emblem as a semantic threshold has recently become the center of her work.

The exhibition—made up of drawings on paper and oil paintings on canvas, gold and aluminum—testifies the growth of the artist that shows today a diversified repertoire of images and allegories, even though her style is still recognizable by poetics and technique.

In dialogue with the other works on display, a group of small skulls paintings catches the viewer's attention. The skull is universally recognized as a symbol for the threshold between life and death. The remains become an element in the artist's narration. Bertaglia strongly wanted to introduce the skull as an iconic element in the development of her research. Both from a technical and conceptual or philosophical point of view, her research has now become essential and complex, free from figurative constraints and eclectic.

Dance Macabre

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