Bendana | Pinel Art Contemporain is pleased to present ‘Summer Shadow’, a group exhibition featuring works by nine international artists. The exhibition explores the way in which shadow shapes our perceptions and transforms our understanding of space and human relationships. Shadow is more than just a natural phenomenon: it becomes a metaphor. Through a variety of media, the artists plunge us into a universe that explores female emancipation, the contemplation of natural or architectural landscapes, and profound reflections on identity and cultural conventions.
Faced with the challenge posed to painting by the emergence of new media, Francisca Aninat has chosen to deconstruct the medium, fragmenting its forms to reveal its matter and tension. Using everyday materials - fabric, paper, thread - and simple gestures such as sewing or tearing, she goes beyond the limits of the canvas. Her painting becomes a bodily, living act, where the essential thing is not to represent, but to constantly question what defines painting. Serpiente Blanca reveals a double gesture: that of writing painting and painting writing.
Chiachio & Giannone (LeoChiachio and Daniel Giannone) reuse domestic materials, combining militant commitment with an emotional dimension, which they transform through embroidery. Their work questions norms and stereotypes, blurring gender boundaries and inviting us to reflect on social expectations. Their work, combining composition and ornamentation, explores self-portraiture and pays homage to the artists they admire, as well as to cultural aesthetics. Conversación sobre arte celebrates the creative universes of Sonia Delaunay, Yente and Gunta Stölzl, while vibrating with the colours of the pride.
Alberto Cont's drawings share the same reflections as his paintings, centred on the exploration of light and colour. In this series, Cont revisits the tradition of Venetian tonal painting, where the successive application of glazes - or velature - creates a delicate plastic effect, subtly merging subject and environment. By combining the use of colour pencils and watercolour, Cont superimposes layers that produce gradual transitions between tones, suggesting spatial depth. Colour then becomes the main vector shaping volume and space.
Niccolò Montesi's work lies at the crossroads of architecture and urban perception. Inspired by the dialogue between landscape and structure characteristic of Aldo Rossi, a major figure in twentieth-century architecture, he uses Monte Amiata as the site for a sensitive visual exploration. Through a subtle interplay of lines, light, shadow and glaze, his shots reveal an unsuspected dimension of architectural beauty. Through carefully composed angles and perspectives, he offers a fresh look at our environment, revealing the fragile harmony between human work and nature.
Alicia Paz explores the themes of identity, genealogy and intercultural exchange, focusing on the female figure. Juntas is a series that questions the construction of the self through a metaphorical self-portrait, akin to a ‘family tree’, bringing together women -thinkers, artists, activists - who have inspired or influenced Paz. The iconographic references and decorative arts techniques, such as azulejos and kintsugi, refer respectively to marginalisation and repair.
Miguel Rothschild regularly intervenes in his photographs, whether by burning them, covering them with fishing line or folding them, thus creating a third dimension. Rothschild also reinterprets in a lighter, more melancholy way the themes of nineteenth-century German Romanticism, religion and spirituality that are recurrent in his work. In Landscape, the materiality of the curtain is underlined by the folds in the print. By juxtaposing two landscapes Rothschild creates a dialogue between the nature captured and that of the curtain motif, evoking a space that is both familiar and poetic.
Alireza Shojaian questions society's view of the male body, nudity and, more broadly, male identity, through intimate, sentimental and political works. His self-portrait, inspired by Baudelaire's ‘La Mort des Amants’, explores melancholy and the meaning of existence. A ritual that he renews every five years, this introspective exercise blends personal memories and symbols. The interior generated by the artificial intelligence evokes his experience of exile, transforming the house into a mental space, a recomposed and dreamed memory.
Sandra Vásquez de la Horra, renowned for her innovative graphic work on different types of waxed paper, tackles profound and committed subjects such as death, sexuality, religion and politics. Her leporellos, in particular, question the boundary between drawing and sculpture. Wax, which she has used since the beginning, acts as a catalyst, linking the two drawings on each side of the same support. This fusion, which plays on transparency and materiality, creates a third image, offering a unique and plural visual experience.