Sara Enrico, Andrea Respino: Mai un vestito dunque, adeguato

Quartz Studio is pleased to present Mai un vestito dunque, adeguato, a project by Sara Enrico (Biella, Italy, 1979) and Andrea Respino (Mondovì, Italy, 1976), conceived specifically for Quartz Studio. The two artists are a couple in life, but this is the first time their artistic paths have crossed.

Mai un vestito dunque, adeguato is a succinct and apparently categorical phrase that the artists used ironically about the exhibition, a seeming snippet from a longer conversation. In Andrea Respino’s paintings, particular objects and settings give shape to a world of men who manifest their condition of uncertainty in their improbable or incomplete state of dress. In answer to the gestural expressiveness of Respino’s paintings, in Sara Enrico’s work, the poetic and performative essence of the material is first contained and then let loose from the surfaces and the sculptural forms through the processes she adopts. Enrico takes this physical and semantic interweaving as a chance to translate complexity, its deconstruction and its co-existence, by working on the precarious balance and material resonance of its language.  

Since 2007, Andrea Respino has been half of the Alis/Filliol duo, with Davide Gennarino. He has recently undertaken a parallel independent path. Respino’s work focuses on drawing and painting in works depicting odd, recurring gestures. Within incongruous places, markedly ambiguous and theatrical, his men, many elderly, appear valiantly confined to the pathetic. There are also recognizable elements from certain types of popular religious painting, such as votive art, but in the form of a parody or turning the ideas of devotion and miracle.

Sara Enrico’s interest revolves around the idea of weaving seen as an activating of connection, starting from certain pictorial paradigms to observe the relationship between the body, clothing, and the space.  Her work is situated between being a physical, linguistic, and cultural system and an interpretation of the world through her senses in an experience of “tactile proximity.”

The two artists share an approach—in different manifestations—that seeks the off-stage element, the unknown marker that informs the transformation and deformation of things. Mai un vestito dunque, adeguato metaphorically suggests a temporary state of lucidity in the interplay of appearances. It is an attempt to empathize with the inner dimension, captured as it strains towards change and camouflaging.

Sara Enrico (Biella, Italy, 1979) lives and works in Turin, Italy. Among her solo exhibitions are: Mart - Museo di arte moderna e contemporanea di Trento e Rovereto, Italy (2019); Marsèlleria, New York, USA (2018); TILE Project Space, Milan, Italy (2017); Fonderia Artistica Battaglia, Milan, Italy (2016); L‘A Project Space, Palermo, Italy (2015); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2014); GAM, Galleria d‘Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin, Italy (2013); Viafarini-in-residence, Milan, Italy (2012).

Andrea Respino (Mondovì, Italy, 1976) lives and works in Turin, Italy. Among his solo exhibitions, as Alis/Filliol, are: Fondazione Arnaldo Pomodoro, Milan, Italy (2017); Pinksummer, Genoa, Italy (2016); Istituto Italiano di Cultura, Paris, France (2016); MEF Museo Ettore Fico, Turin, Italy (2015); GAM, Galleria d’Arte Moderna e Contemporanea, Turin, Italy (2014); Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo, Turin, Italy (2013); Pinksummer, Genoa, Italy (2012); Basilica di Santa Maria Maggiore, Bergamo, Italy (2012); Cripta747, Turin, Italy (2010); blank, Turin, Italy (2010).

Quartz Studio would like to thank the artists and Fonderia Artistica Battaglia, Milan.