South likes: May Hands and Emanuel Röhss at T293, Naples

South likes: May Hands and Emanuel Röhss at T293, Naples
May Hands / Emanuel Röhss
T293, Naples, Italy
21 March – 30 May, 2014

The works of May Hands and Emanuel Röhss are juxtaposed in the venue of T293, highlighting the affinities between their practice in terms of how they relate to consumerist society. Both artists investigate the identity of objects from two different collateral perspectives. May Hands’ work makes use of luxury fashion packages, integrating them into formal compositions that reassess their visual charge. Far from the aesthetic of the swanky boutiques of 5th Avenue, a plastic sheet with the logo of Gucci becomes a pictorial material when it is properly mounted on a stretcher. Conscious of the gap between a scrap of plastic packaging and a painting on the walls of an art gallery, Hands seems to challenge the border between creativity and marketing, maintaining the position of her works well within the aesthetic of a luxury market. The layering of chromatic informations that compose Emanuel Röhss’ paintings plays on a thin line between formalism and a highly personalised fetishism. Their appearance of abstract images is in fact the result of a process that is based on a person, real or fictional. Originated from the proximity with a real personality, the abstract forms are imbued with a fetishist aura, which exposes how the identity of the object is modelled through its creation, its interpretation, and eventually it material acquisition. The use and extraction of ornamental elements emerge as a common approach of these two artists, who manage to outline a regime of commodity exchange transferring narratives from one luxury market to another.

Michelangelo Corsaro

http://www.t293.it/exhibitions/may-hands-emanuel-rohss/