Aeterna by Lorena Florio and Katrina Stamatopoulos at Mucho Mas!

Mucho Mas! is pleased to present Aeterna, the bi-personal exhibition of Lorena Florio and Katrina Stamatopoulos, winners of the open call activated in collaboration with Pellicola.

Overview

Curated by Luca Vianello and Silvia Mangosio, in collaboration with Pellicola, Aeterna is a dialogue focused on experimentation in contemporary photography, implementing practices of transformation and research concerning the intimate and the collective. Memory and imagination combine to welcome the viewer into an imaginative environment, which the two artists recreate in the gallery through their installation practices.

In the twilight of an undefined world, where the sun is the light of an indelible memory, an incursion is undertaken amidst the blurred boundaries of a mysterious habitat. An ethereal atmosphere envelops every step, and the forms of an unknown nature transform the mist of the unknown into intertwined melodies. The weight of a blurred past is like a mosaic of emotions preserved in a kaleidoscope of experiences. Along immaterial pathways, one arrives at the shifting veil that conceals the gateway to a new ecosystem; perception becomes lost among indistinct forms and ineffable colors, wrapped in an aura, the threshold of that enigmatic world wavers.

In this realm, the perceptual environments of animals reveal themselves as a mirror of their internal bodies. Indefinable creatures dance among polychromatic clearings like resonating identities made of shades and emotions reflected in eyes of abstract forms. The habitat responds to the pulse of every form and organism, where memories of the past vibrate in the dense air. With each step, new entities are revealed, resembling fragments that elude reality, like memories of unheard colors dancing in the air, delicately brushing the boundaries between the tangible and the incorporeal, of a vibration in the fabric of existence. Every form, every color, carries with it the trace of a past, like a fragment that dissolves into the present. This luminous glade teems with creatures that move with wisdom through the pathways of memory. Without words, through a language of light and shadows, they reveal the harmony with secrets of an identity now blurred in time.

The individual works of Lorena Florio and Katrina Stamatopoulos, Essere per sempre and Pet or Friends, engage in a continuous dialogue within the space of Mucho Mas!, creating an imaginary environment where the internal and external realms converge. The concept of a "flock" explored by Stamatopoulos' flying and dystopian creatures echoes the network of relationships between human and non-human species inhabiting urban environments, as well as the neural connections that bring memories to the surface. Florio's memory environment is organic and grotesque; the images are fragmented and simultaneously appear "heavy" and "light," contorted and ethereal in their materiality.

The exhibition is the result of the PM + MM Open Call!, launched in March 2023 as a collaboration between two different entities: Mucho Mas! gallery and Pellicola magazine, which recently released its first printed edition. The open call aimed to foster dialogue between the two investigative spaces and their respective research. Its final output includes in-depth interviews on the practices of the five finalists (Lorena Florio, Katrina Stamatopoulos, Bjiorn Nilsson, Alessandro Truffa, Giorgia Zaffanelli), featured in the online magazine Pellicola. Additionally, the exhibition showcases the works of the two winners, engaging in dialogue with each other through their respective photographic practices within the Mucho Mas! gallery.