Galleria Antonella Villanova is pleased to announce that we will reopen for exhibitions on September 12^th with a new installment of Two-fold Project presented at the new exhibition space in Foiano della Chiana, (Via della Repubblica, 39), a Tuscan town not far from Cortona (AR).

Offering a diverse, twofold experience of art is the basic aim of Two-fold Project, a format in which “necessarily two” important artists, one of whose work is an expression of contemporary jewelry design, generate a new and original ‘conversation’ with their art.

The protagonists of this latest encounter, curated by Marco Bazzini, are Paola Gandolfi and Daniel Kruger.

Going beyond the commonplace and drawing the spectator into intimate, original stories, or indicating a path towards discovery of the inner self, seem to be two of the points of contact between these two very different artists: Gandolfi, a refined, uncompromising painter and Kruger, one of the most inventive and productive artists in contemporary jewelry. In their work, the two artists take cues from myths and rites, not to ritualize or reinterpret them, nor to controvert them, but to find triggers that spark new and different narrations.

The exhibition includes around ten of Gandolfi’s portraits of women, most of which were created for this occasion, while Kruger presents a new series of sculptures in the form of pendants inspired by the most traditional of good-luck charms: amulets. The artist makes no attempt to hide their magical nature, in fact he makes it explicit, using it as the title of this recent group of works, which are accompanied by short texts that illustrate in detail each necklace’s possible powers of protection against evil and danger.

Radiating strong and assertive feminine personalities – a major theme of all her work for more than forty years -, Gandolfi’s women need no outward symbols to declare their identity or their place in society. They are contemporary women presented to the spectator without accessories, contrary to the tenets of traditional portraiture like ancient Fayum imagery, in which subjects are presented adorned with jewels. In fact, immersed in a timeless space, they could be credited with the realization of these ‘magical sculpture’ necklaces, were we not sure that their minute detail, inventiveness and hidden irony are characteristics that point clearly to Daniel Kruger: pendants created with small, highly symbolic ritual objects and gems that suggest alchemical and curative capacities, like amber, malachite and coral, set in constructions with an ancient-yet-contemporary essence. This master craftsman of jewelry does not intend to evoke magic spells; what inspires him is the desire to play with obscure, mysterious aspects, and with the personal and societal taboos that too much of contemporary art ignores preferring to follow the latest trends.

These same themes, a unifying thread between the two artists, are the focus of a video and a few small sculptures by Gandolfi, and some of Kruger’s ceramic pieces on display.