Alice Tamburini

f'aces

The artworks we present here are coming form a project called f'aces, promoted by Ettore Mildwin Art. 

This catalogue has been written to recount and promote a series of works painted in the past 4 years by the artist: the outcome is like a short film on a meaningful and intense part of her recent artistic production.

As it often happens, works of art come from an inner itch, a necessity, a generative and not foreordained drive which is beyond any specifically designed project. And yet, when we kneeled down (all the canvases were laid on the floor of her studio) and embraced them with our eyes, we realised that we were faced by a vast multitude of people, true and diverse, whose silence was only a mere illusion. From the density of those silent stories, a narrative fil-rouge was unfolding, striking a vibration which sparkled every single one of those faces, of those figures, and us, along with them. Each one of them holding more questions than answers and aiming for the contagion; so that whoever they ran into, would be wrapped in their anticipation and wonder.

f'aces has been thought out and created as to highlight the emotional impact when seeing the works of art, presenting them with the utmost prominence, and the most accurate reproductions that digital technology provides us with, so as to reach a vast, but also, selected audience.

ALICE SPEAKING ABOUT HERSELF

Let me begin with the eyes.

I paint loneliness in search of a name. My paintings have no titles until they identify with someone,  until they find a body. From being characters they become people: the unexpected adjustment of an object to my wish, quoting Roland Barthes. They take shape from oil and acrylic colours, from wallpaper; they are cut, torn, washed and repainted, darkened and dug out again. They are just as complex as the personalities they will inhabit. They would want to check up their double, carefully sizing it up and at last abandon the painting. They ask not to be painted any longer, they want to become flesh: retreat from the portrait, become people.

Alice is a name that carries wonders with it. And yet, not always: my first painting when I was at the Academy was called Envy, a painful and screamed-out blackness. Now, exactly as back then, painting is unavoidable, indispensable, needful. With time it has taken almost a circus quality, while maintaining loneliness and fierceness.

BIO

Alice Tamburini got her diploma from the Istituto Statale d'arte in Forlì in 1990, to graduate seven years later at the Academy of Visual Arts in Bologna. At the age of 5 she decided to show her drawings to Maria Pasini Morigi, a painter from Cesena, asking her to show them along with those of the artist in a one-man-show Maria was preparing for the city of Badia Prataglia. The day after Maria Pasini Morigi told her that her drawings were highly appreciated, and it was right there and then that Alice decided to become a painter.

Her first exhibition took place in 1990, at the XC Pacifici Hall in Forl . During that time Alice found the perfect space for her studio, an amazing old tobacco barn in the town of Gambettola, where she stayed for 20 years. At the Academy of Visual Arts she met Enrico Lombardi, an artist she defines as her mentor, and with him, participated in many prestigious art exhibitions. In 1995 she came in 3rd place at the Biennale Arte Romagnola held at the Palazzo del Ridotto, Galleria Comunale d'Arte in Cesena, and in 1999 she received an award, as a young painter, given to her from the city of Cesena. From 2002 to 2010 she had to slow down on her artistic production due to the birth of her three children, but from the year 2013 she fully resumed her activity, counting among the several collaborations she has had, galleries from Florence (Spazio d'Arte and Galleria Merlino); Ferrara (Palazzo Scroffa) and Venice (Art Studio). Some of her works have been shown at International Art Fairs in the States, such as in 2018 NYC The Armony Show and L.A. Art Los Angeles Contemporary, in 2017 New Mexico Art Santa Fé, Colorado Art Aspen, Washington Seattle Art Fair and Chicago Art Expo Chicago).

In the Summer 2018 she went on a journey of research and Body Painting performance with her daughter, which took them to Italy and France. In October-November of the same year she took part in Paratissima, in the group-show Base Milano and in the Caserma La Marmora in Turin, I.C.S. section with her own hall. In February 2019, during the Art Fair in Bologna, she organised a one-man show called “Autonomia" at the Off, and in the same month she was part of a theatre act with a body painting performance. In March 2019, in the city of Forlì, she had a one-man show at the Galleria Artistica and Banco. In May of the same year, she organised another solo show called “Origins of the visible" at the Galleria dell'Immagine in Rimini.